Good Morning.

Only last evening, I finished reading the book "(UN)PARENTING" authored by Dr. Nidhi Gupta who is a practicing Radiologist, passionate reader, writer and researcher in human mind and body. She has penned this book based on her experience as a sedulous parent and her experience of being parented by her great parents. Her own son (Dr. Mohak Gupta) is a graduate from AIIMS and is now in USA as an Internal Medicine Trainee. The author says this book is the sumtotal of her life lessons in parenting the children and being parented as a child.

I was bumfuzzled by the title of the book but after reading some pages it seemed justified with the changed times. Gone are the days when " Spare the rod and spoil the child " was reingning supreme. As we know in many countries it is crime even to beat your own child for his or her wrong doings. A neighbor can ring up the police and you will be in soup for your minacious behavior.

The author has tried to outline the newage parenting approach that brings out the absolute best in the child and the parents in the ways that one cannot imagine at first (without reading this book). As per the author we don't prepare ourselves for parenting for the new age but practice the same as we were parented. It may not now work to parent the modern generation, there is a lot of counterculture also now.
Now, when both parents are working and stressed by superergation, they feel upset to produce children and even decide to become " DINK" Double Income No Kids.
 

The skills that we need to learn are not just to enable us to handle children but to make parenting guilt free, confident and relaxed. It would be highly satisfying if we could turn parenting into a partnership or a sort of alliance and both parents and children grow together. Life is an endless journey and teaches us hard lessons.
 

She has put hard work in covering very important subjects like Personality trait of the child, The Shy Child, Defiant Child, Screen time, telling lies by children, minimalist parenting and many more like unconditional love of the mother and maternal temper.

 

Pearls in the book as discovered by me.
* Make your child a co-traveller in your journey from childhood to adulthood.
* Hugging is a handshake of hearts and it creates feelgood feelings both in you and your children.
* Junk food, inadequate sleep, no playtime, no physical exercise, unhealthy life style- all lead to poor concentration in the child.
* Children always want your undivided attention, so be with them without distraction.
* Nothing can beat the golden tradition of story telling at bed time. It stimulates child's imagination and higher thinking.
* Practice minimalistic parenting and even lifestyle. Minimalistic life style saves you from kerfuffle in the family.
* There is no perfect child and no perfect parent.
* Loving yourself and your life partner is one of the best ways to love your children.

In the end it can be said that parenting is never going to be all the sunshine and smiles howsoever practiced. Cookie-cutter parenting which means the same set of values, forced upon every generation of children with different talents and personalities despite changing times and high technology world.

Wish a lot of modern parents and Pediatricians read this book.