A 12-year-old boy, who went missing on Thursday from outside his school, kept the south district police on its toes throughout the afternoon. The boy had got scared after accidentally breaking the laptop of a fellow student. His friends said he would have to shell out a hefty amount. Scared, he fled the school and roamed around. He sat in parks, cried and wondered how to make up for the loss. Fortunately he was found and is back home.
When I hear news like this, I feel very
confused. Ofcourse the first instinct is to blame the school for such irresponsibility
like all my friends are discussing on social chat programs. But then I do have
a tiny feeling which says that why the children in this generation are so
insecure. Especially when we are giving them such a protected upbringing. - Only
goods and no bads. Should we not feel more confident because we are doing
everything that we can to shelter them.
I think all of us take so much pride in
knowing that our child has a mind of its own and if objected once, he gets
upset. We….. By we, I also mean myself…. do not shout at our kids every now and then so
that he or she doesn’t feel angry or depressed given the circumstances of the outside world.
However, still a glimpse of the newspapers itself
is scary these days. I don’t know if these disapproving and harmful things have
gone up or our media has become more efficient in reporting them. But yes it is
depressing and miserable.
And here I am contemplating again what’s best
for my baby. Sending him out or no? I have no clue how to handle this. Of
course I want to send them to school, then college and then work but then what
about their safety. Why am I so under-confident and anxious?
I feel there are two ways to go about it.
One is to coach them for every unpredictable
situation; Safguard every inch of a milieu they walk to ensure nothing is
unpleasant for them; which I bet is impossible .Being a parent I so fancy it
was a fairy tale’s world.
The
other is to groom them to handle. By this I mean, we need to make them alert
and not scared of the wrong deeds; we need to make them responsible to do
things carefully and not burdened ; we need to teach them to be a good listener
while they learn to raise their viewpoints;
and most importantly, we need to make them more TOLERANT not to the
wrongs but to the difficulties. I think that will help them build their mental
strength to handle the situation better and act in the most rational and watchful
way.
Its quite thorny and easier said than done.
But quite honestly, don’t you agree that even after taking endless number of
assessments in school and college for which we were all so prepared; there are
bigger exams in life which we have faced. And surpassed them much more bravely
and boldly; And nobody in fact made us ready or gave us any indication for the
same.
We simply learnt to grow out of that condition
and emerged; moving on much stronger, further positive and particularly SECURE.
So, lets all try to make our children more Self-assured
than actually wrap them in a cotton wool.
