How should we deal with the differences in children's personalities?

Beloved Osho, you said every child is born a god, yet my two children were very different right from birth. One is very serene and god-like, but the other seemed disturbed before she was influenced by any conditioning. How should we deal with the difficult one?

Give the child a wholeness. Make him infectious to your awareness. Love him, tell him what your experience is, but don't try to make him follow your experience. Don't force. If he follows of his own accord, it is good; if he doesn't follow, wait -- there is no hurry. It is difficult to be a father or to be a mother, the MOST difficult thing in the world. And people think it is the easiest. I have heard: One woman was coming in a taxi to her home from the market, and the taxi-driver was just crazy. He was going zigzag; any moment there would be an accident. And he was going so fast...the woman was very, very nervous, sitting on the edge of the seat, and many times she said: Don't go so fast, I'm scared. But he wouldn't listen. Then she said: Listen! Twelve children are waiting…

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…

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…

Beloved Osho, what I find really amazing about your childhood is that, unlike most of us as children, you seem to have an intrinsic and undeniable understanding that your parents' interpretation of reality and your experience of reality were often two different things. You insist that you are no different from us, yet this facet of your childhood alone is more than enough evidence that you house the most unique sort of intelligence. I would be grateful for your comment.

I said, "Don't be worried, I am not going to be a Mohammedan. You just remember, if my father asks you, you say to him, `Yes, he has come, and if he wants to become a Mohammedan we cannot refuse.' I am not going to come, but this much you have to tell him." And my father asked him, "Has he come to you?" He said, "He has come, and he is very insistent." My father said, "It is better to leave him alone! They had a meeting of the whole family, "Leave him alone; he is really dangerous. If he becomes a Mohammedan we will be condemned by the whole city. And he really has gone, and he is insisting, `If anything happens again to force me, then I am going to change my religion.'" That was the last...! They remained silent; they never told me to come to…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, AND A WOMAN WHO HELD A BABE AGAINST HER BOSOM SAID, SPEAK TO US OF CHILDREN. AND HE SAID: YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT YOUR CHILDREN. THEY ARE THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF LIFE'S LONGING FOR ITSELF. THEY COME THROUGH YOU BUT NOT FROM YOU, AND THOUGH THEY ARE WITH YOU YET THEY BELONG NOT TO YOU. YOU MAY GIVE THEM YOUR LOVE BUT NOT YOUR THOUGHTS, FOR THEY HAVE THEIR OWN THOUGHTS. YOU MAY HOUSE THEIR BODIES BUT NOT THEIR SOULS, FOR THEIR SOULS DWELL IN THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW, WHICH YOU CANNOT VISIT, NOT EVEN IN YOUR DREAMS. YOU MAY STRIVE TO BE LIKE THEM, BUT SEEK NOT TO MAKE THEM LIKE YOU. FOR LIFE GOES NOT BACKWARDS NOR TARRIES WITH YESTERDAY. YOU ARE THE BOWS FROM WHICH YOUR CHILDREN AS LIVING ARROWS ARE SENT FORTH.