Rethinking Parental Roles

needing “re-conditioning” but one of parents needing self-training. If they wish to guide their children effectively, they must learn to become counsellors—empathetic, balanced, and intellectually prepared. Weak counselling leads to weak outcomes. Another major issue is pampering. Out of deep affection, parents often indulge their children excessively. Affection is healthy; pampering is harmful. Pampering fosters an easy-going, irresponsible nature that is wholly unsuited to the harsh realities of life. Pampered children rarely heed advice. They grow accustomed to immediate comfort and unquestioned acceptance. They know their desires well, but not the discipline or resilience needed to achieve anything substantial. When such children encounter the external world, they find themselves wholly unprepared. I once met two Indian boys, both graduates, who admitted they were struggling to cope with life. At home, they said, their parents had always protected them, fulfilling every request without hesitation. But once they left home and tried to build their own futures, they felt unloved and unwanted. In the world outside, everything had a price—hard work, adjustment, competence, discipline, acceptance of reality, and even failure. “We were never trained for this,” they lamented. This is the real danger of pampering: it produces individuals who are not equipped for life. Pampering is like manufacturing a product for which there is no market. It may satisfy the producer, but it serves no purpose in the world. Parents must understand that their children need two kinds of education: 1. Professional education, which is provided by schools and universities. 2. Spiritual and emotional training, which can only be provided at home. Parents are the teachers in this second, crucial institution. But effective teaching cannot be delivered through a rigid language of commands—“do this” and “don’t do that.” Today’s children do not respond to authoritarian instruction. What they need is thoughtful, reasoned guidance rooted in empathy and wisdom. For this, parents must cultivate something deeper: rational thinking and spirituality . This means approaching life with clarity, purpose, and emotional maturity. It means modelling resilience, discipline,