Entering A Child's World - An Interview with Dr. Mona

Dr. Mona Choudhary, (MBBS, MD Psychiatry) is a mother to an eleven year old boy. Her quest to be a better parent led her to meditation and teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.  It also led her to Yogananda Flower Essences which she now uses to support her clients. 

 She also trained as an EFL ( Education for Life) teacher and Life Skills Trainer.   

As a psychiatrist she trained in one of the premier Institutes of the country and combines spirituality and natural healing tools along with her medical training. She has clients across the globe. 

She started Parenting Mantra as an endeavour to share her learnings with other parents to support them. She believes that the most important thing that parents can do for their children is elevate their own consciousness.

In this blog, Dr. Shefali, Editor, Dawn Blossom Blog interviews Dr. Mona on parenting, life skills, building good habits and so much more. Dr. Mona shares practical parenting tips that come from her own experiences and expert knowledge set.

Hello Dr. Mona ji! Warm welcome to Dawn Blossom Club! Your brainchild, 'Parentingmantra' is truly a boon for all parents and teachers who are looking for some ways to deal with children's negative behaviour or looking for answers for holistic development of children. 

You are also a mother. As parents, people find it very urgent to calm their children. They want children to sit quietly, stay focused, learn concentration and self-control to excel in studies. How do you view that and what are the ways in which parents can teach calmness to children?

Hi Shefali, thank you for inviting me for this interview. Parentingmantra is just my way of sharing what I have learnt through my journey. I will try to answer the questions as best as I can.

The first question shows how we have a model of a child which is so far removed from what developmental neuroscience tells us. 4 year olds are not supposed to be calm and sit still for long. They do not have the emotional regulation abilities. So what parents are expecting is unrealistic and what’s happening in the bargain is that the children are getting shut down instead of getting calmer. It’s just outward quiet, inside the spirit, the joy of life that children inherently possess when they are born starts dying. 

There’s a time and season for honing different aspects of maturity at different ages. Early childhood is about exploring, getting to know their body and environment through movement and we have to honour that. Swami Kriyananda talks about stages of maturity and many other important concepts regarding raising children in his book “Education for Life”. That book and EFL changed my way of parenting. I wish I had it before my child was born. That book also led me to the EFL curriculum which gave me tools I could work with. I have a small Parenting circle where currently we are discussing some of the key elements and how it can apply to parenting.Emotion regulation is a skill that is learnt. Children learn by observing and they observe their parents, family members all the time. Healthy discussions and arguments are important for growth and understanding of a child. The reason we want our children to calm down  immediately may be because it affects our own peace and secondly the social stigma and guilt attached to not being good parents. We also have to treat a child as a child and not a mini adult, though they may seem to argue at par neurodevelopmentally it’s very different.

If parents want to teach calmness to their children they have to model calmness. Parents can’t be preachers, they have to be role models and walk the talk. Parents have to know for themselves what is calmness. That was the search that led me to meditation and finally to Ananda wherein I found EFL. If you ask me I would say that is the no. 1, the most important parenting tip, start meditation and your inward journey. 

Having said that, few things a parent can do during the situation is to regulate their own breath. If possible hug your children and keep taking slow rhythmic breaths. Don’t offer explanations and try to reason the mood away, it seldom works. Just be there and a child’s breath will synchronize with yours and they will start calming. You could change their environment, go for walks especially if there’s nature around it’s very useful. Sometimes the meltdowns happen or worsen because the child is hungry. Keep that possibility in mind and give them something to eat and maybe a drink and it can ease the meltdown. Also radiating peaceful vibrations to them and doing healing prayers( something I learned at Ananda and very valuable to me.) are extremely helpful. In our parent circle, the third Wednesday of the month is for group healing prayers and we continue doing it individually everyday for our children. If the relationship is very disharmonious, Peace and Harmony Prayers taught at Ananda sangha works like a charm. 

If children learn to meditate it would be wonderful but it has to start from us. And the way young children will learn to meditate is going to be quite different than how adults can learn. We have to start step-by-step so maybe starting with 30 seconds of quiet time, where the child is just sitting quietly and focusing on one object and then gradually increasing the time. If a child is resisting the increase, it’s good to not push because then they will lose interest and not want to do it at all. That is what happened with my child. He was randomly doing 1 minute of quiet time and he was enjoying it and then on reminding it became more regular but then I made the mistake of saying 5 minutes and he couldn’t make that jump and he totally went off it. I was trying to accelerate the whole process but it backfired. I can just be hopeful now that maybe one day he will pick it up on his own. 

I have learnt many lessons the hard way and I felt like sharing so that other parents don’t have to go through it. 

