Keeping your expectations real

Welcoming a baby in a family is like taking delivery of a jet plane without knowing how to fly the aircraft. Parents have the responsibility to determine the future of the new born. Parents, for better or worse, don’t have the choice of picking up a genius child or a child with average intelligence.

But when we do have a child, we can’t predict what he or she is going to be. Every parent wants the child to excel in all activities and they work hard to realise this dream. Every parent raising more than one child is aware of striking differences between offspring. Therefore, we need to accept the truth that each child is unique.

In the modern world, opportunities are many, and new-age parents want to create exclusive opportunities for their children. Every parent puts some thought and research into what kind of environment their child should have. Nowadays, most parents chant the mantra, “I want a school to have all round development for my child and the education imparted should be application-oriented. No spoon feeding or mugging up for my child.”
While it sounds great at the outset, parents should realise that each child is unique and everyone cannot achieve the same goal. Children get enrolled in schools when they are barely three years old. The initial years are important as the child enters a new environment, acquires social skills and develops linguistic ability. So there should be no hurry for the all-round development and application oriented education in the formative years of education.

To begin with, comprehension abilities should be given importance, by narrating stories and encouraging the child to ask questions about the things or events that they come across in day-to-day life. Memorising a poem or a song is important; the exercise of memorising will enhance the memory. Parents think children need not memorise, they should understand the concepts and apply it towards practical work. But one should know that memorising is a very good exercise that enhances the skill to remember.

Parents dream to send their children to the exclusive schools, where there is a swimming pool, horse riding lessons, where they imagine children will bloom into geniuses. But the fact is that the best school has to be chosen based on certain criteria like commute distance and time, basic amnesties like good class rooms, playground, teachers with good communication skills and most importantly, schools not labelling the children. Labelling children creates mental blocks to learning.

Most parents want to realise their dreams through the children. But imagine a world full of only technocrats, scientists and doctors. So the society needs all kinds of talents. Allow the children to learn at their pace. Encourage them to learn more, let them enjoy their childhood.

I remember a child saying, “My father says he loves to go to work, he enjoys his work in the office and he gets paid for that. Neither do I enjoy my school nor do I get paid for my hardship at school. How I wish I would be an adult soon so that I can have fun and get paid”

To avoid such situations, parents should be responsible for the ongoing skill development during the formative years. There should be adequate practice on math facts, letter formation, basic vocabulary and spellings. It is a well-known fact that Albert Einstein was a dyslexic when he was young. That doesn’t lead to the conclusion that every dyslexic child will be a great scientist. So parents should not decide the schools for the children merely on the basis of the success stories of a few kids from a particular school.

No uniform human “product” will ever flow from the pipelines of education. We as parents should understand that schools will produce a diversified assortment of human beings. The children should be exposed to the widest possible gamut of knowledge. And the children should be facilitated to find their strength and try to excel. Children will bloom on their own and have their wings to fly to their ambitious destinations. Let us build a strong foundation of facilitation.