Kid’s Today
Complaining about kids and their behaviour, especially those about pre-teens and teens, seem to be the right of every senior generation. The tradition might have sparked off even before the first fire was lit. Nonetheless, dissatisfaction with the perceived precociousness and attitude of children is a fact of life, and there is nothing striking about it.
However what has changed is the yardstick of what constitutes unacceptable behaviour in children today.
What it used to be….
Previously an average school goer used to be scolded if she spent too much time day dreaming or playing outdoors rather than studying; that was the extent of waywardness, maybe a few cases of cheating in exams, hiding exam papers could also be added to the repertoire of mischief. But overall, the level of misbehaviour was limited to things strictly age appropriate for them. But all that seems to be changing at break neck speed today.
What it is becoming today…..
About 2 years ago, every newspaper in the land was carrying the news of a child accidently shooting his friend with his parent’s gun, and even more recently, a teenager was indicted as the most heinous rapist in a gang-rape case, which shook the nation. Talk shows and magazines are usually replete with cases and accounts of troubled children while depression is now commonly found among kids who are yet to turn 11yrs of age. The list is becoming endless, and the only response that society affords to this situation usually involves blaming technology and/or media and finally claiming that they do not know where they went wrong.
Who is responsible?
But technology and media don’t just surreptitiously make their way into the lives of children, no matter how increasingly ubiquitous they are becoming today. Rather it is the guardians, those in charge of the welfare and development of the young, who gift children smartphones, tabs etc. for various reasons including making up for the lack of quality time spent together, thereby exposing the still impressionable pre-teen/teen minds, to the unrestrained world of technology, internet and media. Thus, at least in the initial days, the degree of exposure children have to these facilities, are completely within the control of their guardians.
In fact today the whole environment is geared towards treating children as adults, constantly pressuring them to outperform each other in every field, whether academics or extra-curricular. Of course children of all generations have had their initiation into the competitive world from a tender age, but today the nature and scope of their playing fields have changed drastically.
Presently we have fifth graders being told to give up playing outdoors because they have to study so that one day they can get into the IITs, we have tenth graders being shamed into depression upon scoring a 95 and not a 98 in their board exams, and then the whole new practice of slut shaming teenagers. These kinds of pressures and competition are not easily manageable for adults even, yet society expects children to master them. The practice of signing children up for reality shows and talent hunts is the latest in thing; in these programs children are usually cut off from the rest of the world, kept in unnatural conditions of tremendous competition and pressure, they don’t get to see their friends for months on end, attend school or be normal kids. However, in the end only one child takes it all, while the others, still too young to take such setbacks in their stride and move on, become vulnerable to depression and other psychiatric problems.
Other disturbing developments of today include the shows and accounts of child models aged below ten and pageant babies who even though too young to sit on regular chairs, are spray tanned and airbrushed on a regular basis. In fact most of our entertainment channels have programmes running with pre-teens performing as their protagonists on a daily basis; and while we are not pushing children out into the rat race there are always cases of judging them according to adult standards of what is considered sexual. For e.g. last month a student of 8th standard was turned away from a movie hall in Kolkata, for wearing a midi and blamed for being “provocatively dressed”, and half the world around, the teenage daughters of the US president, were publicly slut shamed for the length of their skirts.
It is such ridiculous behaviour on the part of the individual guardians and society as a whole which push children out of their innocence, their precocious behaviour is aided further by our improper treatment of them. So the next time we as adults wonder what is wrong with kids today, a bit of introspection might yield some very relevant answers.
