I have two boys, aged ten and four. They are very precious to me. My life definitely revolves around them. While this remains a fact, the reverse is also true (at least for now ;). Living in a huge joint family, these boys have always been super pampered. I am mostly the one yelling and disciplining them. Of course, I do occasionally spoil and coddle them too (who anyway wants to live a ‘strict mom’ tag all her life?).
These millennials I believe are mostly born with a silver spoon. Everything comes to them even before they demand. What's happening because of this is, it's making the material life freely and easily available to them. I remember one of my uncles telling me, how he had struggled all his youth to get to where he is now, that he would never want his kids to do the same. He gave them the best of everything very readily. And at that time being a teenager, I would still argue with him that I wouldn’t want to do that with my kids ever. Easier said than done I guess. They got it all just like that.
When I saw my son growing up, he looked quite unhappy with me. He would be very easily disappointed and angry at small things. I remember us as kids we would sit at the table and pray and eat whatever we got, these kids after giving them multiple choices are not happy with anything. The thing about finding faults with homemade food increased. They found it too spicy while the actual spicy junk that they ate made a way merrily into their tummies. This is just an instance. I don’t want to get into the complaint mode here but it made me very sad to see this.
When his frequent smiles became occasional, it got me worried. I knew I had to do something about it. I have never been so religious about things but have always seen life with a spiritual spark. I knew what needs to be mended here and also very soon. I wanted to shape the mold while it was still wet. I started a routine with both the boys, as it’s always easier for the younger one to mimic the older. I taught them bed time prayers to start with along with moral stories to go along with. I remember doing it way before too but somewhere in our busy lives we forgot about it all.
I bought him a diary and named it ‘gratitude diary’. I asked him to decorate it as much as he likes it. Something he would like to see and use every day. It was his own personal space. I asked him to write a couple of things he was grateful for every day. I didn’t know how much would a pre-teen boy agree to this or if he would find it lame. So I left it to that. I explained to him how being in gratitude changes our attitude towards life. Plus writing would help him get over any stresses he wasn’t able to talk about. I was hoping this would redirect his thoughts.
I found ways to explain this to him. He’s quite a boy of science. I let him know that Researchers say, people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed. Their anxieties and irritability are lowered too. It stimulates two important regions in our brains: the hypothalamus, which regulates stress and the ventral tegmental area, which plays a significant role in the brains' reward system that produces a feeling of pleasure. Spending just five minutes in gratitude each morning or evening, writing gratitude emails or notes increases your well being in a great way.
It all came back to me multifold that day when my kid came back from school. He came home so happy and that’s the change I had started noticing in him for a few days. He hugged me and said, “thank you for the Diary mom, I filled it up in school today like every day and so many good things came my way since morning”. He had changed from a victim to a creator mode so soon. I was elated too. I thanked my own self for making this shift in these little lives and glad that I left an imprint on their young minds.