How to teach hinduism: Challenges and Solutions
A Strategic Guide on Hindu Parenting
How to introduce the fascinating world of Hindu Scriptures to your Kids
This exhaustive guide on How to Teach Hinduism can help any parent or grand parent to understand challenges in introducing Hindu Dharma to children.
It also shares proven strategies to Introduce Hinduism to Your Child
In this in-depth guide, you will learn
- What are the challenges in teaching Hindu Religion?
- How not to teach Hinduism to your child?
- The art of Introducing Hinduism to Your Child
- Amazing facts about Sanatan Dharma
- Reasons behind Hinduism Beliefs
- Parenting in Hindu Religion
So if you are ready to go ‘all in’ with Hindu Religion, this guide is for you
Contents
Chapter 1 - Eye Openers for Hindu Parents - why do you need to learn How to teach hinduism
- The Visit to a Hindu Temple
- Involve Children in Festival Celebrations
- Teach them Scriptures
- Tell your child a conspiracy theory
Chapter 2 - the 5i Framework to understand challenges in teaching hinduism
- Ignorant Attitude in Hindu Parenting
- Illusion of Knowledge among Hindu Parents
- Inauthentic Content around Hindu Scriptures
- Indescribable Ideas for children
- Insecure Behaviour in Parents
Chapter 3 - How to teach hinduism by Crafting Meaningful Experiences for Kids
- Ritual Augmentation Mechanisms to teach Hindu Dharma
- Stories Pool from Hindu Scriptures
- Consume the Hindu Philosophy
- Now Build the Strategy
Chapter 4 -The Way Forward for teaching Hinduism
- Join a Community
- Become a Contributor
NOTE – This guide has been written for Hindu Parents. If you are a non-Hindu parent who wants to explore Hinduism [so that you can introduce it to your child in a non religious way], you might have to wait for a while, we are already planning to write a similar guide for you too.
Chapter 1:
Why do you need to learn How to teach hinduism
While we will share a whole strategy to introduce Hinduism to your child in chapter 3 of this guide about ‘Crafting Meaningful Experiences‘
This chapter is to get us on the same page
Here in the first chapter, we will talk about common beliefs that people consider beneficial in teaching Hindu Dharma to young children and why they do not work
So here is a list of the most common ideas that don’t work but people still tend to recommend them when it comes to How to teach hinduism to children
Suggestion 1: Visit a Temple to teach Hinduism
Believe it or not, the most common advice that people give to parents is to visit temples to introduce Hinduism to children
It used to be a very promising way in the past but now things have changed significantly
and it is kind of not working that well as it used to be earlier, here is why
The curse of Buffet Temples
With increasing population density, a lot of new makeshift type small temples have been created lately
and if you visit them
you will not be able to explain the Garbhagriha, Mandapam, Shikhara, Vimana, Pradakshina path, and many more such things because they hardly have just couple of those things, rest are missing
the purpose was to help people identify the deity with whom they resonates, one at a time
but these modern temples provide you a buffet of deities, Devi, Ganesha, Krishna, Shiva, all at one place.
Your purpose fail.
And yes, there will be no one there who can explain to kids about any of the deity
because no one is dedicated to anyone
This thing has been addressed well by sects based temples like ISCKON or Prem Mandir, You go there and you become Krishnamay,
What is important to notice is that most temples of Devi or Shiva or Vishnu or Ganesha are either in far off places or concentrated only in certain geographical locations
We naturally fall for ease
and in our vicinity we find either temples dedicated to Krishna or the buffet temples
The process of picking a deity that resonates with you, is lost
what we probably need is more such sect based Mandir systems for other deities, for Shakta Traditions or for Shaiva traditions
When you will go to a temple dedicated to only one deity, you will experience the difference from these buffet like temples.
[P.S. – Why a lot of people did not get time to explain the wonderful concept called deity to a child . . . . because they do not understand it themselves, have you tried to understand it]
Forget ancient wisdom, these buffet temples are mixing up things.
Gods that do not exist even in our shastras [scriptures] have got a permanent seat in these complexes.
Think about Santoshi Maa,
She was created only by a Bollywood movie and now she has got a decent place in a lot of such new age deity malls.
If you really want some output and if you do not have bandwidth to visit ancient temples like Shakti Peeth or Jyotirling, we suggest you to learn new ways, explore our ideas, subscribe to this newsletter right now
Now lets move to the second most famous advice
Suggestion 2: Involving Children in Hindu Festival Celebrations to teach Hinduism
This celebrations thing also has changed substantially in the last 20 years.
