Carbon Copies....

Carbon Copies or Xerox Copies- our saviors during the school and college times where the machine would just reproduce how many ever copies of the original material. Indeed a wonderful invention which has made life of so many individuals so much easier.

But the mistake we often commit is- expecting machines to behave like human beings and human beings to behave like machines! We expect the xerox machine to understand our choice of copy each time we need a photocopy and expect our fellow human beings to behave in a particular fixed format each time we interact! That is still not a big mistake. The bigger mistake is expecting one copy to be identical to the other! How is that possible? This is one mistake which i have been trying very hard to get rid of, from the heads of parents of my beloved students.

Kids, from what i have witnessed and experienced in the last decade are all very special and unique. Each child interprets the projectile of the shuttle differently and each child questions the physics behind various drills in his/her own unique and interesting manner on the other hand, some just choose to follow what is being told and not question at all. The issue here is when parents enter the zone of children where they force the children to question what they probably would have questioned if the parents were the students or expect their wards to play or interpret the game like how their neighbor's son does!

Not many parents seem to be satisfied with what their kids are and how their kids want to be. Also, it is important to notice that the kids of the unhappy parents are surely not in the wrong path. How terribly wrong can a 5 or a 6 year could possibly be! In fact they most often would have chosen a very simple and non complicated path and that seems to be the biggest worry for the parents! Which is -    "Why is my son not asking any questions??!!"

As a coach i encounter most of the parents asking me one common question- " When will my child start playing like her?" (Pointing at a kid who would be playing marginally better than their child)
Well educated and highly qualified parents most often forget that their child is special and born with different competencies which probably no other kid has! But alas, their kid is not like the kid standing beside in the school prayer assembly, how unfortunate...

Hats off to those parents who let their kids be the way they want to be and in the process retain the originality. And very unfortunate of those parents who expect their kids to be some other kid and spend their entire lives only telling them "look at her!"  , "look at him!!"  and directly or indirectly asking their child to be like the above him or her.

Comparison leaves a scar forever in the child's mind and drastically pulls the self confidence and morale of the child and end up spending the rest of their lives only to please their parents. This condition is mostly applicable to all the kids who are normal children, who largely outnumber the super talented kids.

--- Set personal and societal goals in a child's mind but not a goal which confines to only getting better grades than your cousin's son.

--- Inculcate habits which will enable your kid to lead a healthy life and not because your neighbor's daughter has the same habits.

--- Teach qualities which will help your child grow mentally but not qualities which will prove your child's classmate wrong.

Well the list can go on...

Let your child be normal and happy and do not expect them to be extraordinary and most importantly "carbon copies"

There is good old saying which says: "Do not limit your child to own learning, for the child was born at another time"

Prepare not Pamper...

It is an era of needs and possibilities. Needs which are no longer for mere survival but more of a status. A need for an I phone for example, is what a need is today. A child today with great pride shows his Iphone to his peers but would not even like to disclose the existence of a phone with him if it is not a high end one.

That being said, what I today witness around me is- Parents seem to have learnt a new way of expressing their care and affection! It is by pampering their kids with the latest gadgets,latest watches and the list goes on. And the process is like the theory of Newton's cradle where, when one does the rest automatically have to do it. It has become a norm. A mother meets her friend and tells her what she picked for her child and the friend immediately picks up the same or something better. Setting benchmarks for the monetary value of the gift is what is noticed in the entire mankind hamlet!

In the interactions that i have had with few latecomers to the coaching class who are not deliberate late comers but legitimate latecomers, what i learnt was most of the children are either dropped by the parents or grandparents or a parent from a common locality takes turns in dropping and picking up the children in their respective cars. And the distance wouldn't even be greater than a kilometer!
I asked them - " Where is your bicycle? Can't you just paddle down the road?" and believe me all the children had a common answer, that is - " My parents do not allow me to"

I understand the safety related concerns with the roads not being as safe as it used to be before, however i still feel a kilometer of cycling surely isn't going to either add or subtract to the associated risks. In turn, a child being taught how to independently carry out their duties as children will have long term positive repercussion on their abilities. Because of the above mentioned like pampers, children get habituated to such favors done and end up being highly dependent, whether on parents or any other equivalent counterparts such as a cab,or any other relative or acquaintances staying close by.

Many such examples i encounter each day. Some to do with drops to schools or tuition centers, some to do with travelling alone in a train or flight and some to do with even going to a local barber!

Dear parents, prepare your children with certain signs about how to judge a good guy and a bad guy with various generic circumstances you have come across in your lives.

Prepare them by inculcating the habit of reading newspapers to make them understand what is currently going on in their city/ state if not the nation or the world.

Pit them in artificial situations of bargain in a shop and instead of encouraging Eshopping, send your kids to a local store nearby and check if they got back with the right change and product.

Ask them to take a local bus in the city instead of a prepaid Uber cab.

Send your son/daughter for a blood donation they turn 18 and a voter ID card instead of buying them a luxury car.

Let your children score low marks once in while in their exams. So that they understand the value of good marks and also can differentiate between the efforts being put for a good and a bad score. Let some self introspection kick off early in their lives. Today's children are smart enough to know what led to the bad and what can lead to good.

Do not cushion or insulate your children from the failures you had in your lives but let them fail and fall. They may loose some marks in the exam but the life gains that they are going to achieve, i assure will surely be greater than the marks that the missed out on.

Do not pamper your children with money but with loads and loads of knowledge and circumstances that they can come across before they become adults. A well learnt and an aware child will surely be a greater asset to your family and finally for the society that we live in.

I shall finally leave this topic(for now) with what once Aristotle the great said:The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The Today's Future

What is today's future? Yes you are right it is tomorrow.

How is today's future? Well, no one knows except for your gut feeling which again can or cannot be right or wrong.

Who is today's future? Now that is something which we all must know and realize that - it is the children of today!!

In the interactions that i have been having with many parents as a coach for the last couple of years, I have more or less arrived to a conclusion that every parent wants his/her child to be and do what they wanted to, not knowing today's child's level of intelligence and interpretation of reality around them. Thanks to the technology explosion and also the easy access to various wanted and unwanted websites have given today's child a free hand to what he or she wants and aspires to become. And also thanks to the parent's failures and inevitable situations of not achieving certain dreams and goals which they had personally set as a child which has made them live their dream through their children not knowing that genetics doesn't reproduce a replica of what they are or they were!

In this blog I shall be pointing out various situations and cases that i come across as a coach who interacts with a reasonably good number of parents on a day to day basis where some come up with complaints and some come with a great sense of pride and also some confused wondering what to feel, which is a clear indication of lack of brain mapping done by them as they themselves haven't figured out yet as to what they want to be!

We as not literate but educated adults, must understand today's child which is so unlike the child that we were - be it his/her feelings, aspirations or interests!

Looking forward to a much better psychological environment for the today's child.