The recent happening in one of the premier private girls’ school of the state will be a lesson for all parents. A girl student of Class-X tied her hands and legs, gagged her mouth and laid concealed herself in the toilet thereby deliberately absented herself from the mathematics paper of the day’s examination.

Later on she herself confessed it was a drama that had been staged by herself to show the inner reality of her mind when she came to know she could not fulfil her parents’ aspiration to get high marks in the examination.

It is good that the girl student did not take extreme steps like suicides but tried her best to toll the bell of alarm and reach it to the ears of her parents. This has given out a message to all of us that we should learn first to know accordingly in a proper and right direction.

On bringing up of a children ancient Meitei wisdom says
“Chahi manga phaoba Nungshi Matumni Echadi,
Mangadagi Mahei tam- hanllu,
tardagi cheksinna warak-watemmu,
tara- ta-ruktagi nangi marup oi-yu”

(Be very loving till the child is five,
sent him/her to school from five onwards,
be a strict disciplinarian to them from ten onwards and
when your child is sixteen treat him/her like a friend).

On the contrary, many parents feel that treating their sons and daughters as a friend often does not get them respect from their children that is due as a parent. At the other end, when the child attains the adolescent period, they have got their own law un-to themselves.

They want their voices to be heard by the world. They feel they have come out from their cocoon and dried their wings to fly in the open field. The parents want their children to follow their own laid laws and rules without creating unnecessary conflicts. Then, where is the balance?

Very often we see that parents aim high and always try to provide their children shoes which are too big for them. Then those children unable to go in the way that has been made by their parents fall on the sideways before they reach the goal. It happens most in the High School and Higher Secondary stage of education.

Most of the parents hope that their children will be able to cross any hurdle if they are forced to study any stream or any branch of knowledge that fetch money and fame even if they know that their children lack the talent and merit to pursue that line of study.

Parents even ignore to see that their children have got talents in music, painting and try to dissuade their children from such branch of studies and force them to study Medicine, Engineering etc. and that brings no good either to the parents or the students.

Usually by default they don’t get into medicine, so they study computer science. At other times the parents’ desire was for their wards to study engineering, so the children are doing that. Nor did the children get the opportunity to confide his or her wants in life and the difficulty in venturing in the field which the they cannot put their head and heart.

When the parents perceive certain degree of drawbacks and timidity in their children, they take it as a fault of the schools and institutions in which their children are going formally during school hours. What does the parents do then? They rush for private tutors. However this mad chase leaves the tutors richer, student poorer having lost at the cross-road unable to choose the right way and the parents become poorest in terms of their exaggerated hopes which remains unrealised and unfulfilled.

When the parents put all the blames to their children, then the children become low in self-esteem. At this crucial juncture they can be easily overwhelmed by stress or are generally pessimistic and appear to be vulnerable to any symptoms of illness what doctors name it as depression.

When children at the adolescent period of life make themselves susceptible to depression it often leads them to take extreme steps in life. And experts say girls are twice more prone to depression than boys.

Basically, we are all parents. The first and foremost duty of parents is to look after their children in the best possible way, to take interest in their welfare and to see them pro-gress. For this, parents give their children the best possible education. But the question surfaced here is how far parents know progress of their children.

Parents seldom visit the school where their children is reading. It is most common to the parents who have admitted their children to Govt schools. They are forced to visit the school on two occasions only - once at the time of admission and later when the child fail to get promoted in the next class.

So the end-point here is that there is no fixed formula or rule on how to bring up a child and how much of what a parent need to do. But role-playing by becoming the parents a role-model is what needs to be done. Every teenager is in a hurry to be an adult in their age.

At the same time, in the most contradictory manner he/she still wants to be cuddled and loved like a five-year old. Then the parents have to find the balance with their children. It is an indispensable part for the parents to use the under-standings of the children and at the same time to be ready to give fresh insights into their problems.

The children will feel it and appreciate their parents’ treatment. It is the toughest and loveliest job on the earth and none but the parents can do it.