It is that time of the year when many parents around the country will be assessing their child’s worth based on a percentile. Welcome to the examinations season!
Glory vs. Guilt
For a small percentage of meritorious children, this will be a time for basking in glory – celebrations, gifts, and a shower of affection.
For some blessed children, notwithstanding what appears on the marks sheet, their caring parents are with them at these trying times.
However, for a significant population in this country, this period is ridden with an epidemic of anxiety, unhealthy comparisons, peer pressure, guilt, and repeated hammer blows to the self-esteem.
For an unfortunate few children, the devastation leads them away from home or towards suicide.
The role of parents
I am not sure if parents can be blamed for letting these pressures build. Instead of seeing parents as perpetrators, they could also be seen as victims of a grand system that works like a factory churning out seemingly market-ready products on an archaic and groaning assembly line. Parents are doing all this for the child’s ‘good’, so it is argued. After all, a brilliant academic performance guarantees a bright future by way of admission into a top-notch institution leading to an attractive placement, lucrative jobs, big money, envious marriage alliances and finally, a ‘good’ life. All in all, a lifelong telescopic assembly line!
In addition, parents may have some unfinished business such as their own unachieved ambition, broken dreams or catching up with a sibling that demands deliverance through the child. In most cases, parents do not want to stick out like a sore thumb – ‘what will others say?’ is the refrain. Therefore, there is untold pressure to conform, to sign on the dotted line. In many accomplished families, unsuspecting children and their inseparable credentials end up serving as parents’ status symbols, much like a Ming vase or an Arab steed.
The child’s stake in his future
In all of this, the central character is often forgotten. Consequently, it is not considered important to listen to what the child wants or likes – that each child is unique, a bundle of strengths, talents, and interests. There are several tools available today to gauge a child’s strengths and talents early on in life and use them to make an informed decision. However, they have not appealed to the man (and the woman) on the street and are not popular.
Let us have faith in the inherent talents of our children, nurture them in an environment of freedom while offering them guidance, respect their opinions and inject hope and optimism into their lives.
With all of this, they will head the right way – ‘their’ way.
To imagine that a percentile can summarize a child’s worth is absurd.
Anyway, as we observe all around us, life’s trajectories are not a function of what appears on the mark sheet.
My Quote #70 says it all, ‘Making your mark in life is seldom linked to your mark sheet.’
Our children are priceless. Let us treat them that way.
I conduct Life Coaching. As a part of this offering, I have been coaching several parents to look at the Big Picture. Academics is not the only thing that matters. Could they drop the magnifying glass and pick up the telescope instead? Developing a bigger perspective along with the child certainly helps.
Interested in signing me up for Life Coaching? I am just an email away.
Write to me at [email protected].