Let’s talk about Diwali
Our festivals were almost always designed to help us find happiness in small things, The celebrations was about rituals, about stories, about procedures.
But Big Retail Brands have replaced celebrations with shopping.
And now It is more about buying dresses and jewellery and less about filling tel in Diyas and lighting them.
We did not realised exactly when we surrendered to fairy lights and candles in place of Diyas. This whole marketing campaign has taken away the real purpose of these festivals.
This guide is not to lecture you on your buying spree, but if it is the larger part in your overall celebrations, we definitely want to give you a nudge here.
If for this trap of buying spree,
we fail to tell our children the stories of Narka Chaudas, or about the Govardhan, the battle of Lord Krishna with Lord Indra,
If we fail to tell them, on Dhanteras, why they should put a diya each for Yum and Kuber and 10 digpal
If we fail to sing with them a beautiful bhajan of shri ramchandra ji
I am afraid, we simply cannot call it a Deepawali celebration
and your children will be vulnerable to treat it like, ‘Jashn-e-Riwaj’ as the big brands want them to do
So the question is
Will we keep calling a buying spree a celebration or will we stop it and teach our children the happiness in small things
Don’t you think that celebrations should consists of activities to engage with our ancient scriptures, symbology and stories of Hindu Dharma
NoMoreShortCutOnCelebrations
P..S. Reducing this crazy buying spree on the festival season can reduce the production of an insane amount of hazardous gases you see,
Fire Crackers are part of our celebrations, so we do not need to be apologetic about it, but can we try to reduce consumption that has been forced upon our minds by these clothing jewellery, shoes, gifts brands of the world.
Now lets move to the next most famous advice
Suggestion 3: Teaching Hinduism Scriptures in Sanskrit to children
When it comes to How to teach Hinduism, the next most common advice that parents get is to teach their children sanskrit scriptures
This could have been amazing but surprisingly nothing falls more flat than this idea.
I mean, you can do that but only in a controlled environment
For an average parent, it is very difficult to teach Scriptures while they themselves do not know how to read Sanskrit
And learning a whole language is a long term task.
Most parents try doing that in just a high and repent later
It is not a bad idea if you can plan well, ready to work on it and if you have support.
or If you have time, if you can give yourself at least a year in advance learning Sanskrit, before you have your child
There are easier options as well.
No I am not suggesting that just read Gita, you cannot read even Gita without help, If you do not know sanskrit, or else you are at the mercy of the translator, whatever one tells you the meaning.
What we instead suggest is to have patience, first let us go through through the first and the second chapters of this guide to understand the challenges around How to teach Hinduism and then through chapter 3 we will talk about solutions
Suggestion 4: Tell them the Truth of Why teaching Hinduism is indispensable
Bigotry is the counter to critical thinking.
No parent in their sane mind would want to instill bigotry in the minds of their children, even children are not inclined to listen to all that
In normal circumstances, a child should never be told that a conspiracy theory being brewed against their religion
But our life does not follow the same rules in all circumstances.
In the recent past a series of incidents has scared a few people and they are willing to give a baton in the hands of every child to protect Dharma
And that is why, you will get this suggestion by people to tell the truth to your child about how Hindus are being persecuted.
However, our ancient practices guide us to crave for instilling critical thinking in your child, telling conspiracy theories may reduce it substantially
And will fill in our children with bigotry
It is a difficult situation, a sort of Dharma Sankat, where you might feel that telling such things to my child might spoil her childhood, but not telling this might risk her being the part of the clan for long
We will always suggest, never even think of stealing their childhood away
You may have to work harder to connect better with your child, learn why they will listen to you
Children love to listen to stories, play games and have fun. If we try to make it any other way, only one in hundreds will actually fall for it
And that is the main Mantra on How to teach Hinduism to children,
which story will you tell your child today
So in this chapter, we shared that most of the ideas that are being suggested for Hindu Parenting, not working
In the next chapter, we will try understanding, why they are not working, the real challenges
Suggestion 5: Give them the Internet
This is an advice being given to many.
Not many are accepting this advice, because they are already doing that
and the advice is to show youtube videos to children.
So what is wrong with YouTube Video,
From Inauthentic content to screen time to lost directions to health hazard, it has all the negatives
for that matter what is it with Internet,
Till 20 years ago, the internet was not very active in the public discourse.
