Indian Tennis star Sania Mirza shared an honest reflection on parenting during difficult moments, saying that children should hear the truth directly from their parents rather than from the outside world.
According to Sania, honesty protects children during tough times and helps them navigate challenges with confidence rather than confusion.
She made the comments in the latest episode of her show "Serving It Up with Sania", during a conversation with designer Masaba Gupta.
Masaba, recalling her own childhood, said her mother never hid anything from her, whether it was gossip in the newspapers or details about her parents’ relationship. “Nothing was hidden from me,” she said. “I had absolute clarity about my parents from the age of 13. I knew when they split, when they were together, everything. It was normal.”
She added that pretending everything is fine, especially when a child can clearly sense problems, is far more damaging. “That is not normal,” she said, adding that honesty shapes a child’s idea of what “normal” really is.
Sania responded by sharing her own experience of dealing with a difficult phase in her life and how she sought professional guidance to communicate it to her son, Izhaan.
“I was consulting with a child psychologist on how to bring it up with him,” she said. “The only advice that really stayed with me was that he should not find out anything from outside. 'You have to tell him yourself'”.
She said openness helps children process difficult situations without feeling isolated or different. “It should be normalised for him,” she added. “He should not feel like a freak.”
Masaba agreed, saying that being told the truth by her parents gave her strength later in life. “The fact that people talked so much about my parents actually became armour for me,” she said. “Because my mom told me, my dad told me, I had the actual information.”
