Raising Indian Kids Abroad
Screens, stubbornness and sanskar — what actually works when home is another country

Why children push back — and why it is not defiance

Somewhere between two and six, a child works out something enormous: I am separate, and I want things of my own. This is not a flaw in your parenting. It is a developmental milestone, and child psychologists worry more about the child who never shows it.

The trouble is that the wanting arrives long before the vocabulary does, and long before the part of the brain that regulates emotion is anywhere near finished — that keeps developing well into the twenties. So when a storm rises inside a five-year-old, they have no way to describe it. What comes out is a scream.

Hunger and tiredness are the most common and the most overlooked. A child at five in the afternoon is running on empty. Expecting reasonableness then is like expecting it from an adult at two in the morning.

Attention is the uncomfortable one. Children learn quickly that good behaviour goes unnoticed while shouting brings everyone running — and at that age, attention in the form of a telling-off still counts as attention.

Control deserves a moment's thought. Consider how much of a child's day they actually decide. When to wake, what to wear, what to eat, when to sleep — all chosen by someone else. Somewhere they are going to say no, and it usually lands on something trivial like the wrong colour cup.

Then there is being cut off abruptly — the one we cause ourselves, which the next section is about — plus not enough sleep, and too many open-ended choices. "What do you want to wear" is a hard question for a four-year-old. "The blue one or the yellow one" is an easy one, and it hands them back a little control at the same time.

Screens: the fight most evenings are actually about

Let's start with something that might take the weight off a little. Research suggests that close to half of parents admit they use screens to manage difficult behaviour. Not a moral failing — a Tuesday evening with dinner on the stove and a child attached to your leg.

Here is what changes the picture. Taking a screen away mid-activity is a genuine jolt to a child's brain. They are inside a story, a level, a video. Then it is gone. Adults find the same thing irritating; the difference is that adults have learned to swallow it.

How much screen time, by age

The WHO advises no screen time at all under one, and no more than an hour a day between two and four, with less considered better. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises avoiding screens before roughly 18 to 24 months, apart from video chat, and around an hour of good-quality content for ages two to five — ideally watched alongside an adult rather than alone.

But the more useful development is recent. In its 2026 guidance the AAP moved away from counting hours, toward asking what screens are displacing. Their framing is about the individual child, the content, whether the household is calm, whether screens are crowding out sleep, play and family time, and whether any of it is being talked about.

Which is liberating, honestly. An hour that leaves sleep, outdoor play and conversation intact is a different hour from thirty minutes that eats into bedtime. Watch the displacement, not the clock.

On hitting — what the evidence actually shows

This section is difficult to write for an Indian audience, because most of us were smacked and most of us feel we turned out fine. So before the evidence, one thing: this is not written to shame anyone. The parent who lost their temper last night and lay awake afterwards is exactly who this is for.

A meta-analysis covering five decades and more than 160,000 children found that the more children were smacked, the more aggression, defiance, mental-health difficulty and academic struggle appeared later.

The finding that should stop us is the absence: not one of those studies found that physical punishment improved behaviour. A 2025 analysis reported negative associations across sixteen of nineteen outcomes examined — and no positive ones at all.

So why does it feel effective? Because in the moment it is. The child stops. But what stopped them was fear, not comprehension — and fear teaches two lessons nobody intends: that power settles arguments, and that the real skill is not getting caught. That is where lying begins.

Five things to do instead

"Don't hit" is easy to say. The real question is what to do at the moment your child is on the floor and your patience has run out.

One — warn first. Worth repeating because it does the heaviest lifting. Nothing gets interrupted without notice: not play, not television, not a bath.

Two — offer two options instead of an instruction. Not "go to bed now" but "teeth first or story first?" Both roads arrive where you were going. The child gets to steer, which is what they wanted.

Three — let the consequence land. No shoes means arriving at the park late. Toys not put away means they are not out tomorrow. A consequence is not a punishment: a punishment is something you impose, a consequence is what their own decision produced. The second one teaches.

