Salma Prabhu elucidates the wonderful role of 'parenting' through her beautiful book!

The book starts off from the time a couple plans to have a baby and traverses the journey from birth, toddlerhood, preschool, teenage, career pursuit right up to marriage. It puts across the various roles which parents play through these stages.

While dedicating this book to all the parents, teachers and students, Ms. Salma has shared these beautiful lines by Osho – ‘Care about your children. Just bless them instead of worrying, as every child is a little Buddha who helps his parents grow up!” Indeed, so very true!!

The book brilliantly underlines the fact that it’s a wrong belief that, by laying down strict rules or a set of expectations for our child, we would help him grow into a perfect human being. Well, On the contrary, we are putting the burden on our child and preventing his true growth. Instead, if we are to just shower our love upon our child…simple pure unconditional love and warmth and care, then our child would not only become a genuine human but would also be kind, emotionally balanced with loads of self-confidence and decision making skills.

Ms Prabhu is telling us that your child learns to respect by role modeling. So it is imperative that the parents must behave nicely and respect all the people around, because our child is constantly observing his parents and elders and copies the behaviors with the others coming into contact. So if the parents behave rudely with ‘WXZ’ then the child too would behave rudely with ‘XYZ’ – so in other words, rather than the parents teaching the child, it is vice versa.  The child is teaching the parents how to behave properly. 

Another aspect where this book stands out is that it is very relevant to our current Indian family upbringing context as Salma gives examples which we have faced with our child almost on a daily basis. While reading this book, you feel as if it is a story about you and your family.

The best part of the book besides Ms. Prabhu’s advice to the readers is-  the occasional quotes by the great thinkers (viz. Dalai Lama, Benjamin Spock, Confucius, Osho, ThichNaht Hanh, Ratan Tata et al.) at the beginning of every chapter. Ms Prabhu has very skillfully and expertly chosen these quotes as they are absolutely pertinent and help driving her point home!! The placement of the ‘quotes’ and ‘golden rules’, with every chapter has added tremendous value to the book.

Ms. Prabhu is inspired by the writing of Dr.WayneDywer, Dr. Brian Weiss, Steve Jones, Dr. Joe Vitale, Pam Grout, Rhonda Byrne who all happen to be great thinkers, motivators and self-help teachers who are shaping the world in a way. And Ms. Prabhu is also contributing to the society by guiding the parents and motivating them through this wonderful book.

Though a well - known practicing psychologist by profession, Salma has mostly avoided the use of technical jargon and has put her story across in a simple to understand language.

Salma Prabhu’s book is indeed a great help to the parents all over and is evident from the responses she has received from the cross section of the society. There are reviews welcoming this book from Psycholigists, Pediatricians, Special Educators, Practicing Gynecologists et al.
 
To quote KaminiSaxena (Management Facilitator, Kaveri Group of Institutes) as a representative response to the book: ‘Salma’s book is like a bible for parenting. As a principal for 16 years I have seen the challenges and issues faced by parents which manifest themselves in certain behavioral issues or academic under-performance……..I have seen fathers with tears in their eyes because their child is misbehaving. Parenting keeps changing as your child is growing up and your strategies need to keep changing…….The parents are the role models. This book beautifully captures all these issues and gives out simple to practice techniques for parents’.