(First Posted on 31 Oct 2014 on iWeb Blog)

People who meet my children always ask me - “How do you raise them? They’re so different!” I always answer, “With a LOT of Love and a handful of tears.” That really sums up the early years of hands-on parenting! Sleepless nights, feeds, keeping them clean and safe and secure. And then there were the songs and stories and endless talks. Children spell Love as T I M E. I’ve spent a LOT of time with my children, just being available for them and sharing all that I love and cherish with them. As they’ve grown into school-going kids, it’s been both rewarding and quite a task to introduce the concept of consistent discipline and healthy exposure. It was difficult at first to find a balance, but over time I discovered that it was the mind-set that mattered most. Was I raising kids or raising adults?

While they were babies, I was indeed raising children. Yet now that they are children, I realise that I need to grow along with them! I now need to accept that they are no longer babies but children, so I need to educate them as children and raise them up to be capable adults. In that sense, I am now raising adults!

So the equation seems to be: 

Babies --------> Children
The process would be raising Children, not raising babies

Children ------> Adults
Logically, here I need to be raising Adults, not raising children!


According to Google results, there are two ways of looking at the word 'raise'. I guess I've decided to focus on the second definition ... which is 'to increase the amount of'.


Yes, I think we are all 'elevating and lifting' our children to reach the adult status, but if we only work at elevating them to adult status, what happens when they get there? Do we then raise adults AFTER they become adults? That's really hard to do, much less achieve! So, personally, I have found that the approach of 'increasing the amount of adult-capabilities' in them while they are still children seems to be a more workable and profitable approach - given the time constraints we have as parents. After all, we only have 17 nett years to really equip them for life!
 
With a long term goal of what they would be like in their adulthood (I'd like them to be wise friends, supportive sisters, loving wives, capable moms, connected adult children, diligent and talented in their work), I began to work backwards and look at my parenting choices in the ‘now’. 

I am still learning and I don’t think the learning ever ends for any of us, yet I can say with confidence that the best way to raise our families is to keep in mind that they’ll all be grown up someday and these days of their youth are truly limited. In Asia, we invest so much in real-estate, stocks and even gold .. hoping to have the material resources that our children will someday need to start out in life. All the while, we can forget that we may just be sending them out into the world with ONLY material resources .. and they will be emotionally bankrupt adults, with too little emotional investments made into their heart-banks to see them through a lifetime of challenges as grown-ups. Without plenty of emotional deposits, where will they get the inner strength to face relationship challenges in their marriages and pressures of competition at work? I’m investing today in creating healthy habits and mindsets because I know for a fact that my children will have to face bullying, heartbreak, and disappointments in their life-journey. I want to prepare them for the real things in life that come to us all. So to me, education goes way beyond academics. I believe in feeding their hearts.

Being an educator means more than just helping children with their lessons, it also means being an adult they can relate to and who will give them those little connections they need over time to see the bigger picture of what life is all about. It's about being a mentor.

As a teacher as well as a mom, I’ve been really blessed to work with a variety of children and youth, and if there’s one thing I’ve taken away from my years of working with young people - it’s that they are capable of so much more than most adults think they are. Give them the best ‘setting’, quality ‘props’ and meaningful help in finding the right context for their script - kids can put on quite a show of talent, passion and performance. As the key adults in their lives, perhaps our best way forward is to not expect children to perform, but to create the best environment we can afford with our time and talents. This conducive environment will naturally inspire and motivate them to want to perform on their own accord. When we give them the wings that fit them best, they really do take off and SOAR IN THE SUNSHINE :)
 
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Celya B.Tay is an experienced mom and teacher who has recently opened her home to students who would like to receive nurturing personal support in familiarising and mastering themselves with the complexities of English as a First Language. She also teaches Year 7 to year 9 IGCSE subjects from 9am - 3pm daily in her home along with her own two children who are currently doing AOP. You can find her homeschool on Facebook at Evergreen Learning