So were the spoilers created by it like social media, home delivery apps, etc but the real problem is consumerism, and the adopted western parenting
The Consumerism and the Western Parenting
But then came the western way of parenting
and discipline was lost
It was now all about, My kid do not like this, My kid do not agree to go to temple, My kid prefers Fast Food, My kid do not like anyone going his room
I mean, what direction are we taking our children to
Making them independent is not bad, but equating snobbish behaviour with independence is definitely questionable
So in case you are accepting the idea of these so called gyani with international degrees, wouldn’t it be better to try evaluating these advices on your own mmeasures and criteria.
any ways, why don’t we first try understand, what are the major challenges because of which the above advice is not working for you.
Chapter 2:
Navigating the 5i Framework to understand Challenges in teaching Hinduism
In August 2022, when we started our research on How parents can help their children to learn about the Scriptures, Stories and Symbology of the Hindu Religion,
we identified 5 major challenges that parents face in teaching Hindu Religion and culture to children
We called it the 5i Framework
Most of these challenges cannot be solved without a community
So we decided to share our research in public in the form of guides to help the masses to understand these challenges and their possible solutions.
Here in this guide on Hinduism for kids, we are sharing the 5i Framework
If you are a parent, you will learn here about the following 5 challenges that parents face in connecting their children with Hindu Religion and Culture.
Let’s check them one by one
1. The Ignorant Attitudes in Hindu Parents towards How to teach Hinduism
Suppose,
all of a sudden,
one day, your son asks
“Why can’t you allow me to eat meat on Mangalvar (Tuesday), when I can do that on any other day of the week?”
And you wonder, “My god, this generation do not have respect for elders. I never dared to ask such questions to my parents.”
Actually, It is not at all about the generation gap, He is simply giving you an opportunity to convince him to continue believing in your beliefs
and it is his right to ask such question
So, nothing abnormal at his end
If someone needs help here, it is you
What you really need is to ask this question to yourself
and once you have this query on your mind, surf the internet for just 15 minutes to get a basic understanding of
– three types of bhojan (food) i.e Satvik, Rajasik and Tamasik as stated in our culture
– and the concept of the upvasa
and I bet, you will have a jolly good answer to share it with your son
Do you know why this was difficult to answer at the first place
because you never asked these questions to yourself
You just need to stop ignoring your rituals, scriptures, culture, and traditions
And you will have all the answers
Now do not start blaming yourself,
Most of us are doing that
Why . .
because making the generation gap the scapegoat is much easier
If you observe, our Shastras are not primarily about obeying our parents
It is about questioning
From Devi Parvati, to Yaksha to Arjun everyone is asking questions
If your child is asking question, it does not mean, one is disrespecting you
What you really need is to prove that you can be a Guru or not
Conformity is not a virtue in our culture
This is the land of Shastrartha
We do not respect the likes of Ashtavakra, Gargi or Ubhaya Bharati for being obedient, we respect them for being inquisitive and candid on their questioning.
In our culture curiosity is the virtue and not being complacent.
Our great ancestors must not have discovered things like Yoga, Dhyana [Meditation], Jyotish, Kaamsutra, Tantra, Shalya Chikitsa, and much more with complacency.
They did it with curiosity and were able to spread it because our culture supported inquisitive behaviour
But ironically, most of us neither understand the gravity of these works, nor we have a sense of pride in these achievements.
‘Ignorance is not always bliss’.
Be more vigilant.
Conclusion
The first challenge that a parent need to counter is to fight with this ignorant attitude and become inquisitive about the Hindu Wisdom that we want to pass on to our children
Do you think, this can be done by individuals, NO
We need a community to solve this issue before we start talking about Hinduism for Kids
2. The Illusion of Knowledge of Hindu Dharma
If I ask you the name of the bird who fought Ravan at the time of Sita Haran
You may tell effortlessly, “oh it was Jatayu”
But If I ask you, “Who was the mother of Sita?”
Now this is kind of a litmus test
Think of it, I have even got Kunti and Janaki as answers
Someone even said, “There was no mother, she came from the earth”
So I rephrased my question, “As we consider Raja Janak her father, I am essentially asking the name of Raja Janak’s wife”
and you will be able to answer it only If you are really invested in Ramayana
But most of us are not
We are dependent only on the TV shows or animation movies
and that is why, it will be difficult for you to answer it without external help
Let’s try it one more time, now in a different format
If I ask you to pick a story from ancient Hindu Scriptures,
any story of your choice, to tell it to your child,
which story would you choose?
