Friday, January 11, 2008

 

Can my Child be a killer?


The question sounds chilling - in the wake of the so called cold blooded shooting of Abhishek Tyagi of Gurgaon's Euro International School by his classmates. Till it was happening in say, USA, we would always condemn another culture as 'less' then ours. But now it stares us point blank. Suddenly child psychologists are in demand for their opinion. "Why" and "what makes children do this" are the questions?

Take another data: over the past couple of years, in Bangalore alone, about 10 children have committed or attempted to commit suicide. Isn't that murder too - as or even more gruesome? Many of these children were actually brilliant, but......

Take another data, in our working with children for the past eight years, thousands of parents have come to us and asked, "Do you have any program like public speaking, or a program that does away his stage shyness, or that can make her speaking and expressing skills stronger" and so on.....
However, in the last eight years we have not had even one parent asking us, "Do you have a program to help my child express her feelings"

Forget children, have we learned how to express our feelings?
So how do we express our feelings, specially the negative ones, the anger, resentment, jealousy, bitterness, sadness, et al:
We shout, hit or hurt
or we cry
or we just shut up and clamp up and just suffer (and let the negative-ness run into our hormones causing all kinds of ailments)

Check these statements told to the child:
I've had enough, I am not going to talk to you.
I've had enough, you will get a slap now.
I've had enough - and (under our breath) wish I could just run away or kill myself.

To me this is not an expression of feelings. Rather it is letting the feelings take control of our behaviour.
Which means If I don't learn how to express my feelings, then

1. My own response is hardly appropriate or effective.
2. The child is also learning the same - that - let your feelings drive your behaviour - that its okay to be aggressive when I am feeling aggressive; that its okay to be passive even when hurt remains; and so on.
3. The child is NOT learning any emotional competence - neither how to become aware of feelings nor how to express them nor how to manage them.

The premise here is that when we are aware of our feelings and are able to express them, then the resulting behaviour is also appropriate as well as our emotions are better managed. Perhaps as a direct benefit I would be able to build better social skills also.

If we were to not only teach children maths and history, but also emotional skills. Unfortunately these can't be drilled or taught in a classroom; can't be put in a text book.

Fortunately these can be developed.
Fortunately these can be modeled.
Fortunately these can be facilitated.
Fortunately these can be the most important learning for a happy life.

Aditi & Ratnesh


 3 Comments
Comments:
I thank you for addressing this issue which had shaken all of us. The pressing need of this hour is 'LOVE'. When children are deprived of this, these kind of stories will be the outcome. This is just one extreme outcome. But there are millions of children silently suffering the deprivation of love, attention and care. It is just not what we give them in the material form, but how we nurture them and love them with all their so called temper tantrums and erratic behaviour. They don't learn by what we teach. They learn by seeing 'what we are'.

Are we full of love and express that in every area of our life? Let us remember, children watch us and imitate us. They don't listen to our words, but they experience our being. So let us watch our 'being'.

Is there humaneness in our being at all times - Let us watch ourselves.
# posted by Blogger Nirupama : January 11, 2008 at 6:18 AM
 
Rightly said; parents need to learn to express their feelings.

I request you to conduct a workshop for parents regarding this issue.
# posted by Blogger Unknown : January 11, 2008 at 3:05 PM
 
thank you so much for bringing this thought provoking issue.

Parents have to be taught first to express and handle their feelings in a appropriate way.

now many parents are open and willing to be guided in a right direction to raise a overall healthy kid.

As reena mentioned workshop for parents on this issue is a must and will definetley be huge success
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : January 12, 2008 at 2:41 AM
 
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