COVID-19 is a household name today, mostly for negative reasons. With the unprecedented challenges this year, there are still countless positive stories that we keep listening to, from across the world, and have strengthened our belief in humanity and resilience.
Driven by the circumstances, here is a one such parenting story that we have lived this year @wellbeingofachild.
With a fair share of hardships in our family, the biggest adversity that I faced was my overnight graduation from a parent to a teacher. Owing to the closure of schools, I was responsible for teaching my child for his continued education, with no prior teacher training. The pain areas was not subject knowledge, it was the delivery mechanism, and managing the ever-volatile emotional encounters between the two of us.
I struggled to find any help that could equip me with teaching skills to help my child, who was at the cusp of graduating from a preschooler to Grade 1. With insurmountable anxiety, I soon fell prey to it, resulting in tarnishing my relationship with my child.
It was a nightmare for me.
Now, being a Positive Parenting practitioner, I took this up as an opportunity to finding a way out of this traumatic experience.
After working on finding a solution for around three weeks, I came up with CaReSMA – a Framework for Positive Education that has helped my child and myself in transforming and transcending our relationship and equipping him with requisite skills to transition him into Grade 1 for 2021. And I feel pretty much comfortable in teaching him now.
To celebrate our journey, my child presented me with a Gratitude badge on the occasion of Teacher’s Day. It serves as a reminder of turning our adversity into an opportunity and commemorating the year 2020 for achieving this success.
I express my gratitude to the support and love of my wife, Aprajita, the leaders, teachers, trainers and mentors of Positive Psychology, without which this could not have been a reality at all. And to my son, Ivan, who has evolved with me in our journey of togetherness.
While I was reflecting this today, I found the motivation to share CaReSMA with other parents and educators who might be facing challenges while handling the emotions (both theirs as well as child’s).
So here it is, very briefly, in the figure above, CaReSMA – a progressive evolutionary journey, comprising of 5-sets of interventions derived from the Positive Psychology tools. It aims at augmenting the well-being of the parent-child duo and making learning a fun experience that both of them will look forward to and cherish.
In these difficult time, if there is any parent-child pair who might need help, in this regard, we hope that CaReSMA might provide them with a direction. If you need help understanding the framework, please feel free to touch base with me.
With Best Wishes
Shaleen
Well-Being Of A Child (@wellbeingofachild) 