The Gift by Arun Gandhi

Author:Arun Gandhi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405938099
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

LESSON SEVEN

Practice Nonviolent Parenting

Whenever I think about my time with Bapuji at the ashram, I remember his warmth and wisdom and gentle smile. He taught with love and patience.

A couple who lived near the ashram came to Bapuji one day with their six-year-old son, Anil. The little boy’s doctor had said he needed to drastically cut down on his sweets because the sugar was making him ill. Anil liked his candy and would sneak treats, making himself sicker. After a few weeks of struggling, the mother brought Anil to Bapuji with a request to speak to the child about not eating sweets. Bapuji said, “Come back in two weeks.”

The mother was a little frustrated and not sure why they had to wait, but when they came back, Bapuji pulled Anil close and whispered to him. They gave each other a high five—and the mother was astonished in the following days to see Anil avoiding sweets and eating as he should. He became healthier, and the mom was convinced that Bapuji had performed a miracle. She came back and asked what he had done.

“It was no miracle,” he said with a smile. “I needed to give up eating sweets myself before I would ask him to do the same. When you came back, I said that I had given up eating sweets for two weeks, and now would he try?”

Bapuji’s idea of education was different from most people’s. He thought children didn’t learn as much from textbooks as from the character and example of the people teaching them. He would scoff at the old advice “Do what I say, not what I do”; he firmly believed that teachers needed to do exactly what they asked of their students. He urged parents and teachers to “live what we want our children to learn.”

I had a tutor for subjects like math and science, but Bapuji knew the most profound lessons would come from watching him. He was a kind and patient teacher, and he wanted everybody to think of him as the father or grandfather they could learn from. He first took on that role back in 1910 when he lived on the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa, one of his early experiments in having many people live and work together. He described it as a family where he had the role of father and the responsibility for teaching the children. In those days he didn’t think he could find any teachers or tutors to come for the nonwhite children, so he himself began educating the boys and girls living there.

Bapuji’s model of leading by example is a powerful one that parents today could use. Many parents talk about limiting screen time for their children, but then they themselves take phone calls or stare at their smartphones when they are supposed to be spending time with their families. The children learn that the phone or electronic device is more important than anything else—and certainly more important than they. I shake my head when

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