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Parenting

Parenting is a beautiful journey with its own challenges. Emotional and behavioral problems in either the parents or the children could pose as additional challenges to parenting and could hamper the parent-child relationship. This in turn could hurt the child’s self esteem and add to your frustration. Self help blogs in this section provide guidance towards effective and positive parenting, which which lead to healthy development of children.

Aggression

UNDERSTANDING AGGRESSIVE CHILDREN : THE VICTIM BEHIND THE AGGRESSOR

Those of us who have children who are irritable and easily angered probably wonder why they are so short-tempered, why they snap back for everything we say and just WHY they are so aggressive. Most of the reasons we manage to think about center around stubbornness, immaturity, peer pressure, deriving pleasure out of rebellion and an irresponsible approach to life. Naturally, our approach towards correcting such behaviors stem from these reasons. We chide our children, give them repeated instructions and make repeated attempts to get them to obey and conform. However, if you have noticed, these may not have worked. You may see that your child still continues to defy and disobey. In fact, most of you may notice that the more you try to correct your child, the more defiant and oppositional your child becomes.

art

EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITY CLASSES FOR CHILDREN: HEALTHY OR UNHEALTHY?

A good number of us watch our children run from one tuition class to another. Then they have school homework, tuition homework, school tests and tuition tests to take care of. Moreover, children today also go to a number of extracurricular or activity classes. They sure learn how to multitask early on! Parents are divided in their opinion of this trend. While some of us feel it is the order of the day, some others think it disturbs the natural experience of ‘childhood’. I wanted to share with you some questions which if you ask yourselves may help to you gain more clarity as to whether a particular extra class is healthy or unhealthy for the child’s development.

Preserving the parent child relation

PRESERVING THE PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP

As parents, we are naturally concerned about our children. We want them to have a bright future and be self sufficient. Anything that we see as taking the child away from this prospect worries us. We worry, fret and spend considerable time and energy correcting the child. “Don’t do this, it’s bad for you.” “Why don’t you listen to me?”, “I’m saying this for your good and nobody else’s!!” are some statements you would probably connect with. At times, we happen to spend ALL our time with the child in correcting him/her. We consider it our duty to mould them right. Hence, many of us would be constantly on the lookout for the negative behavior, be it disinterest in studies, lack of social interaction, excessive viewing of television, argumentativeness or aggression. Every repetition of that behavior frustrates us and we chide and scold our children or maybe even beat them. However, a good number of times, our child continues to engage in the negative behavior. Therefore, is the current approach you are using effective? What is going wrong here?

“THE PERSON BEHIND THE PARENT” – GROUP SESSION FOR PARENTS

The Inner Space Team announces a group session, ‘The Person behind the Parent’. As a parent you have dropped your children off to classes, therapy sessions, have attended Parent-Teacher meetings, open houses, been called to school to hear complaints or praises, fretted, fumed, stressed and of course loved it to some extent.
Time to love yourself, we say!

Child Depression

IS YOUR CHILD DEPRESSED?

Depression can affect children as well.

Many of us would feel that this is just a child, how can he/she be depressed? Perhaps it’s just a mood swing or a phase. Yes, that happens too. Not every child who seems sad or introverted is depressed. But if you notice a significant change in your child’s behavior, which he just doesn’t seem to be ‘getting over’ and is adversely impacting his school work and/or relationships, perhaps it’s time to pay attention.

Safety tips

COMMUNICATING SAFETY TIPS TO CHILDREN

Given the fast paced life we all lead, it is a tad too difficult to supervise our children the way our parents probably did. They need to be more independent and therefore need to be aware of all the do’s and don’ts of daily life, especially those pertaining to safety. While this is of paramount importance, it is equally important to provide a balanced perspective of safety to our children.
What I mean to say is we need to guard against communicating to the child that ‘the world is an unsafe place’ and that ‘people are all out to take advantage of you.’ If the child adopts any such belief, it may lead to emotional turmoil which could manifest in anxiety and apprehension, separation anxiety and clinginess or a refusal to be alone. Let us understand better how this happens:

Children Playing

TOYS IN BIR

This is a guest post by Monisha Mukundan.

Walking towards the stream one day, I passed two little boys intent on their toy. It completely absorbed the attention of both the boy manipulating the device as well as his companion. It was the metal lid of a tin, perhaps a tin of powdered milk or ghee, with rounded edges, and a length of wire. The wire was bent at one end, to hook around the lid. The boy was driving the lid along the cement path with the wire. The path was not smooth and it took skill and concentration to keep the lid turning. The boy’s companion was as intent on the game as he was, perhaps he was waiting for his turn and mentally practising as he watched.

Puzzle

PARENTING CHILDREN WITH MILD DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

Coping and dealing with a child who has a developmental difficulty requires patience, understanding and firm inner resilience, which is why it is referred to as being relatively difficult. It takes us time to understand the nature of our child’s barriers to growth and then help them. But, what about a situation where we probably do not understand fully that our child is facing genuine barriers to growth?? What about when we attribute their problem behavior to their personalities and miss out on recognizing a mild form of a developmental disturbance?? This blog muses about these possibilities.

Self esteem

NURTURING YOUR CHILD’S SELF ESTEEM

‘Self-esteem’ is, to put it simply, what an individual thinks of himself/ herself. Also known as ‘self-confidence’, self-esteem is a key determinant of how we feel about ourselves and the world. It drives our actions and choices and pretty much establishes how we live our lives. Think about that goal you’ve been longing to achieve but haven’t tried to so far. There’s something about that goal which is repulsive…or intimidating. The overt thought is “I want this and don’t want it at the same time.” In several cases, the underlying thought is, “what if I am not able to achieve it??” This ‘what if?’ is so threatening that we choose to ‘camp’ and to stop pursuing that goal.

Aggression

EFFECT OF REEL AGGRESSION: DESENSITIZATION

Desensitization to aggression is a much discussed issue. It refers to a psychological state where the impact of aggression fails to rub off on the mind, when we are “not affected” when we watch scenes of violence. While this could be great news for a good night’s sleep, experiencing it repeatedly could slowly begin to erode empathy out of our systems when such a situation occurs in real life.

The Art of Listening

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