Mind it,
you should be able to tell the whole story without any external assistance (not even the internet)
Come on
Pick one story
. . . . . I am waiting
Now when you have chosen the story
let me tell you
When we asked the same question to 100 different parents, 59 parents chose a story of one of the following four gods
Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesha, Lord Hanuman, and Lord Rama
I wonder
when there are so many Gods and Goddesses,
Sur, Asur, Rishi, Muni,
divine animals like Kamdhenu and Uchheshrava
or birds like Garuda or kakbhushundi,
Raja, Apsara, Gandharva, Kinnar, Valakhilyas, and many more
how come only these 4 gods are dominating the whopping 59%?
The answer was simple
Fetching something from the cache memory is much easier in comparison to retrieve something from the permanent memory.
In recent times animations on Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesha and Lord Hanuman have become very successful.
So they have impacted your cache memory very heavily.
And we do not forget Lord Ram courtesy to Ramanand Sagar ji who made a block buster TV serial on Ramayan
We were also able to recall Ramachandraji a little faster because the news media does not let us put Ram ji out of our cache memory owing to his property which some people always wanted to keep in dispute.
So you see, most of us know about our gods, scriptures, stories, or symbology only when it has an animated movie or a TV serial associated to it,
what an irony
we acquired an illusion of knowledge without even having sufficient information,
If I try to draw a parallel to the Yaksha Prashna, where he asks
‘What is it that is certain to come to everyone but no one believe that it will happen to the one’ and Yudhishthira replied with the answer ‘Death’
Likewise, we can say, ‘what is it that no Hindu knows but everyone believes that one knows’ and the answer can be ‘Knowing Hindu Scriptures’
Do you think this can be solved by individuals, NO
We need a community to solve this issue before we start talking about How to teach Hinduism to Kids
3. Inauthentic content to teach Hinduism
Inauthentic content is a big challenge in Hindu Parenting related content.
There are 6 kinds of content creators on the internet who are writing, creating, or curating stories from Hindu Scriptures
and you need to understand, which content is good for your kid or for your consumption
1 Growth Creators
Whether he is a firang sitting in Australia or a native Indian girl in India itself, a growth blogger essentially does not care about the Hindu Religion or Hindu Cause
For them it is just business
They do not care for authenticity or purpose.
Here the Kaliya Daman Story can easily become the Evil Snake Story, and you may not know the name of the snake even after the story.
2. Passionate Hindu Creators
These people share these stories or information for their own happiness. The growth and business is the byproduct for them for doing, what they love.
They put in hard work to investigate and research the stories in trying to create authentic content [at least to their own understanding]. For example, we cannot claim that there may not be errors on our website, but what we can guarantee, is the good intention to help Hindu Parents on How to teach Hinduism.
These are the go to people when you want to share authentic stories with your children, but there are two major drawbacks
a. Most of them are not savvy marketers, so it is very difficult to find them
b. Their personal beliefs heavily influence their content.
[NOTE -We always welcome such content creators to collaborate with us. If you are a Blogger, YouTuber, Podcaster, Book Author in this category, please do write to us with your name, email and weblink and we can find ways to help you. email is in the footer.
3. Sect influenced Creators
When a visionary religious leader appears among people, they get mesmerised by her or his talks and they start following the Dharma as that visionary influencer sees it.
Gradually this influence might convert into a whole sect. There are several sects today within Hindu religion.
All say, go into the prabhusharan
and to learn how to do it the best way, join us
So if you follow a particular sect, you may automatically be following to these creators.
It can be a whole debate on whether it is right or wrong to follow a sect or its creators, but they say Shraddha and Gyan are two different things
and we do not want to challenge one for the sake of other.
Even Uddhav could not win from Gopis
4. Nationalist Creators
This kind of content creators debunk propaganda against Bharat, our Sanskriti and Hindu Dharma. They share moments of pride, tells real meaning of rituals, showcase real statistics and events
So in a way it is good most of the times
But sometimes this may also lead to bigotry and Politics
We need to remember, Hindu Dharma is all about questioning and not about bigotry at all.
