Consultant Psychiatrist
Last week, we spoke about listening to your kids, talking to them and understanding them. In case you missed it, here is the link. This week, we shift gears a little bit and focus on emotions. But first, why do we need to know about emotions? Isn’t it just a piece of baggage that should be kept under the carpet? In general, parents are not concerned about the emotional health of their children. Their focus lies elsewhere.
“It is very competitive. I don’t want my daughter to fall behind. She goes to seven tuitions. Every day after school she has her tuitions lined up. I have told her that she must not waste any time.”
“I made sure that my son gets the best attention. I have provided him with all luxuries that he can think of. I also made sure that he gets the best possible help as far as studies are concerned. But,..”
“My daughter is very bright. If she puts her mind to it. She will do very well. But, she just doesn’t study!”
“I want my son to do well in school. He should have very good grades in Class II, Class III, Class IV, Class V,… he must do very well in his Class X boards and then in Class XII boards and then join a prestigious college and land up with a good job.”
I wish life was as simple as that. I wish there was a recipe for success that parents could buy and hand them over to their kids. I look at kids carrying heavy backpacks to school and have their whole day arranged into tight schedules: School, tution1, tuition 2, and tuition 3. They don’t have time to play. Play means going to the coaching center and learning the strokes or taking lessons in chess. There is no scope for unstructured play. The term relaxation does not exist in their vocabulary.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of Play. Unstructured play is not on the agenda of the parents. Some even feel that time spend sleeping is a waste of time. it is eating away the time that could be better spent on studying. Sleep is restorative. In fact, if you sleep after a bout of studying, your knowledge gets consolidated. If you are thinking of cheating on sleep, remember that Sleep Debt must be paid, before you move on. The play also has an important role in shaping an individual.
If we look at the animal kingdom, tiger and lion cubs play to practice their hunting skills. As a child grows up, the quality of Play changes. Initially, it is a solitary play. The child plays alone with toys, uninterested or unaware of other kids. Next, they move on to parallel play. Here, they play with similar toys like other children, but they do not interact with each other. Finally, as they progress towards cooperative play, there is social integration. They learn turn-taking, working as a team, strategies and tactics, perseverance, as their games get more and more complex. These skills are important in today’s scenario. Duke of Wellington said, “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”
Humans, unlike other mammals, have a long period of dependence on adults. Traditionally they were taken care of by multiple members of the clan. Ideally, humans are best suited to learn by modeling. Parents and other ‘significant adults’ serve as models. The pretend play that we see in children is basically preparing for adulthood. Here we see a gender-specific play where the boys “go to the office” and the girls play with kitchen utensils making cups of tea. Games like chess evolved as a tool for military strategy. Other strategy games like Contract bridge incorporate elements of mental stimulation, luck and socializing.
Individually as parents and collectively as a society we have eliminated “play” and social interactions from the lives of our children. We think we are acting in their best interests. But, are we? Our schools are based on the “industrial-age factory model of education.” The skills that were relevant in the 1800s and the 1900s have largely become outdated.
“Mass education was the ingenious machine constructed by industrialism to produce the kinds of adults it needed. The whole idea of assembling masses of students (raw material) to be processed by workers (teachers) in a centrally located school (factory) was a stroke of industrial genius. The whole administrative hierarchy of education followed the model of industrial bureaucracy. Children marched from place to place and sat in assigned stations. Bells rang to announce changes in time.” (The invented history of the Factory Model of Education by Audrey Watters).
Just as the Industrial Revolution heralded the onset of the Industrial Age, the Digital Revolution ushered in the Information Age or the Digital Age. Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and Automation are new concepts. The repetitive factory worker type of jobs are largely being replaced by machines. Education should shift from being focussed on rote learning to more unique human skills like creativity, innovation, empathy and leadership (workforce of the Future: Pwc).
Herein lies the importance of developing emotional literacy. Expressing emotions is central to having a well-adjusted child. A child’s sense of well-being and future success hinges on this. I guess most of you are aware of the terms Emotional Quotient or EQ and Emotional Intelligence. They are often compared with Intelligence Quotient or IQ. While IQ helps us assess an individual’s academic abilities and talents, EQ is a much better predictor of success at work, leadership qualities, ability to be a team player and so on. These foster the skills that are valued by modern society.
Next week, we will focus on Emotional Literacy. So, Watch This Space.
