A Mid-Air Crisis!

In the midst of reading about the role of parents while their children begin school and listing down all the experiences of mine and the people around me, a question struck me- "If most of us end up growing as normal humans then it clearly indicates that our parents knew the tricks of raising. So what is the problem?"

This question kept occurring in my mind time and again. I began to probe into the relevance of the project. To save myself from getting more disturbed I headed to my guide, Tarun.

On hearing patiently what I had to say, he suggested that I rethink over the issues that a child faces while beginning school. Moreover the overall phase where the child begins to learn by observing, imitating the ways in which people around him communicate, how it picks up vocabulary and even the way it responds and reacts to a situation should be understood.  All these are actually a result of the customs and the behavior passed onto the parents from their respective parents or who ever brought them, especially in a scenario of a joint family. Earlier children were a part of a big family unit comprising of their parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and other siblings. However the system has undergone a change where most children end up staying in a nuclear family consisting of their parents and to some extent their grandparents. And in most of these cases both the parents are working. So once the child is born the so called occupied parents now turn to take care of the children.  But once it is the child’s turn to go to school then the distance becomes too difficult to handle for both the parents as well as children. They are unable to understand how their child is feeling and many a times in absence of grandparents they too make mistakes.

The crux of situation lies in finding situations where parents also end up making mistakes and approaches to solve it. He also advised me to look at projects from around the world which involve such issues and how these issues have been dealt with.

So I have decided to rethink over the project. Meet people who deal closely with both children and parents and figure out the actual scenario. Give it some more thought and not get troubled by the questions that came in my mind.