At my home, there are places where new life is born often. Yes, there are three places where pigeons lay eggs. It’s been more than 13 years that I have been watching them growing from eggs into fully grown pigeons. My husband usually feeds them and serves grains and water every day. Since I observe them very carefully, I have learnt a very meaningful parenting lesson from them.

Before laying eggs, the parents start searching a safe place and preparing it suitable for laying eggs. The mother pigeon gives warmth with her wings. After a certain period of time, the eggs break and a new life peeps form inside. As the time passes, the mother pigeon feeds them every day, gives warmth of her wings, both parents protect them from outside world and make them strong to fly in the sky. Till the baby pigeon becomes strong, the mother pigeon takes care. As soon as she realizes that her kids are grown up fully and can open their wings, the mother pigeon pushes her child out from the nest. After that she never comes back to see her babies. Probably she feels that now her child is competent enough to fight/ survive in this world. The most amazing thing I have noticed is that the both female and male pigeons share responsibility of caring for and raising their young.

This time, I saw a pigeon laid two eggs. One baby pigeon grew up but the other one had some problem. It could not spread its wings. So

it has stayed back and my husband, as usual, takes care of this baby. The surprise is that this time both the pigeons come every day. The mother pigeon trying its best to make the baby fly, she still protects nurtures and is probably worried about the baby. Though the other baby can fly, it also takes care of its sibling. The whole family is supporting the chick that has some problem. This shows the family bonding, sharing & caring.

The lesson I learned from the pigeons is that we should make our child independent, do our best and when the child becomes self sustaining, allow them to spread their wings and fly. Probably, it’s a quite difficult task for the learned and intelligent human beings to leave their children till the end of the lives. From the very beginning, we take all the decisions for our kids i.e. which dress to wear, what to eat, even how much to eat, when to sleep, where to go, with whom to talk, what to be etc. These small decisions are taken by the parents. In this condition, the children can never take their own decisions for the rest of their lives. Physically, children grow up but not intellectually. Let children take the small decisions in their early life. This will help them gain confidence to take the big decisions of life independently when the time comes. Children are born capable of taking decisions on their own, as parent, it is our job to help them take these in their early years, not to impose our own on them.

Maybe that’s why pigeons called an intelligent bird species.