Parents Need a Value-based Living To Solve Their Children’s Problems

Come March, and I spend a lot of thought on issues related to our children’s year-end academic assessments. In the several years that I have been a children’s coach, I have seen the exam mindset of both students and their parents undergo a significant change. More and more parents are now accepting the idea of academic grades not being the sole factor that determines their children’s future. While the shift in attitude is welcome, there is still a lot of grey area that neither the students nor their parents have been able to clear.

For starters, although parents have recognized that their children need to learn life skills in equal measure to be successful people, they are still unable to let go off their penchant for grades. It hugely matters in their grand scheme of things, and as a result, exam pressure is now more masked and covert than it was before.

Children are made to believe that success is a lot more than coming out tops in academics, but at the same time, they are given a thorough dressing down should the latter fail to meet their parents’ expectations. Yes, let us admit, a chunk of us still has mighty expectations from our wards, no matter how vehemently we deny it.

Of course, parents have altered their views to some extent, but I am still concerned that they are unable to chart a clear course for their children outside of their academics. A number of parents who aver that they have recalibrated their beliefs about exams and have now begun to advise their children to ‘look beyond exams’ are themselves not clear about what the phrase means.

We all concede that our children need more than grades to survive the challenges of a new world, but are we even clear on what those tools for survival might be? If yes, are we also capable of teaching them how to manoeuver through the maze of difficulties?

A youngster, who is a sophomore at the university, recently made a shocking revelation to me about a number of students in his campus inflicting self-harm owing to demands of various kinds on them. A majority of them find self-harm as a means to release their stress, I was told. What appalled me was the fact that parents were often oblivious to these acts of their children who were away in universities and hostels. The pandemic and the physical distance have only exacerbated the situation.

The scene is not very different in families that stay together either. Parents are still unaware for the most part of their children’s struggles. From academic anxieties to peer and parental pressures, our children are grappling with a lot more than we might be aware of. It might be easy for us to label them as ‘unmanageable and incomprehensible’, but what we fail to understand as parents and guardians is that we still cannot shrug our responsibilities by pleading helplessness. Neither can we be overly imperious in the way we tackle them. A happy balance is not easy to achieve, and we still need to labour a lot to get our young ones off the ground and hoist them into a safe future. Needless to say, our task only got tougher with the nasty influences that they come under inadvertently.

The only way we can resolve this issue is by first deciding what we want for our children. I must stress, for them, and not from them. Second, by considering what our role in determining their goals for life should be. They may be young and immature, but it doesn’t mean we decide their goals and design their future. Instead, we would do better by helping them set their objectives for themselves, for which again, we need to be clear about our own priorities in life.

When these two things are ascertained, guide them down the set path with sagacity and patience. Our lessons to them can come only from a source of value-based living that we ourselves practice. It is a sad truth that many of us are clueless about what we need and want in life, and some soul-searching and self-analysis will go a long way in finding solutions to our children’s new age woes.

Are We Having the Correct Conversations About Women's Empowerment?

The upcoming International Women’s Day recently got me in a bind after I impulsively agreed for a virtual discussion online.

Questions like –

who is a modern woman, how do you think women can be empowered etc. are not easy for me to answer. More so because my views are slightly in variance with the popular views one often hears and I refrain from expressing them openly to avoid conflict.

Before I am condemned as insensitive and an ignoramus, I want to clarify that I am all for the idea of women having a happy, fulfilling, and peaceful life. But what confuses me are the jargons. Liberation, empowerment, feminism, freedom, breaking the glass ceilings, equality etc.

They are amorphous concepts in my head; mere platitudes than anything substantial. I know that millions of women go through unmentionable torture in the world day after day, and it pains me to no end, but ask me how I can help them, and I haven’t the slightest idea except by saying an ardent prayer. Allow me my honesty. I don’t want to pretend to be a warrior who can slay all the demons in one murderous stroke.

We live in a world where to be heard and seen is more important than to be found acting effectively. We say things that we don’t often mean, project ourselves as something that we just aren’t, we posture and please the galleries, because not doing so will make us irrelevant to the times.

So, does it mean I don’t endorse the empowerment slogan?

No, not by far.

