Survive from the parental apathy

My wife was elated and sad when she came back from the parent orientation in our daughter’s school, that I couldn’t attend. It seems Brother Mac, the invited speaker, had given an excellent lecture about parenting adolescent children, especially girls. She was gag a about it and sad at the same time because most parents were always complaining about “wastage of time”, “he hasn’t married even and lecturing us on parenting” and “what is there in these gyans & boring lecturing “ etc. My wife went to the Principal to specially thank her for the event and the visibly sad Principal smiled, “you are telling it should have been for more time, see .. most parents have even left before it ended”. My wife smiled back “If you arranged a lecture of which coaching center will be the best for Joint entrance , they would have asked for the whole day”.

It is extremely difficult to handle own children, this is not only my personal experience but I have heard it from some top-class motivational speakers of the country and abroad, many of whom are my Gurus and have confided this in private. Even Dr. Stephen Covey, arguably the best Motivational trainer in the world, has described in book after book, how he had painfully fought for years to handle few of his own children to keep them in proper direction. Everyone needs training, everyone needs guidance from people who are experts in their fields, and the parent community need this the most, but neither they are bothered, nor we have any societal awareness about how this thing is the most required to improve the society itself, beside the country. Parents handling of the children often sways between the extremes and that tilts the balance, the crucial factor in developing a well-rounded individual

The strange apathy of most parents toward proper parenting is strange and in a way dangerous. These people often look at their children as investments, even when not, they think their duty is to ensure success of their children and they spend like anything and do all other work to keep their children at studies. The trouble is that we have schools for every conceivable subject under the sun, but not for parenting. They don’t understand that to make his son a successful man, he has to be successful and even more, a man !! Alas, we do not have schools for making a man (or woman) out of a pupil, we have them to make Doctors or Engineers or MBAs (let’s not talk about the quality), who are what, they themselves do not know but definitely not men or women, they are rather happy to be treated as “resource” by the companies, and the Companies are more than happy to be expected to do that.

The parents normally think their duties are finished when their children get a chance in the IITs or IIMs or any good Institute, or even the bogus MBA Institute that takes a lot of money, because it is then their responsibility to get them jobs. The result is often disastrous. Dr. Aniruddha Deb (a top Psychiatrist associated with MON in Koikhali, who was invited by IIT-KGP to work on their student suicide problem), told me “The day we set foot there, we heard there was a suicide in the morning. We worked on them for 6 months, there was 5 suicides and 7 unsuccessful attempts, beside we must have been able to counsel and bring back from the verge at least 30 guys. But the real problem lies with their parents, they never taught them anything except studies. They simply can’t handle a failure. All these guys who reach there, were the first boys in their class all their lives, and suddenly now, in a class of 40, someone has to be the 39th or even 40th This becomes unbearable for them.

Beside the question of training the children for handling disappointments or failures, we push them towards a blind competition with almost no value or moral base (nowadays, after the breakup of joint families and the added pressures and so called liberal society, the value base of most parents themselves have eroded to a strange extent), no life skills and even any slow training on how to handle relationships.

I often ask a question to people, you want your son to be this.., then what ? This “then what” part they do not know, for them the story ends there. They expect their children to be happy ever-after, as the fairytale stories end. The problem is that the real story of life starts from there. The trouble in handling the office and the work cultures and politics (some learn that from their families though), the marital discords, trouble in handling relationships, lack of life balance, drinking and allied problems, lack of loyalty or caring.. the list are endless. The happiness quotient often goes down, and even often with enough income level or wealth, they live in an unhappy state. This make the ties break.

Brother Mac gave a heart to heart talk about the experiences of his own life and also from the ones gathered in the last 40 years when he has been working with different schools. He said, most children, particularly from the affluent and rich families, are going haywire because they feel they are neglected by their parents who are living their own lives and basically give a damn about them, even while giving a lot of money as they thank that can compensate. Internally, these pupils are angry, unsecure, hopeless and basically give a damn.. as they feel they have to give that back to all other people in this world. Nowadays parents are treating their children as co-habitants and do not even communicate their love for their children, which is there for sure, he said, but are often not even apparent.

There the problem lies, at least partly. Parents expect that while we are paying so much money, schools should take care of all things, which is impossible in a way, as some basic values are always inculcated by the parents and the family and that cannot be avoided. Previously, there used to be a lot of people in a family in a joint environment, and the children didn't feel lonely or neglected by parents, there were so many people to give her the love, caring and company. Children, particularly the adolescents, go through a difficult period - with all the questions, doubts, insecurity, new knowledge, fast-changing world, sudden changes in their bodies which they don'y know how to handle, unreliable and problematic friendships, and their ideas getting smashed everyday. This is the time when they start getting out of the protections and start getting the first feel of the real world - this is often frightening and they need the love and caring the most. This is the time they get angry, careless, reckless and love-hungry. Parents should understand that money isn't everything, love is - almost.

Parents also have a strange attitude towards anything not directly related to their children's studies, or rather, their chance of scoring in the Joint Entrance exams. They simply shut their eyes to the question of a balanced development and the fact that the concentration, memory, values, direction everything can be sharpened, increasing the overall effectiveness manifold, by some simple training. Even when they are told, they think it is a waste of time or money or both, and do not also try to replace the effect by themselves. But parents cannot know everything and cannot give the training on certain aspects and for that, motivational and behavioral trainers are there. But usually the parents should and must put forth some basic values and morals without which no external training really work. Most importantly, the best training in this regard is to set examples by their own lives