WHY INSECURE?

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.