Monday Musings: Let Your Child Dream

It is Monday today and a perfect day to start your week, and reboot your thoughts!

Well, to begin with, this is the time of the year when the board results are out in India and the children make their parents proud. On one side you will hear the media propagating stories of proud parents and excellent achievements of their children and on the other side, you will also hear about failures and disappointments. 

So this morning, when I was reading about the top scorer's performance it made me remember my school days, my parents and my friends' parents, their help and support in fulfilling our dreams and building our careers. I also remember having come across the different set of parents during that time of the year while we students were preparing for our board exams. They were of all types and I am sure they still exist!

- the society fearing parents -'log kya bolenge' types who pressurized their children to study and work harder fearing what will the people say if their child doesn't score well, 

- the over-expecting parents -'beta kaise bhi karke ache marks leke aana', who wanted their kid's name to be on the merit list by any means, 

- the incentive rewarding parents - 'beta scooty gift mein milega' who promised to gift their children anything but he/she should get the highest scores, 

and the last one was and still is probably the most common and irritating types, 

- the comparing parents who compare the neighbor's child's performance with their own 'you know Sharmaji ke bete ko itne marks mile....blah, blah..., 

and there are a few more types that are not even worth mentioning...

but why I write this today is that whatever type of parent you or I may be, we are all bonded and blinded by expectations. We want our child to excel in academics, in sports, in extra-curricular activities and so on...And this pressure building up exercise starts right from the preschooling years. Directly or indirectly we build up the pressure and pass on undesired levels of stress and strain on our kids by our undue expectations. We, as parents, want them all to be achievers. In this process, we try to take a control of their lives from an early age. Thinking that we as parents only want the best for our child, we actually steer them into a direction that he/she may not want to take. 

Think about this today. Is this really what your child wants? Does he/she really wants to excel in academics...maybe he wants to be an artist or may be a sportsperson? Maybe he wants to be something else. Support your child and help them to develop and build their careers. 

Let Your Child Dream

Don't weave your dreams and expectations into your child's future...Let your child dream. Support and guide them in their endeavors. 

Thank you for stopping by and reading this post.

Have a great Monday.

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