students, and most often it's the bright ones, committing suicide for the flimsiest of reasons,
students refusing to accept any kind of discipline in school
students having increasingly short fuses
teachers feeling cornered and wondering why on earth they should even bother to say anything considering they might be the next victim of a student's wrath (a student stabbed a teacher to death in a classroom in a school in Madras), or the media
parents claiming their children don't listen to them
competitiveness hitting unmanageable levels, just because there are not enough 'good' colleges or universities for kids to go to
a society which is increasingly becoming more and more demanding
an economy which divides you cruelly into one of two categories - rich and poor
So, where are we going wrong?
As adults we are just not seeing that children/young adults today are being bombarded with all kinds of things, unconsciously and consciously, every nanosecond - the nerves in their brains are on overdrive. And, very simply, they are just not equipped to handle it. They do not have the mental or psychological capacity to decipher all the stimuli pinging on their brains; or the intellectual power to process and synthesize the data coming in. As for the emotional capacity to accept what is happening, that is way, way off...
As teachers we cannot write them off, After their parents, teachers are the ones who influence these young minds. Teachers just have to find some way of communicating with these young ones. After all they have age and maturity and experience on their side...
As parents, we have to be very attentive to our children. We know them and any sign of their being or doing anything that is not 'them', should be taken as a warning light........ and we better sit up and take notice of it. Children have different ways of communicating what is bothering them or troubling them. Often they themselves don't know why they are troubled... .We, their parents have to see if they are behaving in any manner that is not their usual way... .It is up to us as the primary care givers to our children, to find some platform on which to communicate with them. If we show them that we respect them for who they are, that they are precious to us, no matter what 'society' thinks, or whoever thinks, we'll be helping them to find themselves.
We put too much pressure on our kids, adding to the outside pressure they are already under - we live our dreams through them, we want them to succeed, we want them to go higher, and demand that they get 'good' jobs, etcetcetc....but in all this, we forget that they have their own personalities - we tend to take away from them the right to be themselves - they have to be us, or what we want them to be...or else......
How can scolding or pressurizing help, when the young one doesn't even understand what he is doing or what is happening to him? It's taking him all his energies to just stay afloat - and drowning is a very painful thing whether it's drowning in water, or drowning in the huge, huge amount of varying data impinging on his unformed brain...
What our young need is unconditional love and acceptance....and to stand behind them as they strive to find their place in the sun........................................as themselves......