Losing temper with your kids?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: Acharya Ji, how should I deal with my anger, especially with my kids? I always get annoyed very easily and it bothers me a lot. Kindly help me to get rid of this tendency. Thank you, Acharya Ji.

Acharya Prashant: You see, the kid has stolen a few sweets from a shop. Our old, usual, fat kid who loves sweets. He has stolen a few sweets and now the mother is very angry. The mother is saying, “Why did you steal sweets? Sweets will make you fat!”

It is not that we do not require anger; we require right anger.

“Mama, I have brought something for you as well, rasgulla!” One tight slap, “Don’t you know I love rasmalai?”

We require right anger.

Anger has been decried and presented as avoidable and as a source of a lot of mischief because we do not know ourselves;

we do not know what to want; we do not know what to be angry about.

The kid has not obtained marks as per the parents’ expectations, and the kid brings his report card home. And then, mischievously, he firstly hides away the report card for a long time and then fakes the mother’s signature on the report card. And now the parents are angry about his marks. “Why did you not score sufficiently high in your exams?”

Do we even know what to be angry about?

And if we know that, then all anger is alright, even auspicious.

Do we know what to scold the other about?

Do we know what is it that really deserves punishment and what is it that deserves to be ignored or overlooked?

The kid had a fight with the street rowdy and he comes back with his new t-shirt torn. And the parents are angry that the new and expensive t-shirt is no more. Do we know what is it that really merits censor?

To be angry about the rights things, you first of all have to know your own mind rightly.

When you know your own mind rightly, then you see that the mind of the child is not fundamentally different from the mind of the adult;

then you know that that which the adult must-have, the…