There are a few moments in life that stick in your memory so much that you remember them precisely even after two decades and probably until your death. Seeing your child for the first time is one of those moments for many people, and I am no exception.
On the afternoon of September 3, 2025, I saw my child for the first time, and my mind went blank, there were no words big enough for that moment. It was one of those moments you are never sure how to react. Of course I was over the moon, but expressing that was damn hard at that point. Maybe it’s a thing with men.
I have witnessed countless people, including friends and family, becoming parents and yet when I became a parent, it felt so personal and unique, almost a customized experience for me. It is almost like a spiritual awakening experience, that you can read and hear all your life, but can only realize when you experience it on your own.
Albert Einstein once said-
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Having a child makes you experience this in a deeper way.
The thought of writing something about this experience of becoming a parent crossed my mind quite a few times, but every time I postponed thinking I must savour this experience to crystalize my thoughts. The joy of seeing your baby grow in his first year from a newborn to 1-year-old and everything in between is too precious.
Becoming a father is a new feeling. My life has changed, and my duties have evolved. I had so many thoughts in the beginning days. After a while, I realized the most important thing I can do for him is to help to become a full-fledged human being. In Swami Vivekananda’s words, ‘ a man with right values and character‘.
On the surface, this sounds obvious; every parent wants the same, I guess. The difference lies in how every parent approaches this. And there is no single answer to good parenting, just like there is no single answer to ‘what makes life good’.
Being a parent fills me with genuine responsibility along with ecstasy. The realization that as a parent I will shape a lot of his values, which in turn will shape his actions in life.
A persistent and timeless question worth exploring is whether parents solely shape their children’s lives, or if the reality is more complex.
And the Polgar sisters are a worthwhile starting point for this discussion. Laszlo Polgar was a Hungarian chess teacher and educational psychologist. He held the conviction that proper training could develop individuals with exceptional talent. This means anyone can become talented (in something that requires effort and skill) provided a nurturing environment and early training are available.
In fact, three daughters of Laszlo Polgar, Susan, Sofia, and Judit, are renowned chess players. Laszlo and his wife trained them for this from an early age.
Does this mean we can truly make exceptionally skilled people/children?
I don’t feel it is true in a broader sense; I have cited above here an extreme example that portrays this likely is true, but on a larger sample size this will not hold true every time.
What this example highlights, though, is how incredibly important parents are in influencing the development of young children’s interests and skills.
My inherent belief is that children bring some attitudes and interests from birth (from a past life, as per Hinduism) and then parents can shape their abilities to make it a reality.
This means that my role as a parent is not to force my interests onto my children, but rather to observe and support their own emerging interests as they experience the world.
Raising a child is undeniably difficult. At least, my experience is that it is both fulfilling and draining at times. Caring for your child during sleepless nights and consoling him at 3 am is not the easiest of jobs (more so for the mother; thanks to my wife’s strength and resilience throughout), but these moments become sweet memories that last a lifetime (and sweet memories build a good life).
As I am going through our parenting journey, several thoughts crossed my mind during this time. Here are some of the ideas that consistently surface in my thinking process.
Phase I: Evolution Through Your Eyes
One of the strongest feeling I had after the birth of my child was how it changed my perspective towards my own parents.
Can we describe what it means to be a parent?
Perhaps not, unless we become parents ourselves, we can not. I now feel more gratitude and respect for my parents. Somehow, my parenting experience is helping me to understand my parents better. I would like to say more about fathers that most of us (myself included) misunderstand our fathers. Our fathers love us as much as mothers, but unlike mothers, they don’t express that explicitly.
When we are young, the exuberance of life takes over our minds. Seeing our parents and grandparents hardly invoke feelings of lineage and evolution in the family. The experience of parenting somewhere struck a chord with what our parents used to say about lineage and family trees.
For any living creature in the world, one of the highest goals is to increase its footprint through reproduction. The thousand years of evolution are all about survival and reproduction. The feeling of watching your child grow is an out-of-this-world experience, impossible to articulate yet filled with purpose and a sense of entitlement.
When I play with my child, I realize how my parents must have felt playing with me, and their parents must have felt. Holding your child and watching him grow is one of the peak human experiences. It changes something inside for the good; it makes me internalize the beauty of nature.
