In an unusual scenario, an IPS officer in Gujarat is also a counsellor for parents and imparts knowledge to them on how to bring up their children in the best possible way so that they become responsible citizens of tomorrow. He is senior IPS officer Hasmukh Patel who is Additional DGP and MD of Gujarat State Police Housing Corporation. Understanding the importance of good parenting to raise good human beings, because the child of today is the father of tomorrow, he started an initiative named ‘Parenting for Peace’ in different parts of the country.
Indian Masterminds spoke to Mr. Hasmukh Patel to get details about the unique initiative.
PARENTING FOR PEACE
Good parenting is of utmost necessity for the all-round development of a child. Children are easily influenced, they learn what they see and hear in their formative years. If a child feels loved, then he gives back love to society. However, on the other hand, if a child experiences violence, then he also indulges in violence in the community. Parents need to be tactful and take the right approach while interacting with their children and correcting them. However, many parents lack the knowledge to deal with the psychological aspects of the growing and evolving child whose emotional needs have to be met, too, so that he grows into a healthy adult, both physically and emotionally.
This is where senior IPS officer Hasmukh Patel comes in. With his unique initiative named ‘Parenting for Peace’, he is counselling parents to understand their children and their needs better, so that both share a healthy reationship based on mutual love and respect.
He is providing free of cost counselling to parents and teachers as well, so that they can provide children an environment of love and joy. According to him, ‘Parenting for Peace’ is founded on the principle that “children are very impressionable; they learn what they experience”.
He explained: “If children experience violence, they learn it and give it back to society when they grow. So if we want to prevent violence and bring peace in society, then we should make a child experience peaceful parenting.”
Stressing on the need to help a child grow up in a healthy enviroment, he said that the child should have experiences that empower him. For this, he advises parents to practise non-violent parenting. “Our principles of parenting are based on nurturing, learning, and joyful childhood through peaceful and non-violent parenting. We want to make parents and teachers capable of rearing child in an environment where the child experiences joyfulness, happiness and does not have to undergo any kind of violence,” he said.
BACKGROUND
Before launching this programme Mr. Patel floated this idea at a programme organised by Gujarat Council of Education on research and training. However, he didn’t work on it. Later, during a training programme on ‘Landmark Self-Expression and Leadership’, that idea got reinforced. He shared how: “During the course of the training, a lady shared a small booklet by the late Manubhai Pancholi aka Darshak, titled Vishvashantini Gurukilli. This booklet became a guide to us and we started working on the idea of good parenting more vigorously.”
In July 2014, Mr. Patel and his team called a convention in which around 190 people from Gujarat participated. People from 8 different locations of Gujarat promised to start the programme. Buyoed by the interest the programme received in Gujarat, the officer decided to take it to the national level. “In 2016, we called a national convention. So, people outside Gujarat also started participating in this programme. With every new convention, we got new people who became a part of this programme.”
TOPICS TAUGHT
The programme encapsulates different subjects which the parents and teachers get to learn during the duration of the training. Every subject teaches certain particular aspects of parenting so that the parents and teachers take away knowledge on diversified areas related to parenthood. “We have a subject called ‘Parenting ki Pathshala’ which has 12-16 lectures depending upon the parents’ interest and the time they can give. We start from early childhood to teenage parenting, covering different aspects of communication, the time spend on children, etc.”
At the end of it, the parents and teachers who attend the programme go back richer in good parenting knowledge and well-equipped to meet the evolving needs of growing children and handle them with love and care.
The programme also covers other topics like gender neutral parenting, adolescent parenting, media literacy, child sexual abuse, etc. “We have been telling various stakeholders like police and people working for Childline about the ways of preventing children from sexual abuse,” the officer informed.
They have also organised a programme named ‘You only live once (YOLO)’ for suicide prevention in younger children.
OTHER STATES
Mr. Patel informed that around 300 volunteers are connected to the programme in different states. Other than Gujarat, Parenting for Peace is also being run in Pune, Nagpur, Navi Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh, and Northern Karnataka. “We also started this programme in Orissa. However, they are yet to run the programme systematically,” he said.
In conclusion, Mr. Patel said that all parents want their child to be the best but they don’t know the right way to guide them, which ultimately leads children to become victims of their parents’ expectations. This is where Parenting for Peace helps by gently guiding the parents to the right way to deal with their children and give them a loving childhood.