Learning and teaching kids to breath right and using the breath to calm is also an important tool. The point is that one has to cultivate calmness bit by bit otherwise it’s not going to come in distressing situations when you need it. 

We talked about calmness. Is it important to teach children to feel gratitude? How can one teach children to be grateful in life?

Thank you for asking this question about gratitude. Gratitude is life changing. Gratitude naturally takes us out of fear into calmness. It’s calming for the nerves. When we feel gratitude, we create that vibration which allows more to come to us. Being grateful helps in focusing on what is positive in our lives, and thus can uplift us from negative moods and anxiety, 

So how can one teach children to be grateful in life? I have written a blog on it https://parentingmantra.com/2023/08/22/developing-gratitude-as-a-family/.

I would say that most importantly practice it in your life. Be very mindful when you’re complaining or whining, especially in front of your children. I have covered a few ways in the blogpost, two which stand out for me are gratitude jar and recounting at night blessings of the day out loud, so that children hear you. Ending the day with gratitude is very powerful. Gratitude jar among other things act as a positive reinforcer of right behaviour especially in Indian culture where we are not used to expressing gratitude and appreciation. It helps to see the good in the family members and not always focus on their faults, thus bringing in more peace and harmony in the house. 

There are several occasions when parents find their children facing difficulties in life and stuck with that? How should parents help or counsel children to navigate that? How do you as a mother do that, if you could cite an example from your own life?

Yes, children will face difficulties in life and they will get stuck with that like we are many times. As parents, we want to help them and wish to take away their sufferings but we also have to remember that the children are individual souls who have come with their own genetic make up, their own karma. We as parents have to maintain balance as in when to help, how much to help. Is the struggle helping the child to grow, learn new skills, gain confidence or has the child started breaking down. Provide the support that’s needed and not necessarily do everything for them. 

Also each child has a different learning style. Some children will listen to the advice and they will know where they are lacking and will manage their way, but other children learn from making mistakes themselves sometimes repeatedly. To such children one has to say “I am there when you need me” and then step back. It’s one of the most difficult things I feel. Ofcourse I am talking about life lessons and struggles where life is not at stake, it’s not advisable to step back if a 3 year old is running on a busy street. 

It’s been a personal struggle to be able to hold my breath and not reprimand ‘ You should have listened’ but when I don’t say it, the child says “I wish I had listened.’ That’s when the message seeps down. Specifics will keep changing from one situation to other but the real message is to listen, introspect, and ask for help. 

As parents I also feel before giving advice we must do a reality check on its practicality in today’s world. I don’t like saying it but today life is tough even for children. There is so much vying for attention and they have to compete against all that to maintain their identity. Imagine growing up in so much of insecurity and lack of trust. It’s very damaging to the brain and nervous system. Today more than ever I think the most important job of the parent is to keep the communications channel open and have a trustworthy and deep connection where the child feels seen and heard. 

Giving an example from my life is when I had to step back and let him learn his own lessons. For some reason he was having trouble with his friends and advice was falling on deaf ears. He finally learned from the natural consequence of being shunned out repeatedly. It happened with a lot of tears, angst, punishment and harsh words all of which could have been avoided. It would trigger me and I had to learn my own lessons. These experiences though very painful helped me to grow and also explore various healing modalities. This included Yogananda Flower Essences which helped him to have a more cheerful attitude. 

Should one give  incentives or gifts for instilling good habits in children? What are some ways in which you have taught your son some good habits?

People may find my views controversial. I would say yes, if it gets the job done, do it because once that habit is formed in the child, it will stay. But be smart enough of the incentives/gifts because you might have to give it for a long time, and if your child is smart they will start bargaining for higher rewards. Some children love challenges and they can also be used to instill good habits. For eg. one of my friends would play Ananda Music( children's song) and the challenge would be can we pick up the toys before the song ends. Her children loved it and soon learnt to pick their toys. Different children will respond to different motivations. 

When I had to teach my child to pick up toys I resorted to threat. It worked but it’s not something I would recommend. At that time I didn’t know about Education for Life and its concept of Progressive Development. It's about stages of a child’s consciousness and what kind of motivation will help them in each stage. The job of a parent is not only to rectify the behaviour but also to raise the consciousness of the child and always to give them a chance. So instead of giving him reward which would have been more appropriate for him, I resorted to a lower choice of threat. Also it’s easy to introduce good habits in the beginning and have some rules. I would say it comes back to being a good role model. Our parents were good role models, for example, if they asked us to sleep early, they also retired to bed around the same time. Parents who would like to know more can read some of my articles on rule setting, praise, punishment, motivation on Parentingmantra.com

 Thank you so much Shefali for this opportunity and spreading light around the world.

Thank you Dr. Mona for sharing your time and expert suggestions with us!