Phase II: Technology as a Peril for Raising Children
Although the core principles of parenting remain similar over time, the material growth with each generation presents additional challenges and opportunities.
When I was growing up, my parents instilled in me the values they thought were good. That includes good education, respecting elders, being well-behaved, etc. The challenges they mostly taught me were not trusting strangers, avoiding foul-mouthed peers, etc.
While these points hold true across most generations, raising children in today’s time presents distinct additional challenges.
The technology from the 1990s to 2026 has changed by leaps and bounds. When I was growing up, there was no television at my home (until I was in my teenage), there were no smartphones, nor any gadget to carry in our pockets all the time.
It’s a different story today; life is almost unthinkable without smartphones; televisions have become bigger and brighter; gadgets are part of almost every family now. While life has likely become more convenient because of better technology, it is not the same for children.
Somehow the impact of digital screens on children is not talked about enough. Somehow, society almost accepts today that children will see screens for longer hours daily, and we can’t change it. No parent wants to deteriorate the development of their children, yet knowingly or unknowingly they do it by exposing children to technology that is not meant for children.
Children don’t need technology; they need right values and uninterrupted love from parents when they are growing up (more and more I am experiencing this with my own child). I am typically enthusiastic and outspoken about how technology affects human societies, and I’ve written about it multiple times.
Therefore, technology is a significant subject of conversation in my home concerning the upbringing of children. And one thing widely known today is that children learn by imitating. If I want my child to avoid screen addiction, I need to ensure I am not addicted myself.
While it is not practical to cut off smartphones or gadgets completely, setting an example of there being better and more fulfilling things to do in real life is appropriate for me as a parent.
Phase III: Time is the Great Equalizer
Sometimes it is hard to fathom how life changes in a brief span of time. Just 2 years back in 2024, life seemed vastly different from how it feels today. In a moment, life changes, and the past seems like a different era. No doubt becoming a parent is perhaps the most significant among such moments.
This passage of time has also made me internalize the true cost of time. At a surface level, almost everyone believes that time is valuable.
But what does it mean in terms of actionable items in life?
Is it that we should not waste time and make the most out of every moment? It sounds good but too general as a advice. A better description I like to consider time as the most ruthless dealer. Everyone deals with time in terms of decisions they make in life. And time return us the consequences (ruthlessly) according to the decisions we take or things that happen at particular times in life.
Since the birth of my son, I feel it deeply than ever before. Every day that passes with him makes me realize these times will not return. So I need to make sure I truly live them with him. The early part of him that he won’t remember, but we as parents will cherish forever.
My confidence in learning by doing has also increased significantly after becoming a parent. Parenthood taught me (and us) skills that I never took seriously. Especially far away from home and parents, we learned things on demand. Considering the strong emotion and love every parent feels for their children, learning for your child becomes less intimidating.
I also realized how much babies change in a span of months. My son is almost a year now and he plays, make sounds, desperately try to walk, laugh, cry, etc. It mesmerizes me to think how he changed from the first time I saw him just after birth. Then, he could barely see, move, or make expressions. It is truly miraculous, in fact, to contemplate that each of us starts from such a condition. If you have not closely observed babies grow, you would be surprised to see how much change can occur within months.
Now with every passing week and month, it fills me with gratitude and excitement about how the baby will be in 6 months, 1 year, or even 10 years. But at the same time, there is a nostalgia that hits knowing that moments passed will be vanished in the passage of time. The only thing that will remain are the memories. So I better live these moments and make more lasting memories.
Among all relationships, the bond between child and parent is the most non-material one. A child can recognize his or her parents soon after birth, even without a functioning brain. The most unconditional love one can witness in life is the love of parents for their children. Nothing comes close to that.
In material terms, becoming a parent may not seem like a big deal; after all, thousands of people become parents every day. We humans don’t appreciate something enough until it is rare and special.
However, when considering its beauty alone, I believe it offers one of the best opportunities to appreciate and experience the magnificence of Nature or God, for which we are truly grateful. I am so looking forward to this journey of parenthood.
I often think what kind of moments I will remember just before my death. Even though we go through so many circumstances in life, if you try to remember some of the best moments in your life, you will find they are few. Seeing my child for the first time and playing with him are some of the moments will surely be in my memory even at times of death.
