Discipline for Children
Swami says that we should discipline our children and not allow them to wander about without control. He further says:
Discipline is the mark of intelligent living. Parents should not allow children to fall away from their control, and wander about without compass or anchor. Many parents feed and fondle their children, and then, in the name of freedom, leave them to find their own friends and pleasures. They take them to films regardless of the impression they create on their tender minds. They entertain the friends of their children, but do not inquire their antecedents or habits. They even encourage their children to smoke and drink, not knowing they will one day have to rue their action. They thus declare by their action that they are the enemies of their own progeny!
I like children; I take great care of them; I pay them great attention. I give, and advise parents to give them [the children], proper advice at the proper time. I insist on discipline, on reverent obedience to parents, on regulated food and play, on rigorous allocation of time for study, bhajan (devotional singing), meditation, etc. I also recommend some items of service, like nursing the sick. I condemn frivolous talk, luxurious living, deleterious habits, addiction to films, horror comics, pen-friends, exotic dress, outlandish coiffures designed to draw attention to oneself, etc. By these means, boys and girls are slowly drawn into unrighteous and immoral ways.
Discipline trains you to put up with disappointments; you will know that the path of life has both ups and downs, that every rose has its thorns. Now, people want roses without thorns, life has to be one saga of sensual pleasure, a picnic all the time. When this does not happen, you turn wild and start blaming others. If each one cares for his own pleasures, how can society progress? How can the weak survive? Mine, not thine—this sense of greed is the root of all evil.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, pp. 56-57
Establish the status of the mother in the home, as the upholder of spiritual ideals and therefore, the guru of the chidren. Every mother must share in this effort—the expansion and steady manifestation of the God-consciousness latent in every child.
Children are the crops growing in the fields, to yield the harvest on which the nation has to sustain itself. They are the pillars on which the foundation of the nation’s future is built. They are the roots of the national tree, which has to give the fruits of work, worship, and wisdom to the next generation.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, pp. 236-237
In the tender hearts of the children, there is much potentiality of devotion and attachment to higher ideals and objectives…. Do not think that they do not know anything; that you can divert them any way you wish; this is a mistake. Recognize the great potentials of the child; adopt such methods as the child himself might suggest or indicate. Help the child to reach Godliness and become aware of its high destiny. Do not presume that the child is some inferior personality or that it is incapable of attaining the heights.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, p. 235
