Future Proofing our kids? Naaah

I understand there are circumstances where other priorities of life may come in the way but life is short and time flies. Just live life and be present with your child. Ok, perhaps think ahead a little, as what I'm about to share are my thoughts on how to nurture young'uns who are resilient, resourceful, and ready for what may come and what may be.

E.E.R: Expose, Educate, Reflect

1.Expose

Que sera sera. We now have careers our grandparents and parents wouldn't even have imagined. Actually, they wouldn't think of what to call it, but in essence, a lot of the things we do are still similar to the generations before. However, the scale that we do it in is drastically different, as now we are more connected than ever before.

Ambitions shared when I was a kid were the usual - doctor, lawyer, teacher, actor, police, firefighters, scientist, singer, or perhaps the more unusual fashion designer, game creator, chef, car racer. Goodness knows how many different skilled artisans, genius craftsmen, award-winning engineers, and life-changing roles that we have never heard of, unless exposed to in any way or form.

Here, I'm sharing 2 videos of a career and a research I find intriguing to me as these will hardly be a job ever mentioned under "Ambitions" when we were young.

Who knew mind control could be a reality soon. I'd also never thought of orchestrating people into thousands of pixels in an arena to make displays of light!

With this kind of jobs created now, only time and culture can tell what roles may be available in future. But what I can observe is, many of these unconventional roles are created by seeing opportunities or problems to solve, and with curiosity and lots of passion.

So in the meantime, just try our best to expose them and ourselves to different environment, beings, and circumstances. Make up challenges for them to solve, trigger their curiosity and imagination with the darnest questions a child would ask you, show and share with them things that were done with lots of love and excitement.

2.Educate

Learning is defined many ways, it is attainment of knowledge or attitude, a change in behaviour from an experience. Whereas education is the process of sharing and obtaining learnings or an enlightening experience. So educating your child is not about seeing yourself as the adult or authority or i-have-more-experience/knowledge-than-you, but of sharing of information and imagination to the kids while learning from them too.

Sadhguru (a yogi and an advocate for spiritual wellbeing) mentioned that we do not raise kids, as they are not lower than us. I like his perspective on parenting HERE.

When a child is born, the first and foremost thing one should understand is that you did not create life. You only worked as a passage to deliver life. So you must understand that this has only come to you, this doesn’t really come from you or belong to you. It is just that you have the privilege of nurturing it for a certain period of time. - Sadhguru

Learning is in loops and concentric circles! So as we educate them, we educate ourselves too.

3.Reflect

Digest their day to day, minute to minute with them. Do it for yourself too! This will sound like a project retrospective question, but I guess it works for general life too: What went well? What didn't go so well? What can be better? I believe life is about looking back in the past for a while and planning for the future for a bit, but mostly enjoying the present. Frequent reflections have already been proven a powerful metacognitive and cognitive enhancing exercise.

It is through these practices that our kids and ourselves can grow into beings who are all-rounded not just in skills, but also in character. Wouldn't the world be lovely with a little more kindness, a little more joyful characters, and a whole lot of fun-filled explorations and adventures?

The gist is we are all just another surviving being. If you noticed, it is not much about handling them but more about how we handle ourselves. Who are we to know what's best for them in the future when we can't even handle ourselves in the present? LOL. So take a chill pill and go play with your child!