According to Osho, you cannot make children inward-looking by direct teaching or pressure; it awakens ego and resistance. Transform yourself first—find peace, direction, and the music within. Your lived example, the silent 'shadow' of your being, influences them indirectly. Avoid prohibitions and moral pushing; instead create a spacious, trusting atmosphere where curiosity and inner orientation arise naturally.
Become the calm, genuine person you want your child to be, and stop pushing—your example will quietly guide them inward.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, how can children be made inward-looking?
And secondly, never try—by pressure, by insistence—to lead a child toward any “good” direction. That very thing will become the biggest wall against going in a good direction. It may happen that while he is small he obeys you—because he is weak and you are strong; you can frighten him, threaten him, even do violence to him. And never imagine that parents cannot be violent with their children! Parents have committed such immeasurable violence against children. It simply doesn’t look like violence. Whenever we press someone down, we are being violent. The child’s ego is wounded. But being weak, he bears it. Today or tomorrow, when he grows up and power comes to his hands, by then you will be old and weak—and he will take revenge. The mistreatment of elderly parents by their children has its cause in the parents themselves. What they did to the child in his…
Question: OSHO, HOW CAN WE TEACH CHILDREN TO BE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS? The Protestant booklet that I was just talking about also mentions one fact: that one thing has to be learned from Rajneesh and his sannyasins -- that why they feel so committed. why they feel so involved, so deeply in love. No Christian seems to be so deeply in love with Christ. Why are they so in love with their own Master? There must be some reason behind it that has to be explored. The reason is clear-cut: sannyas is not imposed upon you, you have chosen it. The same was the case with the disciples of Jesus, with the disciples of Buddha. But it happens only when the Master is alive; when the Master is gone... In fact, children should be allowed to choose their own Masters. Parents should not enforce their own ideology on their children.
[To a sannyasin, whose son had just been initiated into sannyas, Osho said that one should respect one's child, and that now her son was a sannyasin, she should regard him as a brother... A child is born to you, but he does not belong to you. Always remember that he has come through you. He has chosen you as a passage, but he has his own destiny. So giving him sannyas does not mean that you have to structure him. You are not to force anything on him. Sannyas is freedom, so give him freedom to be himself, and be alert not to impose anything. Love him as much as you can, but don't give your thoughts to him. When you meditate, just persuade him to be with you. Sometimes dance with him.
Osho, does a child not have as much right to privacy and freedom from parental conditioning as the parents themselves expect?
Jimmy: 'Yes, Mum, there wasn't time to take them off.' The first-grade teacher was talking to her class about nature and she called it 'The World Around You'. She asked little Helen in the first row, 'Now, Helen, tell everyone in the class. Are you vegetable, animal or mineral?' 'I'm not any of those,' she replied promptly. 'I'm a real live girl!' A little fellow who was fishing off the end of a pier lost his balance while trying to land a fish and fell in the lake. Several men who also were fishing nearby rushed to his aid and pulled him out. 'How did you come to fall in?' one of the men asked him. 'I didn't come to fall in,' the kid said. 'I came to fish!' A large family was finally able to move into a more spacious home. Some time later an uncle asked his nephew,…
Beloved Osho, what is the right way to help a child grow without interfering in his natural potentiality?
The right way is not to help the child at all. If you have real courage then please don't help the child. Love him, nourish him. Let him do what he wants to do. Let him go where he wants to go. Your mind will be tempted again and again to interfere, and with good excuses. The mind is very clever in rationalizing: "If you don't interfere there may be danger; the child may fall into the well if you don't stop him." But I say to you, it is better to let him fall into the well than to help him and destroy him. It is a very rare possibility that the child falls into the well -- and then too, it does not mean death; he can be taken out of the well. And if you are really so concerned, the well can be covered; but don't help…