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Thursday 28 April 2016

End of innocence



My neighbors’ son, Sanu, is just three years old; he goes to play school. Three days vacation is guaranteed every week. People at home do not emphasis much anyway because the play school doesn’t teach kids much; a child is sent to a play school just so that he could get used to it as he will have go to school in future too. When I am talking with Sanu, often times I wonder what I was like when I was three years old; I was nothing next to this kid. He rides on his e-bike; in fact he runs it to its highest speed. He even showed me his mother’s smart phone and smartly explained its features to me.

Our ancestress used to compare the kids under the age of five with gods. Looking at today’s five-year-old, one cannot help but wonder if gods are like this. In today’s date, children do not have that innocence in them; they do not have that childishness in their monkey business. They only want to wear the clothes of their choice; they go to school after saying what they want in their lunchbox.

Are today’s children becoming fatheaded and spleenful? Kids that love smart phones; that insist on driving cars and bikes, who use the TV remote better than their mother or grandmother… are those kids really glorious? Their parents are nervous all the time with one tension or another. Today, they get in accidents when they are driving before the age of getting a driving license, and that too when they are drinking beer that costs more than their pocket money could allow. The global trade of smartphones, video games, and inattentiveness has forced the kids to grow before their age. The songs and dance steps that seem inappropriate to us, they dance on them with ease. Liberal, relaxed, and a childhood full of innocence, now seems like a thing of the past.

Today there is so much in the corporate lifestyle from which we need to keep our children’s away from and controlling ourselves is equally necessary too. Today, information tends to confuse terror in front of them. You must be wondering where are our children going with this, what's the solution. Then respectable moms and dads, your children are tangled in your long list of expectations; along with better smart phone, big cars and foreign trips, you want kids that are smart and sharp minded. And to get that you have them wrapped up in school, tuition, homework, exams/competitions, other activities, television, internet... entangled in the endless list today kids are as busy as we are.

Today the kids live under the increasing pressure of their parents’ unreasoned and meaningless expectations and the fear of failing them. The result is a growing depression in children; at such small age they are getting diseases of the old ones (eye glasses, diabetes, gray hair, the girls continue to get early menstruation, obesity in children increases). Many times parents put so much pressure to bring them in advertising, TV series, movies and also expecting them to succeed, which ends up as the child starting to behave like an adult. Don’t impose you incomplete ambitions on your children; that I did not become a hero or heroine, but I will make my kid a celebrity, that we have lived so poorly but we will give the children all that they need (even if they can live without all those stuff). Parents compensate for not spending much time with their children by giving them pocket money and other materialistic features. Many times to show off their prosperity, parents makes spectacle of their children.

Let the children grow up with their innocence. And to make sure that the innocence remains there, you have to change the surrounding. Let them play in mud, let them dance in the rain, let them jump around, let them be persistent but don’t make them stubborn. Let them learn according to their age and interests; don’t make them a robot of your choice.


18 comments:

  1. Pitiful reality.
    My heart breaks to see how children are being brought up in today's world.
    It's so different from our time! Technology has a big hand in ruining the pleasant childhood we have had. We need to strike a right balance somewhere. Off course our days of NO TECHNOLOGY are long gone and today's kids are surrounded with it. It's up to the parents to take control by limiting tech time and reinforcing the real values. They just need to spend more time with them.

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    1. It is all the creation of business tours of the busy father, the mother who is busy in shopping and Kitty Parties and the non-existing joint family (children do not get the chance to spend time with their grandparents), too Aneeta. To keep the children busy, parents give them gadgets instead of their time.

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  2. Innocence in children of today's age has lost, they know much more at their age than their predecessors and we can't stop infiltration of technology in their life but yes we can help them or accompany them in its use but for that parents need time which they don't have nowadays

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    1. You are right, Cifar. I believe, that too much of anything is not good. If one eats too much, they will vomit. What is happening with children today, is the vomit that is a result of too much technology interfering in their life.

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  3. There's no childhood today as we knew it in the old days. Children are born with wifi wired on to them from god above (the trader above, I mean.) It's a world run by business today. It has to change if childhood is to be saved.

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    1. You caught the exact point Tomichan. There was a time when there were dinosaurs. Today we are trying to save tigers, in hope that one day won't have to say, "There was a time when there were tigers". I'm afraid, that if the business that you have mentioned does not change then the next generation won't even know what Childlike Innocence is.

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  4. The age of innocence is indeed a thing of the passe! Sometimes stuff kids know at an early age surprises and concerns me. Very relevant point raised here.

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    1. Thank you, Shaivi.. And the reason for this is that parents have made their children a means to show off. Today we teach kids to say Hi, Hello and to give a flying kiss.

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  5. I don't think the good times can be retraced in any way..they're gone forever:(

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    1. If people try hard enough than those days can come back, especially grandparents.

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  6. Times have changed, so have people. It is not black and white of good and bad. There is some good and some bad in all ages and times. Today is no different. Neither will be tomorrow nor was past.

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    1. You are right, Abhijit. I am not saying that what is happening today is completely wrong. It is a good thing that children knows how to use the latest technology. What I find wrong is the overuse of it.

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  7. सचमुच में बच्चों की मासुमता कही खो गई है। सुन्दर प्रस्तुति।

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    1. शुक्रिया ज्योति जी :)

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  8. सचमुच में बच्चों की मासुमता कही खो गई है। सुन्दर प्रस्तुति।

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