I was returning home from the nearby super market yesterday. As I
walked past my daughter and her friends who were playing badminton, they
greeted me with big smiles
One of the girls told me that sometime in the past I had taught her how to play and from then on she picked up interest in the game. I could not recall the incident. But I was very happy. I told them it felt nice to receive appreciation from young people. After I returned home I pondered over the episode.
What a powerful tool appreciation is! It can mend broken relationships, it can fill your heart with ecstatic happiness and satiate the air around with positivity. I thought hard to remember the time I last appreciated someone and felt really ashamed. The little girl in one nonchalant moment has taught me a very valuable lesson.
Appreciation, where due, should be given liberally.
I have made up my mind to look out for the small little things that people do that deserves an appreciation. Let me share the happiness that I experienced. It has become a habit with me, as with most parents, to assume that parenting teenagers is difficult as they grow out of their childhood and enter into adolescence. The problem, I feel, is further accentuated by the lack of sensitivity shown by the parents. We somehow stop appreciating them even as they struggle to shed their cocoon and set flight to their wings. We stop seeing and treating them as children, because the children themselves don’t like being treated like one.
I, recently met a child about 12 years of age. She looked pretty in her outfit and I gave her a pat on her head and uttered the words ‘cute’. She felt embarrassed and as I apologised, she told me not to apologise as she did like it. Nowadays, my mother does not do these as she is involved in taking care of my younger brother, she continued. True. I went home and held my daughter close and kissed her on her forehead. Surprisingly, she smiled and said,’after a long time’. Adolescence is not equal to adulthood. We must give them their space and yet learn the knack of treating them like kids, maybe, grown up kids. After all if a mother of a teenage child liked the appreciation she got,they are kids are need as much appreciation as they deserve.
Let us not rob their little moments of success from them in focusing too much on an uncertain future and in our anxiety to prepare them for it!
One of the girls told me that sometime in the past I had taught her how to play and from then on she picked up interest in the game. I could not recall the incident. But I was very happy. I told them it felt nice to receive appreciation from young people. After I returned home I pondered over the episode.
What a powerful tool appreciation is! It can mend broken relationships, it can fill your heart with ecstatic happiness and satiate the air around with positivity. I thought hard to remember the time I last appreciated someone and felt really ashamed. The little girl in one nonchalant moment has taught me a very valuable lesson.
Appreciation, where due, should be given liberally.
I have made up my mind to look out for the small little things that people do that deserves an appreciation. Let me share the happiness that I experienced. It has become a habit with me, as with most parents, to assume that parenting teenagers is difficult as they grow out of their childhood and enter into adolescence. The problem, I feel, is further accentuated by the lack of sensitivity shown by the parents. We somehow stop appreciating them even as they struggle to shed their cocoon and set flight to their wings. We stop seeing and treating them as children, because the children themselves don’t like being treated like one.
I, recently met a child about 12 years of age. She looked pretty in her outfit and I gave her a pat on her head and uttered the words ‘cute’. She felt embarrassed and as I apologised, she told me not to apologise as she did like it. Nowadays, my mother does not do these as she is involved in taking care of my younger brother, she continued. True. I went home and held my daughter close and kissed her on her forehead. Surprisingly, she smiled and said,’after a long time’. Adolescence is not equal to adulthood. We must give them their space and yet learn the knack of treating them like kids, maybe, grown up kids. After all if a mother of a teenage child liked the appreciation she got,they are kids are need as much appreciation as they deserve.
Let us not rob their little moments of success from them in focusing too much on an uncertain future and in our anxiety to prepare them for it!
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