Buddhist Parenting Skills

The Buddha talked of many ways that family life can lead to happiness and blessings:

ü       Respecting and supporting one’s father and mother;

ü       Loving one’s spouse and children;

ü       Developing generosity and a sense of duty;

ü       Selflessly helping relatives;

ü        Acting blamelessly;

ü       Developing reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude and listening to the Dharma.

ü       Maintain a sense of gratitude, loving-kindness, compassion, patience and a sense of calm, when we live in a family.

ü       We can read and study the Buddha’s teachings and think we ‘get it’, but when the frictions of family living rub on us we find we have not internalised the teachings – we are not as engaged as we would like to be.

ü       The focus is primarily on mindfulness and compassionate communication and on how to integrate compassion and wisdom in our family life.This way we can be aware of the arising for instance, of annoyance, and be fully aware of it, instead of responding to it inappropriately, such as by wanting to get rid of it through changing the external environment.

The Buddhist way of parenting is leaning more towards cultivating all the good values in themselves, showing best examples to their children hoping the children are brought in a good environment hence, emulating the parents' good example.