When good intentions may backfire…

When it comes to education, parents do the moon shot! They will do anything at all to put them in desirable schools, to endow them with the winning advantage that is so important in life today. Most homes have single children, where children are pampered and their every wish granted ( even outrageous ones ), without so much as a whimper of protest. Children have their own well-appointed rooms, in which they can grow & flourish.

Parents don’t pressure children to study and even schools are obliging enough to not award marks so that children may feel pressured!

All these things that parents do however produce children who are divorced from the harsh realities of life. Children complain about the heat, dust, dirty environment etc. and avoid crowded buses, stay in ac rooms and stay confined in their bubbles.

When later in life they graduate and start working, they experience real world for the first time. They find people are not that accommodating like they had experienced at home. They feel acute stress, have relationship issues, find it difficult to work under pressure, find their bosses toxic as they expect too much within tight deadlines etc.

Then, they get married and find their spouse exactly like them – maladjusted! The spouse comes from another household where s/he had been pampered and living within a sanitised space. Marriages these days are falling apart more frequently as it is between two people who have not learned the basics social engagement and are not schooled on nuances of adjusting & reconciling.

We are producing maladjusted youngsters who are fragile at the core. That is ironical as parents wanted to produce winners and have done all it takes from their side to confer their children a winning advantage.

A butterfly emerging out of the pupa struggles for several minutes. During that time, a fluid flows through the wing formations. If the pupa is released by cutting it open so that it can emerge without a struggle, it will be deformed as the wings would not have not properly developed. It is hence best for a butterfly to go through the process and emerge into a healthy butterfly, that can fly, as it should.

As parents, are we cutting open the pupa for our children in a bit to avoid their struggle? And thereby crippling them?