The child is the most exploited phenomenon in the world and he is exploited behind a facade of love. The child, says Osho, is a slave to his own parents, who love him. Osho’s responses to questions on children and parenting selected from his various talks are compiled in this book.
Every child, according to Osho, is being enveloped in many layers of conditioning by the parents, by the society, by the teachers and by all the vested interests. The obedient child is praised by his parents, by his teachers and by others whereas the playful child is condemned by everybody. The children, Osho says, are very intelligent and he asks us to watch the intelligence of small children and see how spontaneous they are in their day to day life.
A passerby asks a boy,”Son, can you please tell me what time it is?” “Yes, of course,” replies the boy, “but what do you need it for? It changes continuously!” *
Little Pierino comes home from school with a big smile on his face. “Well, dear, you look very happy. So you like school, do you?” “Don’t be silly, Mom,” replies the boy. “We must not confuse the going with the coming back!”
*
Small children are innocent but they have not earned it. It is natural. A little boy, seized with hiccups, cried, “Mommy, I am coughing backwards!”
*
The second - grade teacher had sent the children to the board to work out arithmetic problems. One little fellow said, “I ain’t got no chalk.” “That is not right,” the teacher said. “The right way to say it is, ‘I don’t have any chalk. You don’t have any chalk, we don’t have any chalk, they don’t have any chalk...’ Now do you understand?” “No,” said the little boy. “What happened to all the chalk?”
*
Childhood has its beauties, because it does not know the etiquette, the manners, and all kinds of crap. It is so simple and so innocent and so spontaneous. In a better world, Osho says, every family will learn from children. All the religions of the world, according to Osho, have the idea in parables that once man lived in paradise and somehow, for some reason he has been expelled from that paradise. Osho is of the view that these stories are nothing but a poetic way to express that every man is born in paradise and then loses it. Osho says, “The search for paradise is the search for your childhood again” and “those golden moments of wonder, joy, no tension, no worry, no anxiety, have to be regained and rediscovered.”
Some of Osho’s observations are given below:
Children come through you, but they don’t belong to you. You can give your love to them, but you should not impose your ideas on them.
Education is to give you inner richness. It is not just to make you more informed; that is a very primitive idea of education.
If parents really love children, they will help them to be courageous - courageous even against the parents themselves.
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