They know. Leave them alone and watch them grow.

We know what we want, and when is the right time to push ourselves to make the needed change.

Our parents can never know that. They can only know their own needs best. The child will share it with you, if you allow them and listen to them without over ruling it.

It was a realization I came to one day to scrape off some of the unhelpful shyness and lack of confidence.

I would do an MBA and instead of choosing HR, which seemed safe in view of my (I like to hide from limelight) personality, I said I will take Marketing.

Why?

Because this possibly is my only chance to give me the training to get the fear out of me of being out there and be seen.

And so I did. And it was a good decision.

For the next 2 years and some disastrous presentations after, I was able to end the program with a bang with my best ever ending presentation.

But it had nothing to do with the failed practices I had over the years. I still had the same nevousness and the same feeling of "what a lame performance" after every one of my try, so much that I had almost given hope if I will ever nail it.

The reason for my last presentation going great was, I got to speak about something I really believed in and knew ins and outs of.

I was asked to design a dream project that I had to conceive using my imagination with no boundaries or limitations of what it can be. I do best when you give me no constraints. And so I designed a gym and movie facility combined, which I called Enliven. (Even with that freedom, you see, I never ventured beyond what I could think in my mind was possible)

After working day and night for a month to create a marketing plan, that made complete sense, I felt so invested in this dream project that it seemed on the day I was really out selling it to the people as I would on a shark tank or something.

And I know I must be performing well because the audience listened to me spell bounded. For the first time, I felt awesome while presenting, and the energy I was feeling was going from me to them and their reaction was giving me the needed feedback: you are doing great.

And of course the ending claps and smiles and A+ made this very clear to me...

you will suck at presenting, so long as you are talking about things you don't really care about or don't know extremely well about...

Every other time you will rock at presentations and communications and meeting people and engaging with them.

But this is not all I want to iterate in this article. The point I want to make is

A shy weak girl, who never thought she had it was able to direct her life and take needed decisions moving from A to B seamlessly, and as comfortably as she needed.

Instead of jumping in the deep end of the pool, she always took the easy routes but eventually did land at the deep ends of the pool, by going at her own sweet pace and not ever allowing others to direct the pace in her life.

So my lesson to everyone is despite parents' desire to see their kids sour, it is not their pushes or even the pushes a kid gets from the society or school, that allows him or her to grow the needed wings, but it is the kid herself or himself learns to grow these wings by taking their own decisions every step of the way.

Forcing something when the child is not ready inside will often break something in him or her that is precious. It is almost like not allowing a flower to bud on its own. It is not healthy and it is not always best to happen. What it often does it kills them from inside and ruin the perfect beautiful experience which is meant to be nothing but magical.

It is the independent decision making that we must encourage and support our kids in while keeping our own fears and ideas out.

Let their hearts guide them to what will heal and help them. Because their hearts know the way.