"TEACH YOUR CHILD VALUES"
Summer vacations is the time when parents should teach their children about the country’s rich heritage
Most schools in Delhi are over with the summer break. With holidays that lasted for nearly two months, it was very difficult to to ensure that the children were kept busy all through the vacations. One does not really know how to properly organise the free time that children have.
Let’s be honest — children at home can be annoying if you have them sitting idle, watching television, playing games on their laptops the whole day or SMSing their friends. It can be a real pain, more so when the husbands’ come back home and vent their anger on the youngsters who have been caught doing nothing but whiling away their time and ordering everyone around them.
My mother used to say that our upbringing was very comfortable. We were never deprived of anything. But then, I believe, we were also not too demanding either. Today, the children think that living in the lap of luxury is their birthright and making demands is not rude. It is difficult to communicate with them because they think they are right and that their parents are old fashioned and do not understand what the outside world is like today.
The explanation the children have is that they have more exposure and hence, know more. Though they might have more exposure, it can’t be denied that they have become more rude, impolite, arrogant and have no manners.
Travelling around the country, visiting heritage sites, touring villages and discovering different cultures and cuisines doesn’t attract them. For them it is boring and passé. They would rather stay in Delhi and go mall crawling than familiarise themselves with the rest of the country.
Mention a trip across the country and pat comes the reply: ‘We will Google search the place and get the information’. A visit to the Golden Temple, or Trivandrum or J&K or Himachal Pradesh is not their idea of a holiday. Sri Lanka, Singapore, Bangkok and Europe is more their style.
Who is to be blamed? The parents or the children? Holidays are meant for family bonding, to strengthen emotional ties and improve communication channels. It is a time to monitor your child’s behaviour 24X7.
You can teach him as you observe him. Not destroying public property, obeying the rules, be kind to others, not to throw litter on the streets are some of the lessons they can be taught even when they are having fun. No child, in my opinion, should be allowed to have his way.
There are many parents who insist that their children first explore India before they demand a foreign holiday. For those in Delhi, teach your child classical dancing, tabla, painting or yoga. It is time we were familiar with our heritage and culture.
One is bound to be respected for having explored one’s own country rather than having visited some foreign destination.
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