How to Bring Up a Child

by The Mother

Can there be a more pressing question for the parents who are genuinely concerned about the right upbringing of their children? Perhaps not. But how many of them, even those who are most serious and sincere, truly understand the deeper needs of a child and know how to bring him up giving him the right direction in life.

The Mother said, "To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more."

This book answers some very fundamental questions mostly from the works of the Mother on child's needs and demands and also provides helpful practical suggestions to the guardians of the future on this very important but still obscure field of child's education.

Beautifully illustrated, this book is a significant contribution to the growing literature on child psychology and can act as a handbook for parents, guardians and teachers not as a collection of rules but as torch to light the way.

Extract:

Every child is a lover of interesting narrative, a heroworshipper and a patriot. Appeal to these qualities in him and through them let him master without knowing it the living and human parts of his nation's history.

Every child is an inquirer, an investigator, analyser, a merciless anatomist. Appeal to these qualities in him and let him acquire without knowing it the right temper and the necessary fundamental knowledge of the scientist.

Every child has an insatiable intellectual curiosity and turn for metaphysical enquiry. Use it to draw him on slowly to an understanding of the world and himself.

Every child has the gift of imaginative power. Use it to give him the ground-work of the faculty of the artist.

- Sri Aurobindo

About the Author:

Born in Paris in 1878, the Mother studied painting at an art studio and became an accomplished artist. Primarily interested in inner development, she was associated with several groups of spiritual seekers in France.

In 1914 she journeyed to India to meet the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry and settled there permanently in 1920. For nearly fifty years, she was the head of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, from its founding in 1926 until her passing in 1973. She also established a school, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, in 1952, and an international township, Auroville, in 1968.