I first noticed this book in Flipkart. Then I picked it up from Crossword after few days. The tag line ‘The Art of Raising children’ made me think that this book would be a full-fledged multi chapter manual on how to raise your child. It was rather a collection of excerpts from H.H. Sri Sri Ravishankar’s speeches across the globe. After the initial chapters, you cannot avoid the same points repeating again and again. There were some brilliant ideas and some ideas that are common. Some key points that I could recollect after reading the book
– An infant smiles 400 times a day, a child 15 times and an adult hardly smiles.
– There is no harm in accepting education as a business as long as the management treats the customers, aka students, as kings
– Parents should not hesitate to scold/reprimand the kids now and then so that the kids get used to this and does not suffer when they are treated badly in outside world (mostly applicable for West. In India, this is still very common)
– Children should be given spiritual training, yoga, physical activities, pranayama etc to avoid stress
– Government and Corporates should work together in increasing the quality of the education. More corporates should come forward to adopt areas/schools
– Children should be encouraged to meet one new friend each day.
– Teachers should be role models. They should imbibe values deeply into children’s mind.
– A child should be allowed to talk to people of all age ranges.
Sparing some good points and ideas, I felt this book was full of marketing message to get your child to enrol for YES, YES+ programs etc. If not that, then there are examples of how these programs transformed the behaviour of unruly children. It’s a good one time read that could be rented from library. I did not see this book as buy-worthy although price is less.
Pointless & Prosaic 