Raising Kids - America vs India

This is the one of the topics which I had never bothered to give a thought. But when I started observing things I could see major differences which influences the way we think, the way we handle a challenge, the way to discover ourselves etc. etc. I would say the major drawbacks Indians are having is they do not know what they want or they want everything. I am no exception in this, I sometimes do not know what I want or sometimes I want everything. According to me the root cause for this behavior is because we always depend on someone for taking decisions. If we take decisions by ourselves then majorly it will be to satisfy our ego.

I got a chance to get to know an American. He is married and is having 2 sons. One is 11 years old and another is 8 years old. His wife is a teacher by profession. In his house the kids should go to bed at 08:30 in the night, before going to bed the kids should talk to their parents about the complete day. Kids will tell what all happened in the day, there will be sequence of things which the kids are supposed to recall, like the best part of the day, worst part of the day, learning of the day etc. etc. The biggest benefit of this practice is that the kids will start to discover themselves. I remember my childhood days, we were listening to some stories from Ramayana or Mahabharata or some fairy tale story and then we were sleeping. In my childhood I never spent 5 minutes recalling the day. One of my colleagues had arranged a get together and I got a chance to commute with this family. While we were in car, the kids started asking so many questions (which I probably never bothered when I was 11), the questions included from extinction of dinosaurs, extinction of some plants (which till today I am unaware of), reason for extinction, importance for particular sequence of traffic lights, impact on mileage of car because of incorrect way of driving, depreciation of selling rate of car with its age etc. What I have observed is in India these things are not meant for kids even though they are valid questions. Somehow we fail to explain the kids the answer. I observed the way these parents explained the things. They explained in a very simple way which kids can understand, for extinction; they told when environment changes, all species needs to adjust themselves to the change, but few species fail to change which forces them to extinct. It was a 15-20 minutes explanation which made kids realizes it. These kids were treated like adults, they were answered to all questions, and they were asked what they want for dinner. For dinner, the parents were eating with office friends and the kids were eating with other kids. Kids were never forced to eat something specific; in India making kids to eat is a big challenge. I remember we were shown the moon and we were told some imaginary story saying moon will come if we eat the food and stuff like that, we were told some kings and queens stories. I am not complaining the way the kids are brought up in India but there are major differences.

Due to this globalization and all these differences are reducing and I am sure a day will come when there will be very minimal difference in the way kids are brought up.