Being a child is no child's play!

By Arastah Jannat Islam

"Every morning I see her drag herself from bed with half opened eyes, wash and eat in that sleepy state and then carry the bag double her weight on her back and she is off to school. Back from school, she's  all set for her extra classes and at the end of the day, she is busy with her homework and projects. On weekends she is occupied with her karate classes and now her parents are planning for music and art classes as well!"

image source: internet

 If you turn your eyes around this is how today's kids, in general, are living their lives. It is the common schedule of almost every kid around us.

It pains so much to see these little people whirl around from dawn to dusk, from one class to another. Of course, some things are important and useful and should be incorporated into a child's schedule. Of course to follow a discipline is a very good thing. However, when I see a child's daily schedule, I wonder what they must be feeling. The kid is at home, with family, hardly for few hours, a major part of which is the time to sleep. Alright, I can understand the plight of nuclear families with both parents working. They don't have the time and keeping the child in a creche is generally a good and convenient idea, provided they spend together times on the weekends. But in general cases, the poor little souls are not even spared with a relaxed weekend with the plethora of different "useful" classes.

I absolutely don't feel that it is justified to keep your kids so occupied that they don't understand what it is to be family and therefore they can't differentiate from being the self to being selfish. It is necessary to have an individuality, a sense of self, but the mechanical way of life, wipes out the individuality and only a selfish, egoistic-self remains. It's all on the parents to take care that their child is not lost in this hullabaloo of human beings turning into some crunching machines.

Why is all this chaos going around a child? The reason is simple. We all want our children to reach the zenith of life. It is a good thing, right? Yes, it is! The problem is not with aspiring to be successful, but with the definition of being successful or the definition of "zenith". This race of becoming the topper in every possible field is heart-wrenching. Agreed...competitive mindset is necessary. But are the parents instilling this idea in the right way? Continuous comparisons are not the way to generate a sense of competition in the child. This can never be the right approach. Teach the kid to compete with the self. But I see parents doing this dangerous thing of comparing their child with other children. If that is the way, a child will be left with no one whom it can term as a friend, whom it can love and not just see as an opponent or foe. And this may act two-way on the child's psychology. Either the sense of competition will lead it to be the high scorer (without a friend may be) or this sense might lead to an inferiority complex and eventually act as the nemesis in whatever endeavour the child is involved. So please stop comparing and instil the sense of racing with the self.

image source: internet

Dear Parents...it's a humble request that while imparting education and all round (so called) development of your respective wards, take care that things are going towards the true sense of the term of education and development. Instead of raising up some parrots in your homes, raise a human being. Just because your neighbour's child has joined some so and so classes it's not necessary that your child needs that too. No! It is not necessary that your child has to be an all-rounder with super skills in music, art, martial arts, extempores and debates and above all school texts. Please stop imitating other children and avoid enrolling your baby in every possible extracurricular activity. Not to speak of the pressure on the kids for highest grade points which may be some other neighbour's child must have scored. In your race towards becoming the proud parents of a super kid, the little souls are losing their individuality and their essence of being a child is fading away. In the process when they will grow up they will be left with not an ounce of that childlike conscious which still resides inside every matured or grown up individuals and which keeps us compassionate. But if these children lose their childhood this way, I am afraid that they will be left with a little compassion as a human being for their later life.

     
Along with regular studies and the classes of their choice of extracurricular activities, let your child play in the sun, run in the field, quarrel over silly games with their friends and live at least, a bit of childhood that they deserve.

Take care...