It has been a pleasure to see my daughter, Dhriti, grow up and I have learnt more from her growing up than she would have from me. She is 4 years and 11 months old now and just about to complete her Kindergarten education and move into primary school. Wow! That feels good!
Dhriti has been going to school ever since she turned two, school in the morning and day care by afternoon. She made some friends, learnt to speak and is learning the rights and wrongs. (Really??!!)
I have a few friends, colleagues, acquaintances etc who also have kids and we end up discussing about our kids and kids in general. Strangely what we discussed 2 to 3 years ago, when our kids were just about 1.5 to 3 years old, and what we discuss now are extremely different. Earlier discussions were about happy things, which would make us smile a lot and de-stress but now it is all about schools, homework, pressure, fees, donations etc….depressing!
Now Iam beginning to wonder about the corporatized lifestyles the young parents of today have. Now it has given rise to corporate kids and corporate upbringing.
I realized that the ‘Parenting process’ has been outsourced - PPO.
Parameters outsourced: Education – Academic and Social,
Health – Food, medical facilities etc
Entertainment – School, computers, Videogames etc
When the kid turns 2years (I know of people who put their kids in day care right from when the kid turned 6months) the pressures of managing the kid starts creeping into the conversations of the parents. Frantic searches are made to find schools/day cares that have good hygiene, that serve food, feed the kids on time, teach them the alphabet and more, give medication on time if child is unwell, teach the kids good manners/values etc.
Then it is time for primary education, where the parents look for a school that could again give good food, great (ask them to define great, they wouldn’t be able to) academic education, teach arts, crafts, music, focus on sports, have medical facilities, pick up and drop facilities etc. The kids must leave home in uniform, grow up with their classmates and teachers and return home to bosses (parents) who would just understand what the child has done, through report cards/written reports and a chat for 15minutes with the child.
Tremendous stress, pressure and expectations now start building up on the child; competition, loosely defined excellence in academics and/or sports, excellent behavior etc becomes the KRAs for the child. Summer holidays are not for relaxation or for exploration and learning from nature, because there are summer-camps to teach the kids what they have to do with their lives. Again holidays and vacations together is also time-bound and agenda bound. No freedom for the child even on such outings!
The child then grows up to face the challenges of board exams, common entrance exams, college education etc.
The schools, right from kindergarten to college charge an arm and a leg. They have started advertising about the facilities, international standards, teacher - to - student ratio, their tie-ups etc to attract the (corporate) parents. The parents fall prey to this due to peer pressure and also perceived work/relationship pressure, both of which are non-existent to a great extent.
Come to think of it, any product or service is not created by an organization; it is created by the customer’s expectations.
The child of today is growing up like a corporate kid, who spends most of the time outside of home with unreal expectations. Saturdays and Sundays have special events, parents must participate too, and expensive hobbies, expensive excursions etc are the order of the day. Money shouldn’t matter you say, I agree, but how is the child growing up? He/she only gets to be monitored by parents at home, always hears a ‘No’ from either or both of the parents, does not see happy parents, grows up with external values (good or bad is a bad decision or judgment to make now), is at home only for dinner and sleep.
The parents are always busy, making even the ‘dinner together’ look like a chore, post which they could be back on their lap tops. On a day off the parents are too tired and often complain saying ‘Iam tired, don’t disturb’, ‘I can’t come out as Iam busy or Iam not well’. Even worse, the parents fight among each other trying to divide the work of taking care of the kid, making it even more corporate (stupid). And typically on weekends it is 'ordering out' for dinner as they are too tired to cook a meal and there is too much traffic to move out. The child eats 90% of the major meals outside. The child grows up to be one of you and the blame game continues with each parent telling the other what they did wrong. Basic values are missing; the earning couples/parents don’t have a goal, a real goal (this statement holds good to only people I know and have interacted with. It is not generally judgmental. The other readers may agree voluntarily ;))! They just keep going to their offices as if they were destined to or programmed to do only that.
The worst of all is that at the end of the day the kids keep hearing complaints about how they do not have manners, are indisciplined and why they don’t have any goals in life, why they don't get good marks or ranks in classes (while some of their friends can), they are supposed to be aggressive to be on their own and that their parents can’t feed them forever etc etc.
The parents are responsible for Comparisons, (bad) demonstration of values, Judgmental talks, and lack of self discipline. What we see in the child is exactly what we are like. Why is it that we are all talk and no action? Why blame the child and burden them with unrealistic expectations!? We got to own this up.
Any child’s sense of identity, till he/she becomes a teen, is the parents. The child looks up to them and their identity is what their parents are. During the teens, the child’s identity is determined by the friends they keep and thus they have a strong group identity. Once they complete the formal education, when the real education in life begins they form their own identity.
There are various influences that go into creating a personality, namely, parents, teachers, locality, social circle, region, nation and religion.
All I have to say is that we should start being more responsible toward building a home of love and values. Our jobs are Temporary! Our influence on a growing child is Permanent!
It’s not what you leave to your children; it’s what you leave in your children.
We cannot outsource everything! That’s nature!
