deAlinG wiTh cHiLdrEn aT tHe woRkplAce

I know that in every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. However dealing with that child at the workplace is quite a predicament. Everyone in your team is a child, especially when you’ve grey hair. Just as children have expectations of their parents, you’d find many fluttering around at the workplace with expectations of those few grayed folks sitting at higher grounds. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things…. I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. I bathe and remain wet for long and I soil my clothes with food. Only that as you grow up, you change and say “I still get wildly enthusiastic with a big paycheck, I play with gadgets, I don’t like the person next to me, I need to be trained before I perform, I want to breathe and live and see and smell and touch authority, I just want more and more and more”. What happened! I don’t have an answer to that, not earlier, not now. I never understood human nature and I don’t know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back. My mom used to say it doesn’t matter how many kids you have… because one kid’ll take up 100% of your time so more kids can’t possibly take up more than 100% of your time. So what the hell!

At work I do love to play hide and seek, but some days my goal is to find a hiding place where the children can’t find me. On other days, I have some simple things that I remember and do.

1. Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it. Don’t. To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
2. It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself, and show the way. Remember that if there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
3. Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you. The quickest way for a parent to get a child’s attention is to sit down and look comfortable.
4. Always kiss your children goodnight – even if they’re already asleep. At work, acknowledge their existence. Feel excited that they are around.
5. If you have never been hated by your child you have never been a parent. A parent’s love is whole no matter how many times divided.
6. At times it may kill you to see them grow up. They may explore new territories and go away. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.
7. Children are restless. If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.
8. Children have more need of models than of critics.
9. Although there are many trial marriages… there is no such thing as a trial child. (Which is why I never understood the concept of being on probation)?
10. There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.

But alas, these children enter your home and for the next few years make so much noise you can hardly stand it. When they depart, they leave the house so silent you think you are going mad. Sometimes, in a moral struggle, we discover the right thing to do – remember to do that and discover the joy. There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. If you can give that to your children at the workplace, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.