Home is the first school framed by family

The other day we were chatting over a very commonplace topic that gripped my mind and I thought of sharing some views on the same.

A baby’s first encounter begins at home. Parents are the ones to clasp a baby’s fist and feed him or her first spark of knowledge. Knowledge does not mean intricate doctrines or sciences but very simple basic chores of life. This eventually transforms into a learning process for the child and the child looks up to its parents for understanding the elemental things of life.

Home is the first school and parents are the first teachers. A little baby opens his eyes to this world, the world seems to be a new place where everything is unfamiliar for him. Even bringing his lips to consume the first globule of milk from his mother’s bosom is a new experience for the little baby and surely a learning process.Holding his father’s thumb with his little hand is not a very effortless skill for him. He learns with the help of his parents; the first signs of his fingers struggling hard to touch his father’s hand is a learning process for the little baby.

His home is a breeding ground for so many new things, in fact everything is new. Home is where he first comprehends the meaning of so many things. His first utterance of words in his babbling tone and then his mother teaching him ‘Ma’ pointing towards herself introduces him to his first language skill, it could be ‘Ma’, ‘Mummy’ or ‘Aayee’. He absorbs the words and the next time he is able to recollect what his mother had taught him and suddenly utters it pointing towards ‘Mother’, giving boundless happiness to the mother. Thanks to the family, his learning process continues.

His first language skills, his speech, his signs, his expressions, his verbal intonations and surely his emotional and behavioural pattern take a course primarily based on the values and ethics of his family and their teachings. There are times when a child is not consciously directed towards any specific thought process but subconsciously he imitates it.

Whether it’s realizing his dreams or shaping his reality, his first seeds of becoming a doctor or an engineer, an artist, a writer or even what kind of human being he will be is based 70% on family views, their beliefs and their theories. His parents’ knowledge of things is unceasingly reprinted onto the child’s brain. A child calls an Apple ‘Apple’ because he was taught that the specific fruit was known as ‘Apple’. Similarly shapes, colours or anything and everything is just a borrowed interpretation from the first encounters and that surely is his family.

And one day this little child grows into a man but his basic virtues and learnings are mostly doused in his family’s colour. His behavioural pattern reflects his upbringing.

Thus, the legacy which we pass on to our offsprings surely reflects in their behaviour. Parents are the first teachers. They actually feed the raw materials and fodder for the first learning and that is mirrored so effortlessly in his life’s circle.

Ronita-Maitra Bhandari is a freelance creative writer who writes for various sites and blogs. She has also done a certified course in “Positive Parenting” from U.K. She is a mom to a 7-year-old and loves nurturing her greatest resource, her daughter. Apart from writing she is a nature lover and gets energised wandering around green patches. She believes family is a treasure chest and children are those precious jewels in the chest who sparkle to illuminate lives. What else would one desire to live a rich life?