Blog@GraceJunction

 

Anju Musafir. Not a name that would make many people in Ahmedabad to turn their heads, even just an year ago. However, recently, when a workshop was announced in a school where Anju was to speak, there was an unprecedented rush of lawyers, doctors, teachers and even psychologists to hear Anju! Very often it is the subject of the workshop that draws the crowd. But in this case, people were flooding in just to see and meet Anju. Anju had become someone who had certainly impacted their lives.

Who is Anju Musafir? She is no beauty queen, nor is she an actress nor an astrologer, numerologist or fortune teller. She is the founder of one of the International Schools in the city and a teacher trainer with a passion for teaching and learning! That’s all! But with that background, Anju had become someone whom the people of the city were looking up to for tips, advices and wise counsel.

What made her popular? Well, she started writing a column in a local daily and her subject is, Parenting! Her column apparently is much awaited and one of the most widely read columns in the daily!

Young mothers crowded around Anju for almost half an hour before the workshop began with common and fundamental problems that they face. During the workshop, Anju addressed basic upbringing issues, children’s behavioral patterns, parent’s list of do’s and don’ts, how conditioning plays a role in deciding what they grow up to be as well as issues that concern the present tech savvy generation.

I am really excited that someone is addressing these really urgent and often neglected issues but the whole news only brought into light the growing gulf between the parents and their children and more than that the helplessness of these parents, despite being well qualified and seemingly well equipped to handle anything in life, anything!

Now more embarrassing is the realization that most of their questions were not supposed to be asked at all. I mean, our predecessors have dealt with such and worse issues with much more élan and that too with just a fraction of our education, resources and exposure!

What made them wise or what equipped them? Was it not the presence of their elders; one or two generations; around them always ready and willing to help? The wisdom of the ages did help. These people often are absent in today’s homes and even if they are present, they are as good as absent as they mostly are neglected. Most times their opinions are not asked for or considered and often they too choose to remain silent than to speak and be ridiculed or derided. I recently met one of my father’s elder cousins who had off late become very quiet. On asking he cited that after a certain age it is wiser to not speak much unless necessarily required. There are too many generational barriers to break even to make a convincing remark!

 

Secondly, they had more time to spend with their children. Watching them and spending time with them is the most effective method in understanding our kids from an early age and dealing with them better. I have learnt from experience that it’s not very difficult to know the psyche of your own child. Especially when they are still small, their thought patterns are more biologically acquired than circumstantially modified. If one spends time enough to notice them, parents will learn that much of their child’s thought patterns are like their own. Together, it wouldn’t take too much of an effort for the dad and the mom to pick up their child’s next moves, especially if they are aware of their own thought and behavioral patterns. There is no need of a psychologist to teach that to anyone nor is there the need to undergo a course in behavioral science to pick it up. So, is it that most people perhaps do not even have the time to assess themselves and know their own thought and behavioral patterns?

 

Thirdly, our predecessors were concentrating more on inculcating values and infusing character in us while perhaps, our focus is more materialistic and achievement oriented. We are trying to make a generation of achievers and scholars, ready to take on the world at all costs, and do well too. We ensure that they have no hardships along the way and do our best to give them opportunities for the best universities and courses. In the course, we forget that, we are not to create prodigies and wonders, but human beings who care, love, share and live. We miss catering to their basic needs and keep pushing them to perform better and better. Their very definition of life itself is skewed. Life is more of an opportunity to enjoy oneself than a chance to share with others or prepare to meet the creator.

“We will see when it comes to that” is often the attitude of even the current generation of parents. One of the reasons being that they have accumulated enough and more on their tables to look through for today that they have no time to look much into the future, except in matters of money and investments. The only foresight they exercise with regards to their children is career linked. They have no foresight to assess what will become if a certain conditioning is provided to their kids. Therefore, just as on Anju’s workshop day, they end up creating a symptomatic ruckus than having indulged in precautionary maneuvering much earlier.

I don’t think our predecessors did a bad job. Recently, I heard about a young man in his late teens tell an old man, “I have a mobile phone and a laptop and a bike and I also go to the best college. What have you got?” The old man replied, “Yeah, true, we never had all these things and so we got you all these things. What will you give to the generation after you?” The young man was silent.

The crowding at Anju Musafir’s workshop shows how this generation is faring. They are struggling to parent well. However, they may still end up at least half as well as their predecessors but for the generation that follows, looking at the news reports coming in, workshops won’t do. It is really scary.

Tags: Anju Musafir, Generation gap, parenting, Society, Youth

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Geo, Relationships, Society, Thoughts, Trends, Youth Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.