Catching your child’s potential early on

 

We all can learn what to do and how to live better lives from great sportsmen like Abhinav Bindra. And also from his parents, for they played a major role in his success.

 

Like in shooting, firing without aiming will not lead to hitting the target, in life; activity without direction will not result in improvement. In fact, often we indulge in activity without thinking about the direction. Thus, instead of adding, we end up reducing value in our lives and creating conflicts.

 

Abhinav’s parents identified early in life what their son's talent was, and did everything to ensure that he focused on and pursued shooting.

 

A crucial element of successful parenting is to identify as early as possible the unique strengths of one’s child, and help them develop in that direction. Often, parents are lazy, and only start thinking about the children’s career when the childrenare in their late teens.

 

All children give indications about what they like doing and what they are good at early on. When Bindra was seven years old, he put a bottle on a person’s head, and shot at it with an air gun pellet. The incident convinced Abhinav’s parents about his strength.

They created a conviction in Abhinav that shooting was his sweet spot.

 

Though born and raised in a rich family, Abhinav lived a disciplined life, leveraging the resources he had at his disposal, instead of abusing them and creating nuisance for himself and others.

 

Bindra’s annual training cost about Rs 1,00,00,000. Abhinav is a great role model, to the growing number of children in affluent families in India. When children of affluent families abuse the things at their disposal instead of adding value, it gives a bad impression, especially to youngsters from middle and lower middle class. Children of affluent families have the responsibility to live well, and work hard, so that middle class children are not exposed to the ill-use of wealth. For India to become great, the children of middle class need to live with discipline, only then will they move up, and India will become a better country.

 

Hats off to Abhinav for starting India’s run for gold medals in the Olympics. Let’s hope we will all work hard to get many more in the years to come.

 

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