When I was growing up, the culture of “tuitions”–pronounced tyooshun by us Indian middle-class types–was just picking up. Each and every one of my friends had a tutor for almost every subject; from English to Physics. Throughout my school years, I never attended a single tuition class.
Most people assumed that I was being tutored by my father because he taught students during his free time. Everyone would stare in disbelief when I said that my father rarely tutored my older sister and I. So what method did my parents employ that ensured my sister and I would still get good grades?
Early lessons in responsibility
The first thing my parents taught me was that I was responsible for my own school work. If there was homework that needed to be done, I was expected to do it without anyone asking me to. This does not mean that my parents were not interested in what I was learning in school, it just meant that they were not micromanaging my day-to-day school logistics.
It was understood that whatever homework was required to be done would be completed before bedtime. On the rare occasion I didn’t finish my homework and my parents were informed of it, they would sit me down and explain that if I wanted to learn, I had to take the initiative myself. They would support me if I needed extra help but the first push was to come from me.
No spoon feeding allowed
I remember having trouble understanding Newton’s second law of motion, which I was learning in my Physics classes. I went to my father for help. He said to me, “What do you think it means?” I was stumped. I really didn’t know what it meant. But he pushed me to express what I understood of it and assured me that even if I got it wrong, it didn’t matter.
While I haltingly tried to explain my thoughts on Newton’s second law of motion, my father caught me at the exact point where my understanding of it was flawed. Only then did he stop me and explain the whole concept. My father firmly believed that you should never spoon feed information to children. He believes that if you force kids to think, it helps them develop critical reasoning abilities.
My father has never said no to helping me, but he’d only do so after I had tried to figure it out myself first. There have actually been times where I eventually figured things out myself and didn’t need any help after all!
I learnt to manage my own time
By allowing me to be responsible for my own school work, my parents inadvertently ended up teaching me one of the biggest lessons in my life: How to manage my own time. Besides my school hours and piano lessons, which had fixed timings, my parents didn’t micromanage my life. My free time was mine.
The beauty of having such freedom is that you quickly learn it’s not always fun to be loafing around. I learnt to set aside time for my homework, television, music, playtime with my friends, and to practice the piano. This is a skill that has served me well into adulthood. The ability to set my own goals and routine has helped me survive adulthood without too many mishaps.
So, as much as we’d like to know what our kids are doing all the time, giving them the space to just be will actually help them more in the long run. We love our kids and we all want them to become well-balanced adults one day. Just remember that responsibility, like most things, is best taught when young.
