What should be the daily routine of school-going children !

Every parent wants his child to be an ideal and cultured. So every parent tries to provide all the facilities to his children. We cherish a very limited aim of providing good education to our children so that they have a successful and bright future. However, in doing so we fail to judge their capacity, interest, innate talents, as well as their shortcomings and unknowingly enforce our expectations on them. The result of this is that neither the parent nor the child is satisfied. If on the other hand, we have a spiritual approach while bringing up our children then we as well as our children will be satisfied and we will be able to observe some necessary changes in them. In order to achieve this, we have given below an outline as to ‘what should be the daily routine of our children’.

If children go to a morning school, then let the routine be like this!

1. Pray to Mother Earth on getting up from the bed. Have a bath and proceed to school after having a breakfast. Once you are ready, offer Namaskar at the feet of God and the elders in the house. While leaving home, bid goodbye to your mother and offer prayer to God.

2. On the way to school, chant the Name of your Kuldevata (Family Deity).

3. Pray and express gratitude to Shri Ganesh and Saraswati Devi before the beginning and at the end of every period.

4. When the school gets over pay gratitude to Saraswati Devi and Sri Ganesh.

5. After reaching home, wash your feet and hands and then change the school uniform. Offer gratitude to God.

6. While having lunch, pray to God and offer gratitude to Him.

7. After lunch, take some rest. You may read the newspaper in the meantime.

8. Before starting your homework, chant for 5-10 minutes. Write down the topics you are going to study on a notebook after offering a prayer to God.

After completing the study of each subject make a note of it in the note-book. (By doing so the children realise the amount of study they have to complete and they automatically get prepared to shoulder the responsibility. Initially the parents should teach them how to make a list of the lessons to be studied and how to study them for some days. Thereafter the children will be able to handle it themselves.)

Evening time should be a play-time. Children should be encouraged to play outdoor games.

During the evening twilight after washing hands and feet they should sit in front of God and recite the  ‘Shubhamkaroti’, Stotras, parvachas and chant for some time.

Children should be encouraged to follow their hobbies such as reading, painting, etc. They should be asked to complete their home-work.

After having dinner at around 9 p.m. parents should spend some time with them. They should ask them the following questions particularly :

1) What was taught in the school today?

2) What did you learn from others today?

3) What mistakes did you commit today?

4) What were your efforts  to avoid those mistakes?

5) Which personality defects did you come across during the day?

Parents should give proper guidance to the child after hearing the child’s answers to the above mentioned questions.

In order to inculcate a good habit in the children, parents should provide a note-book to them with columns having Date, Good action undertaken during the day, Wrong action, Number of prayers and gratitude offered to God and see that they do fill the columns regularly. If they have any difficulty in doing so, then the parents should help them. Once they get accustomed to this routine of the day, they will get pleasure in doing so; because they will observe their mistakes and will try to correct them.

(Note : The same time-table can be followed by those attending school at 11 a.m. too.)