Daayra filmmaker Meghna Gulzar shared a heartwarming revelation about her father, Indian poet and lyricist Gulzar. “Actually, I carry something from him about parenting more than I do about filmmaking. So, he wrote a book for me every year on my birthday till I was 13. He would get it published, and I would distribute it in school. When I was born, it was about counting. Every book would have a letter for me from him, which was speaking to me at that age. This is how he has raised me,” Meghna told Be a Man, Yaar Townhall.

According to Meghna’s candid confession, the 92-year-old has always maintained that children need to be spoken to as equals. “He said, when you were 1 year old, I was a one-year-old father. You need to understand that talking down to them is never good. If they are 14-year-old children, you are a 14-year-old parent. So, please come to them from a place of equality,” Meghna continued.

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As a psychotherapist, Delnna Rrajesh reflected that this approach is “one of the most beautiful descriptions of conscious parenting” because it replaces something parents are often expected to have, certainty, with something far more valuable: curiosity.

“We tend to think that because we gave birth to or raised a child, we automatically know them. But children are constantly changing. The child you understood at eight may be psychologically very different at 14. Their friendships, fears, body, identity, aspirations, values and relationship with the world are evolving. Parenting therefore cannot remain static while the child continues to grow,” shared Delnna.

Equality here does not mean equal authority

Equality here does not mean equal authority. “A five-year-old cannot carry the responsibilities of a 40-year-old, and children need adults to provide structure, protection, boundaries and guidance. Equality in parenting means equality of human dignity. A child’s feelings do not become less real simply because an adult considers the problem small,” Delnna told indianexpress.com.

One of the most common parenting mistakes is therefore correcting an emotion before connecting with the child experiencing it.

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Gulzar’s idea of the parent growing alongside the child also offers parents something they rarely give themselves: permission not to know everything. “Every stage requires new parenting skills. Toddlers need co-regulation and physical protection. School-age children need increasing responsibility and guidance. Adolescents need boundaries alongside privacy, autonomy and respectful negotiation. Young adults need parents who can gradually move from directing their lives to becoming trusted advisers. Problems arise when the child grows but the parenting style does not. The 16-year-old is still spoken to like the six-year-old. Questions are interpreted as disrespect. Privacy is interpreted as secrecy. Independent opinions are experienced as rebellion. A child’s growing autonomy can feel like rejection to a parent who remembers being the centre of their world,” expressed Delnna.

Yet one of the goals of healthy parenting is precisely this gradual separation.

Children speak more freely where they feel they can reveal themselves without immediately being corrected. “That does not mean parents should approve of everything they hear. It means listening and intervention do not always have to occur in the same second,” stressed Delnna.

 

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Perhaps that is why Gulzar’s philosophy feels so profound. “It removes the pedestal from parenting without removing parental responsibility. We can possess experience without assuming omniscience. We can guide without humiliating. We can set boundaries without denying feelings. We can teach while remaining willing to learn,” said Delnna.

A child does not need a parent who knows everything about them simply because they created them. “They need a parent curious enough to keep discovering them. And perhaps every birthday really does mark two kinds of growing up: a child entering an age they have never experienced before, and a parent learning, for the first time, how to love and guide this new version of their child.”

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