I strongly feel that every human being should be empowered to lead a good life. But I have questions about the definitions of terms that claim to manifest happiness for women. Freedom. Emancipation. Empowerment.

Pray tell, what are they?

Audacity and belligerence? Throwing caution to the winds?

Being an unbridled badass? Leading a life with gay abandon?

Creating new female avatars that challenge biological patterns and laws of natural selection?

Defying everything that our past has prescribed?

This is the refrain I hear everywhere: women must be allowed to do what they please without fetters of any sort. That alone is freedom.

It is here that I beg to differ.

Freedom is not doing things as one pleases and then claiming immunity from harm. Freedom is, not having the desire to do things that might bring one to harm.

Freedom is not being obsessed about tilting the apple cart. Freedom is being at peace with oneself, in the circumstances that naturally exist.

Empowerment isn’t wanting to invade male bastions. Empowerment is to have the capacity to make informed decisions about one’s life and the courage to act upon it. It is not calling for men to supplicate to women’s demands; it is about each woman finding the strength to take stock of her life and knowing what will make them better physically, mentally, and spiritually.

A woman who is abused must find the nerve to walk out of the relationship and build a life of her own. A woman who is consistently exploited must resolve and do what it takes to get out of the diabolical settings and charter a new course. This, to me, is power.

Empowerment, to me, is not fancy grandstanding and glorification of womens’ virtues. It is making each woman realize that her life is in her hands and that she has the power to decide what is good for her. And no one other than the individual woman has the right to decide what is good for her.

No one outside of her can empower her. At best, what the external influences can do it to make her aware that her freedom rests within her and all she needs to do is draw upon her innate resources. She must determine what is important for her and what kind of life she wants to lead and eliminate all forces that stop her from leading that life.

The sooner we steer our debates and discussions around this fact and don’t limit them to who should do the dishes and the diapers, or go ballistic about clothes, make-up, night-outs, promiscuousness and brazen self-importance, the better life will be for millions of women who silently nurse their bruises in their own shadows. What these women need is a prop to leap out of their pits and not nauseating propaganda.

The Mamma Moment

I watch her intently as she bent over her math worksheet and solved the questions with unmatched surety. She has always been strong in the subject. Number crunching comes to her naturally and she has a unique pow

er to grasp the concepts faster than other children of her age. She is sharp beyond her 10 years, and it makes me imagine a future where she would tower over her peers making me puff up silly with pride.

No, I don’t dream on her behalf, nor do I have incognito aspirations for her, but I know that she would accomplish great things in life. My pride would only be a natural fall out of it. A mother’s gratification of having birthed a worthy offspring.

They say girls see a growth spurt as soon as they are ten, and I am beginning to see the changes in her. Her jeans now stand a few inches above the ankles. She has become mellow in her manners and there is a fresh dignity showing up in her conduct. I sincerely wish that she doesn’t imbibe my qualities and grows into ‘woman of substance’ as they say.

How will a timid woman who took years to find her voice teach temerity to her child? How will she train her to speak up and be counted in a world that walks rough-shod on the meek? This is a crucial time in her life and mine: a time to get her acquainted with the wondrous aspects of a woman’s identity, of letting her know truths from lies, of preparing her for the challenges that lay ahead and to set her up to be the woman I never could be, till the day I walked out of our home, saying ‘enough is enough’ with a month-old baby in hands.

It was an act of desperation than courage. It was a step taken not for my sake, but for my child’s. I couldn’t picture her growing up in a house where her father threw the mother to the wall, and her mother, battered and bruised, could do nothing but helplessly bawl. She couldn’t grow up witnessing the ugliness of his misogyny and the whimpers of my surrender.

10 years is a long time to endure violence of that kind. But I stayed, refusing to break away. Not for reasons of love. Nor obligation to parents. The world outside was too intimidating for me to embrace. Yes, more intimidating than the glowering eyes of a drunken man who thought nothing of reducing her to an ever-relenting ragdoll. There is a comfort in suffering the familiar than battling the unknown. So, I stayed on, and I am glad I did, else, this child would not have been mine. But for her, I would have wallowed in self-pity and atrophied with time.

