Non-Violence is appreciated - but it's hard to leave a Habit

After writing about violence against children in my letter to Indian parents and the past days, I was asked whether I really thought I would change anybody’s mind in my writing. First of all, that is not my first intention of writing, I just want to express. What you make of that is your choice. If it changes the life for some parents and children, I will be happy. I know however that it is hard to change because violence with words and actions has become a habit for many. I think you need practical help to change. I can give you the example of our Ashram where exactly that is happening right now.

One of our employees had been working here for some time while his wife was living further away in a village with his children. He went there on the weekends to visit them. He saw how we treated the children who live here at the Ashram as well as a child of other employees, a boy of about the same age as his son, approximately two years old. He heard us tell the parents that they should not hit their boy and he listened to our arguments why one should not even threaten with violence.

He understood that this was good. He wanted this atmosphere for his children as well – and so he went to get them to the Ashram. Now his wife, too, works here and his children live with us.

Nevertheless it has proven very difficult to get rid of the habit of hitting a child. He and especially his wife, who spent much more time with the children than him, have to work hard on changing their way of education. Or better said to find a way that actually teaches their children because I refuse accepting violence as ‘education’.

It took them a while to stop raising the hand as if they would slap. It took a strict ban from our side for them to stop threatening with beatings. And it took and still takes our example, explanations from us and thus our help for them to see another way. They don’t know anything else! They themselves grew up with being hit, they have seen children being raised with violence their whole lives long and only now they got to know that there is another way, too.

So we are helping them and trying to show them other ways – because they love their children and understand how good it will be to raise them without violence. They have to get used to it – and their children as well. They were hit for the first two years of their lives and not always for reasons that they could understand, not always preceded by a warning and not always with an explanation. They now need to relearn how to behave as well, following new rules, a sudden change of behavior in their parents and the amount of love that they can feel in this surrounding.

It is the best thing that could happen to both these parents and their children, I believe. And for the Ashram, because as I said yesterday, we make this the best place for my daughter that she could possible grow up in – free of violence and filled with love!