While
watching Prime ministers speech yesterday evening I told my husband I
wish you too sold chai , why did you become a doctor , see the prince of
India would have walked half the way of the house to hug you. A chai
wala is so powerful in comparison to the foreign educated opposition
leader.
The daughter asked slowly from behind so mom will you allow me to study a little less from tomorrow, I too will grow up and open a coffee shop, instead of becoming a doctor or an engineer!
She turned towards her dad and winked at him.
I said yes provided you read the newspaper daily , manorama year book every weekend , and finish reading one great biography every month, choice is yours now, either school books or other good books but the reading should go on . my fear is if I let you lose without any conditions , all you will do is watch those silly stupid episodes on Netflix .
More than her scores, we keep an eye on her thought process and try to make an assessment of her core strengths. Academic scores take a back seat when it comes to participation in sports, co-curricular and extracurricular activities. She has her own set of weaknesses and teenage distractions which we together try to help her overcome. Many times it is even difficult to extract what is going on in a teenager’s mind, who is playing the devil and hero in their minds. She doesn’t even give us access we have to do a lot of goading to make her open up and share, above all it isn’t easy for a full time working mother to keep an eye on the child round the clock.
Last couple of months I have been mentally recording the fascinating discussions between parents about their children of all ages at various gatherings …
At one table There is a mother who Often mentions about her colleagues very sarcastically, according to her , her colleagues send their daughter to too many tuitions, in spite of the effort of multiple tuitions and teachers the child did not score any great percentage. She would go on asking every child she meets at the party about how many tuitions they are attending. She would know the exact number of tuitions every child is going to, in their colony. All the statistics are permanently recorded in her brain. And she will not fail to quote them at every possible opportunity. Whoever she meets at the party she will try to bring up the tuitions topic and use the opportunity to share about her child doing it on his own without the help of any tuition teacher and scoring full marks in all subjects except languages.
At the next table a mother is giving sermons that they will not pay any donation /management fees or use any recommendation to get their child into a good school/college , she says our ethics doesn’t permit us to do so, But after the results came out she was the first one to get her child admitted into a college under the management fees category.
At the third table there is another lady who is never happy even when her child scored 100/100. She is always cribbing; it is not out of humility but out of the greed of wanting 101/100
At the next table is a mother of a toddler, who, while checking the diaper of her daughter was sharing her concern if ever her daughter will make it to aiims, given the disturbance and chaos her in laws create in her house.
At the next table is a mother who is feeding her son in a hurry as she does not want her 5 year old son to miss the school next day. she created a situation of panic a scene of something like the child is going to miss IAS entrance tomorrow if he does not go home and sleep before 8 pm . She summoned her husband and warned him to wind it up as fast as possible to go home early.
You meet anyone, go anywhere, relatives, friends neighbours, colleague are all engulfed by the fear of their child not making it to the right college on time. Education is our concern, our weakness and our strength too.
We have to accept the fact that every child will grow in his own timeline. Tuitions or no tuitions it is the child’s effort which will bring him the marks.
Stop using your child’s success to look down upon other children. Every individual will shine and rise at some point in his career. Success does not come to everyone at the same age. Some shine in school , some others in college, few among the rest will open businesses to hire the above school and college toppers , and the left out will outshine everyone in assembly and parliament.
While my mind raced back and forth collecting all the data about mothers and their obsession with marks, the PM was going on and on , on the TV. I shuffled between various channels to listen to expert opinion on his speech , As All of them individually and collectively couldn’t find any fault in his intent and content so they directed their ire and criticism towards the length and duration of his speech.
They found it boring, where as I found it interesting , the rebuttal to the hug, and the lengthy but beautiful chronological explanation on why he cant do the ankh milana , the taunt by quoting Chidambaram, the answer as kaamdaar to the naamdaar bagidar allegation…. He covered everything….though he couldn’nt give enough explanation on the lynching, the raphel deal...
The motion was moved by the prince, the intelligentsia and their allies but it was won by the chai waala, the masses and the ordinary bhaktas aka patriots!
So do not underestimate your child even if he does not come in top 10, do not get carried away by taunting aunties venom spitting dialogues….
If you give him enough space one day he will become capable of hiring all the toppers of his class.