Every time I become remorseful of my vulnerabilities in the past, I look at her and take comfort in the thought that it was this blessing waiting to happen that kept me from walking out. There was a purpose behind all the tears spent in the bathroom after a spate of abuse and forceful invasion. Behind the failed attempt to kill myself. There was a reason, after all. It makes me believe that all human sufferings perhaps have a just end that our eyes fogged by tears fail to see.

‘Mamma, I am done. Check please,’ she says. There was no need to check. She aced her math,yet, to her, the exercise was complete only when I checked and put a smiley mark on the paper, added with an appreciative remark.

‘Sit properly in the chair, Amita,’ I say, taking the notebook from her. She was perched on the edge, with one leg stretched for a firm footing lest she slide off the seat. I see that her body rested on that out-stretched leg than on her buttocks.

‘I am sitting properly, mamma.’

‘No, look how you are sitting lopsided, on the edge of the seat.’

‘Mamma, it is comfortable. This is how I sit even in school.’

I raise an inquiring brow. ‘But why?’

It takes a few more persistent ‘whys’ from me and casual dismissals from her for the truth to reveal.

Anirudh is a big boy in the class, taller than any other and a bully, she says. He sits next to her and their desks almost breathe into each other’s necks.

I listen to her as she explains the classroom scenario.

‘His bag and books spill over to my desk and there is little room on it for me. So, I put my books to one end so that my books don’t get into his bag by mistake.’

I am not pleased to hear her narrative. To know that the inequalities of the world is beginning to afflict her at the tender age of ten.

‘Why didn’t you ask him to remove his books from your desk?’

‘He is a bully, mamma, and I don’t want to fight with him and annoy him. I am happy that Corona struck. I don’t have to sit next to him for some time now.’

I throw my head back and take a deep breath. ‘Another mamma moment in your life, lady,’ I tell myself. I put the worksheet down, take her hands in mine and ask, ‘Have you ever objected to what he is doing?’

‘Not really. But this isn’t a big issue, mamma. I can adjust.’

‘I am sure you can adjust, but you needn’t.’

‘I don’t want to fight with him,’ she said, sliding back to the edge, as if that was where her comfort zone was. She couldn’t sit in the middle of the chair anymore.

‘Who said you have to fight? You can tell him that he is invading your space.’

‘I did, once. And he asked me to adjust,’ she said matter-of-factly.

Ah, that corny word that brought doom to jillions of women around the world! How early and easily has it found a place in my child’s life!

Adjust.

I still feel the phantom pain of carrying that millstone around the neck for years together. At what point in time the suffering became tolerance which then turned into adjustment, I don’t know. When I stopped distinguishing pain from numbness, I don't remember. But I am sure of one thing. I will not let my child toe the line.

‘Do you think it is OK?’ I ask.

‘Of course, mamma. I am OK with it. As I said, I don’t want to fight. You have told me that fighting is not good.’

‘Yes, I have. And I am not asking you to fight now either. But you must be firm. Polite, but firm. Tell him you are adjusting a little, and he should adjust a little too and remove his books from your desk. It’s only fair. You must speak up, Amita.’

‘Mamma, my ME teacher said we must not be arrogant.’

‘Who said you have to be arrogant? I am asking you to be assertive, not arrogant. If you don’t claim what is rightfully yours, the world will deprive you of all your prized possessions. Including your self-respect and dignity. Do you want that to happen?’

‘No.’ She shakes her head. She isn’t convinced; there is a little bit of the docile me in her that still considers ‘adjusting’ a virtue. Some elements of character in the DNA cannot be erased completely. But I want to tune and tailor them to make an armour for her.

Amita will not be a prototype of her mother. She will know the difference between adjustment and suffering. She will know when to say, ‘enough is enough’. She will learn to say it firmly and claim her place in the world. To that end, I will strive.

‘Promise me that when you go back to school, you will tell Anirudh that he has to be fair and give you space.’

‘Yes, mamma, but what if he doesn’t?’

‘If he doesn’t, I will tell you what to do next. But you first say it, boldly, and then we will see.’

She nods, anxiety still lurking in her eyes. I know she will live in dread of her return to school. I must allay her fears and substitute it with courage. What I didn’t do, I must teach her to do. It is my only aspiration I will impose on her.

I draw a smiley in her worksheet and write, ‘well done!’

The growth spurt in my life as a single parent has just begun.

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