Four — give them somewhere to cool down. At peak fury a child physically cannot process what you are saying. Let them sit, let them cry, stay nearby, say nothing. Do not turn this into a punishment corner — it is a place to breathe, not a sentence.

Five — talk afterwards. Ten minutes later, on your lap. "You were really angry, weren't you? I get angry too." Name the feeling first, then discuss the behaviour. That is the window where a child actually hears you.

Ask what you are putting in the gap

Everything above is about reducing screens. But there is a point that gets missed, and it may be the single most useful sentence here: a child does not actually want the phone. They want it because nothing better is available right then.

Take the screen away with nothing to follow and what remains is a vacuum, and a vacuum produces exactly what it always produces. But if something else begins the moment it goes off, the fight simply does not happen.

It does not need to be elaborate. Fifteen phone-free minutes, being allowed to help with the dough, a walk around the block — or the oldest and most effective option available to us: a story.

One caution, because it is the mistake families make most often once they finally decide to cut down. Do not announce a total ban on a Sunday evening and expect it to survive the week. A screen that has been part of a child's day for two years is a habit, and habits come down in steps. Shorten the slot rather than deleting it. Move it earlier in the evening so it is not the last thing before sleep. Take one meal a week and make it phone-free for everyone, adults included — and expect to be called out the first time you check your own phone at the table, because you will be.

Stories are the oldest tool we have — and still the strongest

In Indian homes, values were never transmitted by explanation. They were transmitted by story.

No child in history has learned honesty from the sentence "you should be honest." But a child who hears the story of Raja Harishchandra understands what it costs. "Respect your elders" achieves nothing; the story of Shravan Kumar leaves a mark. The Panchatantra taught strategy through a clever rabbit, and the stories behind our own rituals quietly tell a child what they are part of.

And a story carries something no screen does — a teller. The voice, the pause at "and then what do you think happened?", the hand on the shoulder. That is what a child keeps coming back for.

A true story — from Charlotte to Sadulpur

Now the account that reframed this entire article for me.

A relative of mine — Shri Ramkumar ji, a retired lecturer from Sadulpur, Rajasthan — went to stay with his software-engineer son in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was there a month. When he came back he described plenty: the roads, the weather, the particular loneliness of a suburb where nobody walks anywhere.

But I asked him something else. His grandchildren — eight years old and four and a half — what were their days like, and what had struck him most about them?

His answer was this. Every night the two of them attached themselves to him and would not let go. He told them stories from the village — the fields, the bullock cart, the well, his own childhood. And they listened with such appetite that they would not release him until he had told five or six. "Dadaji, one more."

It was mostly the eight-year-old who insisted. The four-and-a-half-year-old said little, but listened to every word.

Then came the day he left

The month ended. His flight was booked. His son and both children came to Charlotte airport to see him off.

Inside the terminal, both children started crying. And what they said was not "don't go."

"Dadaji, now who will tell us stories?"

In one month they had not become attached to their grandfather. They had become attached to the stories. What frightened them was not that he was leaving — it was that the fields and the wells and the bullock carts were leaving with him.

Except they didn't

This is where the story stops being touching and starts being useful.

Once home, Ramkumar ji refused to let the thread break. He now tells those same two children stories every single day over a WhatsApp video call — about India, about festivals, about the village.

He has kept it up, daily, for a year.

Which is where this whole article turns over

We have spent this entire piece discussing how to keep a screen away from a child. And the same screen, with a grandfather's face on it, becomes a bridge across seven thousand miles.

And the second lesson runs deeper. Ramkumar ji never took a phone away from those children. He simply put something better in front of it — his voice, his time, and a village they had never seen but can now describe.

That is what sanskar actually is. It does not travel in lectures, it does not survive being enforced, and it does not stop at a national border. It arrives through the person who picks up the phone every evening and says, "right, listen to this one."

What this looks like in practice, abroad

The fear most NRI parents carry is that their children simply will not be interested. Ramkumar ji's grandchildren are the direct rebuttal: they were not merely interested, they were insistent. Children do not find culture boring. They find it boring when it arrives as instruction.

