The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Even fun turns into a programmed activity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Even fun turns into a programmed activity

Bageshree S.

A child’s nervous system is not ready to grip a pencil till five or six. Today we have mental gyms and abacus for toddlers

Most parents admit their children get on to the fast lane too early in life
Children today are more anxious than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

IN THE RAT RACE: Childhood today is almost like a boardroom: full of targets, competition and deadlines.

Bangalore: The day begins early for Pratyusha, a class IV student of a school on Kanakapura Road. The school van arrives an hour ahead of the school time because it is a long journey. She has time only for a quick wash and quicker breakfast of her “iron-rich” cereal before the driver starts honking at the gate.

Her “good school” has only few children in each class. There are “fun-filled” projects and she has swimming and music classes. The child comes back home earliest by four. A quick snack while watching TV, and it is time for advanced maths class. When she comes back there is just enough time for a little more TV and dinner.

There surely was never a golden age when children did nothing but laugh and play. But too many things about the present times seem designed to make children highly anxious. Even swimming in Pratyusha’s school is for “developing skill” rather than fun.

The distance to school and nature of curriculum might vary. But most parents admit that their children get on to the fast lane too early in life. However, they also believe it is inevitable.

Sudha Kumar, mother of two school-going children says: “Children should be encouraged to do what they feel they are good at. But they should excel in it because we have to face the fact that we live in a competitive world.”

Ritesh Agrawal, a college student who has a younger sibling in school, has a problem precisely with this: “Competition removes all the fun. I feel they would learn more if there wasn’t the constant pressure of excelling.” Priyanka R. adds that this is a perpetual cycle: “When you are in class IX teachers want you to do well in the class X Board exams and the whole process of drilling in the importance of Board Exams starts. In Class XI, you are again preparing for the board exams in XII. Once you pass that, there are the innumerable entrance exams.”

Shoba Srinath, the head of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Services at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), is wary of catch phrases like “age of anxiety” often used by Western media to describe the present time. But she admits that a range of factors — busy and moneyed parents, flood of consumer goods, exposure to media, intense competition and pressure to pack a lot into little time — makes an upper middle class child “more hassled” then ever before.

She points to the absurdity of our schooling system. “A child’s nervous system is not ready to grip a pencil till five or six. But most children are taught to write small words by the time they are in UKG,” observes Dr. Srinath.

Parenting style

What adds to the problem is also what she calls “parenting style,” with most parents at a loss given the pressures they themselves face. “The rapidly changing circumstances have left parents without a template to model themselves after, unlike the earlier generations.” Many compensate lack of time by buying children things. “Learning occurs best when it is interactive and allows the child to play, think and concentrate. It does not happen in a playstation game where quick action is the key,” says Dr. Srinath. “It is not like a board game where you can have a conversation collaterally.”

It is hard to quantify, though, when a whole lot of hassles add up to make a child really anxious. The state of mind as a “dynamic equilibrium” that will depend on the child’s own temperament, parenting style, schooling pattern, peer pressure and so on. Two recent American studies published in the American Psychological Association’s journal report that normal children today are more anxious than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. In an open letter published in the Daily Telegraph (United Kingdom) over 100 professionals — including teachers and psychologists, psychiatrists and others — expressed deep concern about psychological well-being of children.

“They [children] still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed junk), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives. They also need time. In a fast-moving hyper-competitive culture, today’s children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum.”

There have been no comprehensive studies in India to gauge levels of anxiety in a normal children’s population over an extended period of time. But based on her long experience as a psychiatrist, Dr. Srinath makes an astute observation: “We are trying to get the child ready for the system while the child’s own system is not ready for it. For what, one wonders.”

(With inputs from Esha Chatterjee)

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