So we should consume this content with an open eye.
and wherever we find bigotry infusion, we should not share that content with children
[Mind it, having pride is not bigotry, having pride is fulfillment. Bigotry is when we consider that only we are right or where we do not allow anyone else to speak about their beliefs or when we demand someone else to believe in our beliefs]
5. The False Narrative Creator
You must have heard words like Fake news, Rhetoric, Propaganda etc
This is all about an art of making fake things look real
And it is so prevalent now on the internet that a whole new skill has emerged to counter these things which is known as ‘Media Literacy’
It is obvious to see that it is not easy from both ends
Be it creating or be it countering
Creating narratives is a high rated skill and not only Sanatan Dharma, every other religion is fighting with these fake narrative creators
Almost always, this is sponsored content created by very high IQ people and that is why such content always have the best quality of story line, music, audio-video effects, video quality etc
These creators do not offend your belief, they rather work on your subconscious in a subtle way, and soon you start questioning your beliefs and gradually you may also go against your beliefs.
So it is very important to identify such content and stay away from it.
6. The Woke Creator
There is another sub category to False Narrative Creators that we may call Woke Creators.
These are people who are heavily influenced by the false creators and firmly believe that Hindu Dharma is bad.
And they have made it their life goal to debunk Hindu Dharma.
These are like FREE labour to the False Narrative creators, who have created them to malign Hindu Dharma.
And they are being fed on ideas by the false narrative creators.
Conclusion
Now when you know that various kinds of content is being created, isn’t it important to pick the right stuff for your child
But do you think an average parent has the time and resources to critically check all this content to find the right stuff for their child, NO
Do you not see a great need for a community to solve this issue of finding right content when it comes to help parents of How to teach Hinduism to their children.
Together we can.
4. Exploring the Indescribable Aspects
A lot of false narrative creators would tell you not to introduce your children to Hindu Dharma by calling it difficult and indescribable [tricky things that are not easy to explain to a child].
So they give you examples like
- You should not overburden your child by teaching Sanskrit, one of the most difficult language
- How will you explain your child about the birth of Draupadi out of fire, or Lord Narsingh came out of a pillar and other similar things
- Then they also ask similar questions to put forward their false claims about rapes and incest and much more about Hindu Gods
- or they try to push Fake Feminism into Lord Rama and Ma Sita story
Now one of the four things will happen with the reader
- The readers will accept their claim without any evidence and will consider Hindu Dharma indescribable and will remove it from their child’s reach [and then the False Narrative creators may teach their child whatever they want through their books and guided program]
- The readers with low IQ have accepted their claims but they want to give it a reason, so they go for a research [with a budget of just 15 to 30 minutes] and will consume only selective stuff that supports their message and claims and once this so called research is over, they will now share only peripheral stuff from Hindu Dharma to their children.
- or the third one which is very very rare that the readers really get curious to understand it and realised all that play of narration to create a narrative is happening through translation. So they start reading Samskrita to understand the real meaning and now they know how people are being brainwashed by false propaganda against Hindu Dharma
- The last option is to opt the Bhakti way, where the readers will not listen to any negative thing about Hindu Dharma and will become very selective to consume only the content by their chosen sect.
The difficulty is that it is not available right now and no one alone can build it
Can you help us in building this community . . .
Welcome aboard.
5. Insecure Behaviour in Hindu Parents
Courtesy to the fake narrative creators,
Insecure Behaviour is a pandemic in Hindu Parenting
‘Spiritual but not Religious‘ have become a fashion statement for a lot of Hindus today and they are doing it even without understanding it
for a very large number of Hindu parents, teaching Hindu Dharma to their own kids has become a taboo
They believe that if their child will follow any rituals of Hindu Dharma, their friends from other religion might consider it as bigotry
They push their children away from their roots as they feel, it is not safe to practice Hindu Dharma as an expat in some other country
Sometimes they may do such things even in the home country just to please their friends from other religion
Surprisingly these friends have not been reciprocating the same way but that is all fine for these insecure Hindu Parents
The irony is that they are connecting this disconnection from their roots as a way to modernity
What can we really do with this kind of insecure behavior
This is by far, one of the most difficult challenge to manage
one that even a community cannot solve
because learning is voluntary and if you do not want to learn, no one can teach you
Thank you for being so curious and to keep reading this guide up to here.
Now this is time to explore solutions.
