With the pressures of academic achievements being underlined as imperative and peer group pressure to be uber cool, children find themselves lost in the labyrinth of self-doubt and go astray more easily than we imagine. Its easy to blame parents for everything related to children especially when the child shows signs of dysfunctionality, but perhaps we need to look closer at the prevailing world of influences around us to recognise how much these occurrences disallow for simple values to be viewed as relevant in today's world of violence, power and money which act as as the symbols of success.
So what is the solution if at all we imagine there is one to have…? My belief is that schools play a pivotal roll really because they are the seat at which most formative moulding takes place. The importance that children give to instructions from a teacher is massive. Therefore if educational institutions could utilise this effectively along with in-depth communication with parents on a regular basis that does not deal with academics but with the 360 factor of child development, then we could actually arrive at prompting directions of purpose and life-style choices of merit.
But what is the real scenario today? We watch world leaders demean women and war atrocities that show explicit torture and violence as righteous. We support thuggery by allowing elected members of state and national governance to behave as despots and wield their power for self-gain, slapping people and shooting at them if the whim to do so prevails. We kill people who differ in their religious beliefs despite our constitution defining and upholding secular principles of co-existences. We are a nation that cannot work just on the paradigms of ethical norms but need always for that calling-card of power and clout to get what should otherwise be rightfully owing to one. We are a nation that demands the show of money in order to endorse our status. It is to this and much more that we expose our children without any filter of counselling to suggest to them that this in fact is not what a morally sound and ethical society should stand for. Tragic but true!
Success is no longer viewed as a simple construct where we target knowing ourselves well and honing our capabilities to yield for us something of self-purpose that offers us satisfaction. Today it is a world where everybody wants to be a celebrity and to be rich to boot! When these dreams don't pan out for all then the disillusionment sets in, and then too often alcohol and drugs take over and other types of heart wrenching situations of despair unfold.
I see bewildered parents who love their children very much, hurt and confused by their children's behaviour that exhibits disrespect and is often traumatising to the overall peace and stability that parents desire as they grow older. If grown children cannot nurture a family as a method of reciprocity for the love and attention they have received then I believe that it is an important lesson for parents to learn (hard as it may emotionally be for them) to let their off-springs learn lessons about the truth of life on their own, perhaps the hard way.
I still find delight in small intimate factors of life. I love to hold special the ordinary. I love to honour relationships that have nurtured me and insist of myself to acknowledge all that I have received as being always the gift of the belief others have reposed in me. When I look into the eyes of children lost in their pursuit of life outside of what their natural orbits are, I hope always that somewhere an image or a circumstance can refocus their humanness to allow them to become realigned with the energies of self-purposefulness that in fact each of us possess….if we are willing to know ourselves without pretence or fear, which perhaps is the hardest test of all.
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