IF PARENTS WANT TO GIVE THEIR CHILDREN A GIFT OF THE BEST THINGS WHAT THEY CAN DO IS TO TEACH THEIR CHILDREN TO ACCEPT AND LOVE CHALLENGES, ENJOY HARD WORK AND EFFORT AND KEEP ON LEARNING. The need of the hour is to talk to the children about all the evils that prevail in the society today.
With the recent episode of the exam paper leak, the air has been rife with so many comments allegations counter allegations rebuttals and rejections made by parents, media, authorities, students and teachers. Yes, it is a disastrous incident to have happened in an educational institution and it has had a tremendous negative psychologically impact on the morale of the students, parents, teachers and also on the concerned authorities. There has been a lot of damage done, but a lot of damage control is also under way.
IF YOU CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS THE THINGS YOU LOOK AT CHANGE.
My point of contention is that such episodes of exam leaks, cheating, favoritism, are maladies that have been plaguing us since time immemorial. I faced such issues ,decades ago when I was studying, my children have faced them too, decades later, and now the recent episode has again shocked us all! Our instant reaction to this was quite obvious. Parents and children got very vocal and poured down the streets shouting out their anger. But I strongly refute this unwanted behaviour of showing your anger. If we indulge in a postmortem of what happened, why it happened, how it happened or how it could have been averted, we are giving ourselves the liberty to indulge in something we are constantly advising our children NOT to do–we tell them not to do a postmortem or analyze the exam which they have given—but proceed and prepare for the next exam. This is called ACCEPTING that what has happened or done with, without being stressed or judgmental about it, and moving on to the next thing. We should all cultivate this skill of ACCEPTANCE. It is the need of the hour. The tragedy is that parents do not know how to ‘accept’ and move on, so the children are unaware about it too. That is why they are so stressed about the paper leak incident and have taken to the streets to protest. They have the concurrence of their parents to be so and do so. They feel cheated and feel all their hard work has gone waste. Some suspect that their previous papers must have met the same fate too. All this stress is accumulating in their mind and is creating a havoc there re-inforcing their suspicion, distrust and fear. To make matters worse, the parents are supporting their children in this scenario and making matters worse for them.
The result of all this turmoil is that young vulnerable 15-16 year old children who have malleable, impressionable brains are seething with rage and confusion and are taking to the roads shouting slogans and protesting. My question is –Will this undo what has happened? No it won’t. Rather it will make our children bitter and suspicious of their future dealings with others. We all need to sit back, think and ponder about this and change the way we think so that our children can model our behavior.
TEACH CHILDREN THAT ITS NOT WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU THAT MATTERS–BUT HOW YOU REACT TO IT THAT MATTERS—EPICTETUS
Dr. Sona Kaushal Gupta
Director Dr. Sona Counseling Consultancy and Founder of a NGO PARIFOUNDATION at DehraDun UK India