Chapter 3:
Crafting Meaningful Experiences for Hindu Kids
When I was a kid,
I would definitely visit Chhatri wala Mandir in my hometown on every Krishna Janmashtami,
Every year on this day, a small mela [fair] was organised, a lot of jhanki [exhibits] were shown where young children would dress up to play as Krishna ji, Radhaji, Giriraj ji, Damodar ji and many more other deities
But I was just waiting for the Kailash Parvat
It was nothing but a room where the floor was covered with big pieces of Ice
It was very slippery in there and there were many volunteers inside to slide you through the Kailash parvat
It was almost always a dazzling experience for my bare feet.
This definitely connected me strong with the idea of janmashtami
Can you share some such experience in the comments
Creating such an experience is challenging
To conquer such challenges that often arise when teaching Hinduism to young minds, you need a strategy
Building a Strategy
Building a strategy means choosing a few options from a large list of choices and then giving them a sequence.
In this world of instant gratification everyone wants their kids to behave well without putting in efforts
People are looking for value-added, cultured kids as a ready made product.
But there are no magic spells here
Only if you are ready to put in efforts, get in a habit of learning and exploring possibilities, this guide may help
To build a strategy, you need to first make a list of options
The Three Fundamentals
Every religion has 3 fundamentals
- Rituals
- Stories
- and Philosophy
To connect the kids with Hindu Dharma, most parents teach only a few rituals and forget to share even the stories
Very rarely you may find parents who are trying to teach philosophies of Hindu Dharma to their children
How can we improve that
Let’s check them one by one
1 Ritual Augmentation Mechanisms for Hindu Dharma
Upnayan sanskar, or some sorts of Vedik Yajna [sacrifice] or Shraddha for our loved ones who passed away
all above are examples of rituals in Hindu dharma
So, what are rituals and how can we augment them for our children
Let’s try to understand it
When we do some Pooja [worship] at home or at a temple,
we usually wear a tilak, put a mauli on our wrist, perform archana, take aarati and do a lot of other things in a sequence
All such sequence of religious ceremonies are called rituals
1 The Starter Kit [for Hindu Rituals]
The very first thing that we should include in our strategy should be some sort of a starter kit for rituals through which our children can understand the basics
- Do you think, children might like knowing about Ajna Chakra, Urdhva Pundra or Tripundra and all other types of Tilaks
- Does it makes sense to you to teach them a Mantra of Deep Prajjvalan. Will they like learning the mantra for tying a Mauli on your hand
Don’t you think, they are running away because they are not participating
- What about teaching them about Hindu Symbols. you may not have observed but there are hundreds of symbols out there in Hindu Dharma.
- What about Yantras, Have you seen Sri Mahalakshmi Yantra, Can you imagine how it can improve their capability to focus on things
Why don’t you create such a kit for your child. You may also take our help here
2 Why do we need to augment experiences
What we need to understand is that the world has changed
The opportunity cost for children for going to a pooja at the temple has significantly changed
Your daughter will not go to the temple for Sweets anymore because your refrigerator is full of all sorts of chocolates, cakes, sweets, and drinks
Have you explained the importance of Prasadam to her
Your son will not go to the temple for that low quality plastic toy from the hawker outside the temple as his cupboard is already filled with LEGO, Pokemon, and other high quality toys
You have to either prove the importance of visiting temple
or you may simply improve experiences
How will you do that
3 Scavenger Hunt at the temple
We cannot make them curious about our rituals by lecturing them, we need to create experiences
How about creating a Scavenger Hunt at the temple
Suppose you are going to your nearby temple,
the one where you are regular
So you already know all the places, pratima, and Murti there
Now if you can create a Scavenger Hunt beforehand and give it to your children when they reach there,
and If you ask them to find out simple symbols like Swastik or Om in it
it will be an experience that they will love
If it is a temple of Lord Vishnu and your hunt ask them to find out PANCHAJANYA or KAUMODAKI
or in a Shaiva Mandir, you may ask them to find TRIPUNDRA
Allow them to use the internet or you may even help them yourself to let them understand the meanings
Such things will give them curiosity
It will be a project that they would like to talk about with their friends
They will love it
4 Treasure Hunt at your home
You may also think of developing a Treasure Hunt at home.
You may take inspiration from our product
Finding Ratnas is a Hunt made by Mokshaverse to let your child learn about Ksheer Sagar Manthan Story. This one Hunt at your home can teach them loads of things. You may have a look at it for reference.
