A 13-year old school girl from Bangalore went missing recently and was found in Hubli. I do not know the family personally, but the incident had me thinking really hard because I too am a mother. I feel, today all stake holders in the education system are facing a serious challenge. Parents, teachers and the society have to rely on each other to ensure that children grow up to be emotionally and psychologically strong.
**
Excellence of any kind is about hardwork, talent (some or a lot of it), right opportunities and a lot of mental and physical stamina. More mental because once you start excelling, the first three are at play, but everything in the end depends on whether one fights it out or wants to quit. These days, the school finds it difficult to discipline kids be it in academics or behaviour-wise. The same are troublesome areas even at home. The initial pampering, hand holding and lessons in motivation with soft hands at home are expected to be mirrored by even people outside of home that the child interacts with, may be at school, the art class or a sports arena. This often leads to discord especially between school and home.
**
When one says, a kid requires attention in certain areas, the caregiver wonders if it isn’t the school that should be doing the same. So we are back to where we started. This isn’t just about academics and it seems inexplicable why a well-performing child in all attributes decided to just leave school and a loving home behind. Little does she know the anguish, anxiety caused and the probable aftermath of this ride into the unknown. The child not only left a safe, caring and loving home, she also left behind encouraging and supportive tutors, leaving everyone to wonder just who or what went wrong.
**
I do get that we must tell our children to not fret over academic scores but we also must make our kids not susceptible to this malaise of being overly sensitive to criticism, extremely conscious of their image in the outer world. We must ensure that by protecting our kids from honest criticism, we are not making them psychologically and emotionally feeble and distracting them from self-motivation and hard work.
**
Today, our kids enjoy personal transport to ferry them to school and back, lighter bags, nutritious tiffin boxes, comfortable shoes, crisp uniforms and at home, they get care, luxurious vacations, mall visits, fancy clothes, gadgets and above all a total insulation from whatever that may even remotely spell “stress”. But hey, we do this, because we want the generation after us to be better than us.Yes, we are doing it all but, somewhere it’s all not adding up.
**
This is not just about one child but about this millennial generation where kids turn into crumbly cookies at the slightest stress and emotional pressure and are victims of inflated self-image and over sensitivity. We must not shield them from hard work or we will have on our hands, an entire generation and also a society full of demotivated individuals.
Shruthi is a trained dental professional, a radio personality and a mother.
