We Stopped Trying to Teach Shlokas

We started with the Gayatri Mantra. I had learned it myself as a child, by overhearing it — the way you learn the words to a song on the radio, not by being taught it but by being near it often enough. I wanted the same for him. What I did instead, without realising it, was teach it. Sat him down. Explained the syllables. Tested him the next morning.

He resisted. Not dramatically — just that particular five-year-old non-compliance where a thing becomes associated with effort and is therefore avoided. He would walk away when I started. He would suddenly need water, or the toilet, or to tell me something urgent about a cloud he had seen from the window.

We stopped the sessions. Instead we just said the Gayatri at dinner, both of us, without ceremony, the way you might say something habitual. Not every night — most nights. No instruction, no repetition prompts, no checking. Just the sound of it in the room. About six weeks later, he joined in. Halfway through at first. Then from the beginning. Then one morning he said it alone, unprompted, while brushing his teeth, as if it had always been his.

I think what I had done wrong the first time was make the shloka visible as a thing to be learned. Children are perfectly good at learning what they decide to learn. What they resist is learning on someone else's schedule, for someone else's reasons. The shloka in the lesson was mine. The shloka at dinner was just part of the house. He took it when he was ready.

We have done the same thing since with two others. Same result both times. The only system that has worked is not having one.