5. Create a Trivia Quiz around a Hindu Deity
One thing you have to keep in mind, when you are making a quiz for your child
Do not make it a knowledge quiz
Children may not have enough prior knowledge to answer
In that case they will continue playing the quiz till they can answer and then it will become boring for them.
Ask questions that they can answer and this gives you an opportunity to teach them a thing.
You may learn this concept by having a look at our upcoming product Trishna for Krishna
This is one of our most interesting product. One part of this product has Trivia Question cards. You can use it to develop curiosity in children about Lord Krishna
6. Create an Escape Room on a Hindu Story
A typical Escape Room is a sequence of puzzles that need to be solved by children
It can be a digital or a real world experience that can be created at various difficulty level.
These Escape Rooms can give a heavy dose of critical thinking to your children.
We have created Journey of Dhruva, an Escape Room that is suitable for anyone between 14 to 99.
we are releasing it soon, you may host it now at your place.
If you have more such ideas, please do not hesitate to share them with us in comments. You may also send us an email
2 Immersive Storytelling: Drawing from Hindu Scriptures
While strategically working on Hinduism for Kids, once you have started teaching Rituals, you should support that momentum with a set of authentic stories.
There are 4 ways to do it
- Follow a Dharmaguru or a Sect – Learning from a sect is fine when you cannot put a lot of efforts but then this word ‘authentic’ becomes a bit tricky here.
- Learn directly from the Scriptures – If you want authentic content, the only way is to explore the ancient text yourself. Learn Samskrit.
- Curate it yourself –
But Hindu Dharma is not a one book religion. Here you may find Veda, Samhita, Smriti, Itihasa, Purana, and much more, all in Sanskrit
- Simply join a community – In our opinion, the easiest yet most authentic way would be to join a relevant community
We are building such a community. If you wish to join in, look for options in the neext chapter
3 Philosophical Integration in Hindu Parenting
Now when you have already exposed your child to Hindu rituals, created an authentic stories pool
It is now time to focus on Hindu Philosophy
This is an accumulation of wisdom that Rishis from this land worked upon to make the life of a human being better
Let’s take a couple of examples
There are 8 segments in Ashtanga Yoga
yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi.
Then why only the following 3 are famous
Because of the two buzzword in western philosophy ‘easy’ and ‘fashion’
- When Yogasana became Yoga [and rest are left]
- When Pranayam became Breathing Exercise
- and Dhyana became ‘zen’
It all became fashionable
But have you wondered why other 5 not being talked about in the same proportion by the world,
because the rest of the things are hard core things of ancient Indic philosophy
Without passing through Pratyahar and Dharana, you cannot reach Dhyana
But the fashionable world did not have the patience to go through Yam, Niyam, Sainyam
Following the fashion is easy and trendy, so the west influenced world easily accepted Meditation because it is jazzy
But we, the people of this land, have a long memory
we can naturally understand it better and we may go the non-fashinable way.
Let me give you another example
Yantras are our ancient powerful technique for increasing focus
If only, you try to understand the philosophy of Yantra, Mantra and Tantra, you may experience another way to a spiritual journey
else it may simply appear like black magic
It was such powerful philosophy that the practitioners made it forbidden to teach it to the general public
After Yoga and Meditation,, now Tantra is becoming famous in the west
but for the wrong reasons
If you are from the west, you may understand what they have made out of Tantra, you are right, they call it Tantrik s-x, despite this is fake, it is easy and fashionable
people are accepting it for the while, but it will not help you in long run
We recommend you to understand the philosophy behind ancient Hindu Practices to live a better life
4 Strategic Parenting: Building a Comprehensive Approach
Now you know a lot of stuff, have multiple ideas, so you are free to make a strategy
But there is a easier way
You may either build a community
. . . . or join an existing one
Chapter 4:
Paving The Way Forward in Hindu Parenting
Here you are
Now you know the major challenges
and you also know about the possible solutions,
and you need to pick the way ahead from here
1 Community Connection: Joining Other Hindu Parents
We recommend you to join a community to create a conducive environment for children to explore Hindu Dharma
2 Contributing to Change: Becoming an Active Participant
At Mokshaverse, we are building this community that not help your child to explore Hindu Dharma, it also help our child to develop the futuristic skills
and we hope to get your support in this cause
You may
- Link this guide to your blog
- Share it with your friends
- Mention this guide on Social Media
This way you can help us in this cause to create and nurture a Hindu Parenting Community.
Please do share your thoughts in the comments so that we can improve this guide