The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : What's ailing the children?

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Saturday, Jan 06, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

What's ailing the children?

Does high expectation among parents drive children to suicide or criminal behaviour? L. Srikrishna raises the disturbing question

Even as the murder of 11-year-old Aravind remains too fresh in public memory to even form a scar, the city was this week rocked again by reports about the suicide by two children — an eight-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl.

The suicides committed by Prem Anand of Vyasarpadi and Dharini of Pattinapakkam have made people sit and think.

The boy had doused kerosene on his body and set himself afire. With over 70 per cent burns, he was admitted in the hospital, but after battling for over five hours, he died.

In the second case reported on Friday, a 14-year-old girl allegedly poured petrol on her and after closing the room in her house she set fire to herself and died on the spot.

Questions that are making the rounds are: Is loneliness at home making kids commit such acts. Are parents expecting too much from their children and as a result making the children vulnerable. Do children have an outlet in the modern world to ventilate their feelings? How much of an influence is cinema. Are parents to blame?

In the recent incident, the reason that drove the children to suicide is not clearly known. But, preliminary inquiries pointed more to a lack of affection from parents or high expectations from parents. According to investigating officers, Prem Anand was studying in the IV Standard at a local school. He had lost his mother. He has no idea where his father lived. His grandmother, a casual worker, had brought him up.

A neighbour said the boy used to watch children's channels on television with his friends. Whether he had tried to imitate something he had seen on television needs to be investigated.

In the case of Dharini, it is said that the girl returned home from school on Thursday evening with under par scores in the school examination. Her mother is working in a school and father is a policeman. When she committed the act, her parents were away, while her younger sister was playing. A senior police officer said the act showed the girl was determined to end her life.

Speaking to The Hindu , Tamil Nadu Psychiatric Society president C. Ramasubramanian said that such instances only reflected that family members and teachers expected very high from the kids. There is nothing wrong in it, but one has to assess the child's potential. For instance, children are unfortunately looked upon as mark-producing machines. Success is gauged only by marks, not by values.

This is the first step that irritates children, as they are not allowed to ventilate their emotions.

How many schools encouraged kids to play football and basketball, which helped release the aggression indirectly. A good role model and a parental expression of affection towards kids would be solutions, he summed up.

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