Dear All,

As most of you know, for past few days we have been discussing about the programmes that we as parents should do in the coming year. Lata Aaji has given few guidelines to work out what we should be focusing on. Some of these are:

We need to keep in mind that the programmers we decide on should be to enrich us & need not be focused on children.

Also rather than choosing information based or current issues based programmers we need to introspect & work on the ways to improve ourselves & see how we as a group can provide an ideal society for children to grow in.

More frequent & meaningful use of blog is one of the obvious ways to remain in touch & we all have agreed to make efforts to see that blog becomes much more active & becomes a first choice of visit whenever we surf.

Today morning I was talking to Lata Aaji for guidance from her as to what kind of programmed we can have on third Saturday of June (17th June). She suggested discussion on our behavior as “social parents”. (You can refer to pages 146 to 156 in “Anandyatra Sangopanchi” & page numbers 166 to 171 in “Growing Together” where Lata Aaji has discussed in detail about concept of social parenting).

Few recent happenings have been quite painful to Lata Aaji. She has conveyed that even though we parents have evolved & have become better in past few years, this has mainly remained restricted to being good “parents”. As “social parents” our behavior still leaves lot of scope for improvement. What she has suggested is each one of us should introspect & try to recollect events when we have made mistakes in this area. These can be shared here on blog & when we meet in June; we can take discussion forward.

While thinking about the mistakes I have made, I thought of the time when we were to watch Christmas celebration film that Adwait had sent specially from US for all of us. Lata Aaji had entrusted us ( Mahesh & myself) task of setting up projector on the terrace. On that day afternoon, we had planned something else & had thought that we would be able to complete it & reach Sion well in time. Things did not work out & we reached Sion late & as it happens at such times; lot of other unanticipated problems cropped up & it took so much time to set projector that ultimately complete film could not be shown on that day. Children had come with great expectation & had to go back. Later on we realised how important this group activity was to children & that we should

have been more careful in planning that day’s other outings.

I am sure that many of you while introspecting; will recollect such mistakes you have done, lessons you have learnt from them & would share these.

I am also asking Vikas to translate this in Marathi & post it on blog. You can respond in Marathi or English. If you want to know how to post in Marathi, please contact Vikas. Also please be assured that it is the quality of experience that all would be looking at & not how good you are in English & Marathi.

Last year we made groups & discussed various topics. These discussions turned out to be very useful for everybody. I am sure this year also we can have meaningful activities.

Cheers,

Milind Chitnis