Things Kids Don’t Know

Elders love to preach to kids – don’t we? We feel we know much more than those tiny beings and we tend to keep teaching the little ones how to live. It satisfies the adult ego to pour out volumes of advice to those spongy minds.

Its in our blood, I guess, that we should advice kids. Maybe its parental instinct. We see a kid doing something which we think is wrong and start off. Even if a kid did something right, we start of about how it could be done better. If the child isn’t doing anything, we start off about how he or she should be doing something. We tell active children to slow down and slow ones to speed up.

Elders just can’t let Kids be!

And one recent Sunday this paradox struck me. True, kids don’t know a lot of things. I compiled a brief list below:

• Sadness
• Hate
• Holding grudges
• Lying
• Worrying
• Unkindness
• Fear
• Depression
• Selfishness
• Anger

Isn’t it an interesting list?

An elder knows all these and somewhere in our advice, we pass on these accumulations to children. If we look at how we picked up these tendencies in our journey from childhood to adulthood, we will find some elders’ well-meant advice or “knowledge sharing” behind it.

Children have been made pure and simple, innocent, excited, loving, loveable. That is how Nature has designed the human race. Rather than living our lives on this basis, we tend to reverse the design of Nature and downgrade the beauty Nature instilled in us at our birth.

What an elder ought to do is:

• Reflect how one imbibes these undesirable qualities.
• Observe children who are unexposed to the aforesaid negative tendencies.
• Learn from them to live life in all happiness.

Kids are made this way to remind us of how happy it is to be free of vices.

We were made that way, is it too hard to go back to be that way?

Learning to grow

They came with eyes unseeing
As they saw the world,
When I saw them, I came to know,
I’m here to make them grow.

They didn’t know the world
The way I knew it,
I thought I have to make them know,
I have to make them grow.

I held them in my arms,
Innocent smiles on their faces,
A smile of recognition started to flow,
I felt, I will make them grow.

My finger they held
And walked their first steps with me,
Seeing their slow and steady flow,
I knew I was making them grow.

Small steps they took
While I took large ones,
I was fast and they slow,
And I was sure like me they will grow.

The smiles turned wide
Into grins and musical laughter,
At times they took a blow,
I told myself that’s how they must grow.

How soon they forget
The things they don’t like,
See things in a manner I didn’t show,
That’s how I was seeing them grow.

While I was seeing things
Rough and smooth in the path,
They saw joy whether high or low,
What a way to grow!

I worked to give them the best
To make them learn all,
I was working with sweat on my brow,
Everything to make them grow.

They laughed while I worked away
To make their life comfortable,
I wondered whether they would ever know,
In what manner I wanted them to grow.

They learnt the world in many ways
In a manner sweet and pure,
I couldn’t make out things true and pseudo,
While I was making them grow.

To the world I tried
To show their many talents,
Tough times I don’t want them to undergo,
But is that how I wanted them to grow?

When I felt sad one day
They spoke to me of things simple,
Laughs and smiles they always throw,
While I make them grow.

While I couldn’t smile
They played on my lap,
Never does their joy go,
What will happen when they grow?

I gave them life’s problems to solve
Without anyone teaching it at all,
Simple ways they know,
Am I the one making them grow?

The true path they talk of
Say things so simply right
To their innocence I feel I must bow,
How do I make them grow?

Life’s problems big and small
In their cute smiles I forget,
I was like them some time ago,
Now, like me, I want them to grow.

Can’t I just forget
The trials that I go thru?
Can’t I, my worries throw
And just watch them grow?

When I see them now
I want them to be themselves,
To me they now show,
What it is to grow.

I don’t own them
They will be themselves
But now for sure I know,
There are here to make me grow.

I see their joy and I laugh
I had forgotten what that was like,
With them I forget all woe,
That’s how I’ve learnt to grow.

They will learn the way they should
And I will do want I must do,
While I go on and become slow,
And simply watch them grow.

I have learnt now that things must
Happen as Nature has made out to be,
Watching them for sure I know,
That’s what it means to grow.

My Notes: This poem is about what I have learnt from my children.