I am pregnant. What is the best way to educate the child?
By practising mantra and kirtan, that’s all!
And after the child is born, what is the best way of educating it?
Well, by living a life which the child can appreciate, because children are idealistic. They cannot understand our stupid realism. Children should be given an ideal example by you. Suppose I get angry. You are already a grown-up person, so you can understand that I am a human being and it is natural to get angry. You can understand why I am angry, but a child cannot understand it. He gets a shock. If you do not want your child to do something, don’t tell him because children cannot understand why you are telling them not to do it.
Suppose my child goes to sing kirtan with a swami and starts dancing there and I tell him not to go. He will never understand why I am telling him this because my commandment and his intellect do not coincide. I mean they are not parallel. Parents must understand that there is a difference of at least twenty years between parents and children. I mean a minimum of twenty years, it can be even twenty-five years. Remember in twenty-five years what a great difference there is between the understanding of the child and the understanding of the parent.
Therefore, at the age of twenty five, when you have a child of four, you must try to become his age. If you can become a child with the child then you will understand this, but if you talk to him as if you are a very wise person, he does not understand you. Every Sunday you take him to church. He does not like it. He cannot oppose you because he is only four years old, but if you could understand his subconscious mind you would understand that he does not want to go.
Children like to play; they want to shout; they want to jump. That’s all they want. They want to hear stories, and children like kirtan and music very much. Kirtan has a very good effect on children. Stories, dance, painting, playing, jumping, all kinds of shouting and jokes, that’s all children like. Sometimes they like an embrace, a kiss, but many children don’t like it.
I know about myself. I remember when my grandmother used to come and place her hands on my head. I did not like it and I don’t remember that I had ever been near to my mother’s bosom. I don’t remember if my mother ever kissed me. She must have, but I don’t remember. I don’t know what the use is. Let me play, that is all.
If you want to train children, you have to become children. Children have to go to school because that is the law of the country. Children have to understand that much, but if children know that you are anxious to have them sent to school and become educated and first class high rank, they go crazy.
I was a very good student, first in the class, but I always used to think that today maybe my school will be burnt and there will be no class. And when it used to rain, I used to think that it will rain so much and so much that the school would be closed. I used to think all impossible things so that there would be no school. Sometimes I used to think if my mathematics teacher dies there will be no mathematics class. I think all of you were also like this.
That is how you have to treat children. Parents should not be a dictator to their children. They should not behave like policemen. They should behave like friends. When your child becomes twelve, you are his friend and not mother or father. When your child has become eight, he is your friend, so do not oppose him. The only thing that you should do is let him sing, let him play!
1983, Spain