Moms, Do You Mind?
Where can kids get to acquire this ability? Nowhere! And that sadly is
the problem with our education system. In fact, you don't even have tutors to
do that for you. Unless you think of tutoring outside the box. And that, is
about tutoring the Mind.
Since all boxed-up subjects go into the mind, it is very easy to clutter
up our kids minds with numerous boxes and think we are gifting them “valuable
education”. From their perspective, they are being crammed with unrelated boxes
marked ‘miscellaneous’. And that doesn’t really help them learn much, or have
any fun. Over years, they do understand how to retrieve a fraction of what’s
filled in some boxes, to apply that in life. But what is unused is a complete
waste of everyone’s time, effort and money. Especially Mom’s!
So what can Mom do?
She can’t change the education system. She can’t fight the authorities.
She can’t choose what to do with the syllabus. So she must remember the wise
old story of the ancient King. This is of the days when everyone walked
barefoot. The King once gashed his foot over a stone. Since he had the authority
and the resources, he commanded his Minister to lay a leather cover over all
the roads of the land. The Minister thought about it and said, “Your Lordship,
what if we have each citizen cover their own feet with leather?” The King
thought about that and decided it would be a smarter idea. And shoes came into
being!
Well, Mommy-dear, you are the “King” here and the “shoes” are ‘mindfulness
techniques’. When your kids realize that they can play with their own minds –
and have fun while at it – they will be able to mark their boxes meaningfully
and retrieve a lot more for their future lives.
Sounds strange? Let us look at an illustration.
Let’s say we adopt a simple mindfulness technique of ‘linking any new
input with a familiar object’. Now let’s say our kid is fed with Pythagoras’
Theorem. Since it concerns a triangle, she could link it with a mountain. And
before she knows it, climbing up c-square becomes a fun shortcut. One that she
has discovered herself!
Mindfulness serves us in many ways. It is essentially a training of each
individual mind into getting into awareness of each moment. Not only does that
improve focus and assimilation, it also enhances memory and aids the recall of whatever
is relevant – when its moment arises.
Techniques that can be learned through only a few sessions – stretching
over 4 to 40 hours – provide life skills that proactively address issues like
“work-life balance”, “information overload” and “stress overwhelm”, to name a
few. Needless to point out that the incidence of these is increasing by the day.
And no permanent solutions are available with “modern science”.
Think of this. All recent technological advances – be they printing
presses, cars, planes, internet or whatsapp – have seen trillions of dollars
going into the advancement of ways of ‘reaching faster and faster to those
outside’. Well, our happiness arises from the inside. Mindfulness is the time-tested
means to building meditative awareness in motion, for ‘reaching faster and
faster to one’s inside’.
And progressive organizations like Google, Canada Police and several
others are realizing this and making a “start-of-day-mindfulness-session” part
of their daily work-routine.
The understanding of mindfulness can possibly become a “subject” of the
future by itself, which can be where the next trillion dollars will go. And
while that happens, your kids can get an unfair advantage by learning,
practicing and applying mindfulness in their daily lives.
Would you Mind?