Let us teach the kids that there is a lot of learning outside the school books, and that learning should be a life long process!
The daughter asked slowly from behind so mom will you allow me to study a little less from tomorrow, I too will grow up and open a coffee shop, instead of becoming a doctor or an engineer!
She turned towards her dad and winked at him.
I said yes provided you read the newspaper daily , manorama year book every weekend , and finish reading one great biography every month, choice is yours now, either school books or other good books but the reading should go on . my fear is if I let you lose without any conditions , all you will do is watch those silly stupid episodes on Netflix .
More than her scores, we keep an eye on her thought process and try to make an assessment of her core strengths. Academic scores take a back seat when it comes to participation in sports, co-curricular and extracurricular activities. She has her own set of weaknesses and teenage distractions which we together try to help her overcome. Many times it is even difficult to extract what is going on in a teenager’s mind, who is playing the devil and hero in their minds. She doesn’t even give us access we have to do a lot of goading to make her open up and share, above all it isn’t easy for a full time working mother to keep an eye on the child round the clock.
Last couple of months I have been mentally recording the fascinating discussions between parents about their children of all ages at various gatherings …
At one table There is a mother who Often mentions about her colleagues very sarcastically, according to her , her colleagues send their daughter to too many tuitions, in spite of the effort of multiple tuitions and teachers the child did not score any great percentage. She would go on asking every child she meets at the party about how many tuitions they are attending. She would know the exact number of tuitions every child is going to, in their colony. All the statistics are permanently recorded in her brain. And she will not fail to quote them at every possible opportunity. Whoever she meets at the party she will try to bring up the tuitions topic and use the opportunity to share about her child doing it on his own without the help of any tuition teacher and scoring full marks in all subjects except languages.
At the next table a mother is giving sermons that they will not pay any donation /management fees or use any recommendation to get their child into a good school/college , she says our ethics doesn’t permit us to do so, But after the results came out she was the first one to get her child admitted into a college under the management fees category.
At the third table there is another lady who is never happy even when her child scored 100/100. She is always cribbing; it is not out of humility but out of the greed of wanting 101/100
At the next table is a mother of a toddler, who, while checking the diaper of her daughter was sharing her concern if ever her daughter will make it to aiims, given the disturbance and chaos her in laws create in her house.
At the next table is a mother who is feeding her son in a hurry as she does not want her 5 year old son to miss the school next day. she created a situation of panic a scene of something like the child is going to miss IAS entrance tomorrow if he does not go home and sleep before 8 pm . She summoned her husband and warned him to wind it up as fast as possible to go home early.
You meet anyone, go anywhere, relatives, friends neighbours, colleague are all engulfed by the fear of their child not making it to the right college on time. Education is our concern, our weakness and our strength too.
We have to accept the fact that every child will grow in his own timeline. Tuitions or no tuitions it is the child’s effort which will bring him the marks.
Stop using your child’s success to look down upon other children. Every individual will shine and rise at some point in his career. Success does not come to everyone at the same age. Some shine in school , some others in college, few among the rest will open businesses to hire the above school and college toppers , and the left out will outshine everyone in assembly and parliament.
While my mind raced back and forth collecting all the data about mothers and their obsession with marks, the PM was going on and on , on the TV. I shuffled between various channels to listen to expert opinion on his speech , As All of them individually and collectively couldn’t find any fault in his intent and content so they directed their ire and criticism towards the length and duration of his speech.
They found it boring, where as I found it interesting , the rebuttal to the hug, and the lengthy but beautiful chronological explanation on why he cant do the ankh milana , the taunt by quoting Chidambaram, the answer as kaamdaar to the naamdaar bagidar allegation…. He covered everything….though he couldn’nt give enough explanation on the lynching, the raphel deal...
The motion was moved by the prince, the intelligentsia and their allies but it was won by the chai waala, the masses and the ordinary bhaktas aka patriots!
So do not underestimate your child even if he does not come in top 10, do not get carried away by taunting aunties venom spitting dialogues….
If you give him enough space one day he will become capable of hiring all the toppers of his class.
Let us teach the kids that there is a lot of learning outside the school books, and that learning should be a life long process!
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