Osho – If something is wrong with the child, it must have come from the parents

Osho – Compassion is pure soul, it is pure sky: it has no matter around it. It is the ultimate blooming of the flower. Even the flower disappears in it, only fragrance remains. Shanti means silence, deva means god – god of silence. Help him to become as silent as possible. By being silent yourself, he will learn.

Children are imitators. If you sometimes find something in your child which you don’t like, look within yourself, you will find it there; it is reflected in the child. The child is only a sensitive response. The child is simply there imbibing you, repeating you, imitating you. So if something wrong appears in the child, rather than putting it right there, put it right in yourself, and you will be surprised: the chi!d drops it automatically. The child does not only depend on the mother for physical food, he depends on her in every way – for spiritual food also. So if you become silent, the child will follow it, he will learn it unknowingly; if you become meditative, he will become meditative.

Whenever parents come to me and they complain about their children, they are not aware of what they are doing, because my own observation is that if something is wrong with the child, it must have come from the parents. It is almost always so: ninety-nine percent of it comes from the parents; the smaller the child, the more is the percentage. When the child becomes a little bigger and starts moving in society, then of course he learns from others too, but in the ultimate account, almost ninety percent always comes from the parents. So whatsoever you want the child to become, be.

Be silent, be compassionate, be loving, be joyous, and you will be surprised that just by your being that, the child starts imbibing those qualities. And this will be the greatest thing for him, if he can imbibe silence.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”