Some things that work:

• Fix a daily slot with grandparents, not a weekly one. One long Sunday call does far less than fifteen minutes every evening. The child starts waiting for it — and waiting is what builds the habit.
• Ask the elders to tell, not to interrogate. "How was school, what marks did you get" makes children flee. "When I was small…" brings them closer.
• Keep speaking the language at home. Even when they answer in English, keep going in Hindi. Comprehension comes first and speech follows, sometimes years later — but only if the input never stopped.
• Give them a job at festivals rather than a seat. Arranging diyas, setting the thali, kneading dough. What the hands do, the memory keeps.
• Let them hear the language sung, not just spoken. Old film songs, bhajans, folk songs in the car. Rhythm carries vocabulary past resistance.

And remember it runs both ways. The grandfather telling stories every evening is being kept alive by it too. Distance produces loneliness at both ends, and those fifteen minutes fill both.

When to speak to a doctor

Now the section most parenting articles leave out, and whose absence leaves children without help for years.

Most stubbornness is ordinary and fades with age. But occasionally what presents as defiance is something else — and scolding or smacking it makes it worse.

In closing

Frequently asked questions

Why is my child so stubborn?

Between about two and six, children develop a sense of their own separate will — this is healthy development, not misbehaviour. What is missing is the vocabulary to express it, and the part of the brain that regulates emotion is still forming. So the feeling comes out as a scream instead of a sentence. They are not trying to defeat you; they are overwhelmed and cannot say so.

How much screen time should a child have?

The WHO advises no screen time under one year, and no more than an hour for ages two to four — less being better. The AAP advises avoiding screens before 18–24 months, video chatting excepted. In 2026 the AAP shifted emphasis away from counting hours towards asking what the screen is displacing — whether sleep, play, schoolwork and conversation are still intact.

Do video calls count as screen time?

No. Even for children under two, video calls are treated as an exception, because the child is interacting with a real person in real time rather than passively consuming. Calls with grandparents are not screen exposure; they are relationship. For families raising children abroad, this distinction matters enormously.

Does smacking children work?

The evidence is unusually consistent. Across fifty years of research and more than 160,000 children, not one study has shown that physical punishment improves behaviour. What it is associated with is greater aggression, more defiance, poorer mental health and a more distant relationship. It appears to work in the moment because the child stops — but that silence is fear, and fear teaches children mainly not to get caught.

What is gentle parenting, and does it actually work?

The term is used loosely, which is why it attracts scepticism. It does not mean no boundaries. What it means in practice is holding a firm limit while staying regulated yourself — warning before transitions, offering choices within limits, allowing consequences, and talking after the emotion passes rather than during it. Approaches that combine warmth with clear, consistent limits are the ones the research supports. Warmth without limits is permissiveness, and that does not work either.

How do I stop the daily fight over the tablet?

Three things. Warn before switching off — "when this finishes" rather than grabbing mid-activity. Fix a predictable slot so it is not renegotiated daily. And most importantly, have something ready to follow. Removing a screen into an empty evening produces exactly the tantrum you were trying to avoid. Keeping meals and bedrooms screen-free also removes two arguments permanently.

How do I teach my child Hindi when we live abroad?

Keep speaking it at home even when they answer in English — comprehension builds long before speech, but only if the input continues. Add a daily video call with grandparents, which supplies natural, motivated listening in a way no class does. Use songs and stories rather than worksheets for young children, and start letters and matras only once they enjoy hearing the language. A child who resents Hindi lessons will not learn Hindi.

How do I pass on Indian culture to children born abroad?

Through stories and participation, never through lectures. Fix a daily fifteen minutes with grandparents and ask the elders to tell stories rather than quiz the children about school. Give children a real job during festivals instead of a seat to watch from. And accept that this is a long accumulation of small moments, not a lesson you deliver once.

When should tantrums be discussed with a doctor?

If meltdowns are very intense and prolonged, if the child hurts themselves during rage, if speech is delayed, if attention never settles, if connecting with other children is persistently hard, or if there is a sudden change in behaviour — see a paediatrician. Underlying causes such as ADHD, anxiety, sleep disorders or hearing difficulties are common and cannot be reported by the child themselves.