According to Osho, the gravest mistake is treating children as possessions—imposing identities, beliefs, and a ready-made personality on them for parental convenience. Children come through you, not from you; they are born as clean slates. Do not baptize, label, or coerce. Protect their individuality, allow free inquiry, and postpone religious conditioning until true maturity—help them become themselves, even if their freedom brings 'trouble' to your ego.
Don’t own or mold kids; let them grow freely, ask questions, and choose beliefs when they’re truly ready.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT ARE THE MAJOR MISTAKES IN BRINGING UP CHILDREN? The major mistakes in bringing up children are many, but I will talk only about the most important. First: the idea that they belong to you. They come through you; you have been a passage, but they don't belong to you. They are not your possessions. Out of this idea of possessiveness many mistakes arise. Once you start thinking that they are your possessions, you have reduced them into things, because only things can be possessed, not human beings. It is the ugliest act you can do. And those poor children are so helpless, so dependent on you, they cannot rebel. They accept whatever your idea is. And to protect your possessiveness you make them Christians the moment they are born.
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.
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…
Why are parents so cruel to their children? Is there any sense in making them responsible? And how can one avoid making the same mistake?
There is something ESSENTIAL about climbing trees. If a child has NEVER been doing it, he will remain something poor, he will miss some richness -- for his whole life. You have deprived him of something beautiful, and there is no other way to know about it! Later on it will become more difficult for him to climb on the tree, it will look stupid or foolish or ridiculous. Let him climb the tree. And if you are afraid, help him, go and teach him. You also climb with him! Help him learn so he doesn't fall. And once in a while, falling from a tree is not so bad either. Rather than being deprived forever.... The child wants to go out in the rains and wants to run around the streets in the rain, and you are afraid he may catch a cold or get pneumonia or something --…
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…