Parenting - Carpenters vs Gardeners

​The other day a good friend suggested I should read The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik, a renowned developmental psychologist in the United States. Apparently, we as parents tend to unknowingly act as carpenters for our kids instead of being gardeners who should let them bloom and flourish in their own right. Being a gardener parent is akin to good parenting, claims the author.

“Parents Swinging Child Silhouette” by GDJ is licensed under CC by 2.0

I just finished reading the book and I have to admit, it did strike a chord somewhere within. I realized the fact that me as a parent, and a majority of the parents around me are following what she calls ‘the narrow parenting model’. For instance, according to most parents, a strict set of rules need to be adhered to by our kids – such as kids that go to school have to learn science mostly be reading facts about it rather than by doing stuff. (This was really satisfying for me as a homeschooling parent – most of our science lessons at home are taught as well as learnt by doing instead of just learning by rote.)

In the author’s words: “So our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child. Instead, our job is to provide a protected space of love, safety and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish. Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it’s to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows. Our job is not to tell children how to play; it’s to give them the toys and pick the toys up again after the kids are done. We can’t make children learn, but we can let them learn.”
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She couldn’t have put it better in words.