In season of exams, meeting our children where they are

As the light changes from gentle to sharp and temperatures rise to signal the beginning of a new summer, it is final exam season in most parts of India all over again. Parents are nervous and feverish. Teachers are wound up and increasingly frantic.

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Students are responding in a variety of ways. They are studying, pretending to study, being distracted, acquiring new anxieties, waiting for it all to blow over and like generations of young people before them, experimenting with innovative coping mechanisms.

A particularly frustrating form of rebellion we witness is when our adolescent students shut down and close in on themselves. Parents demand their attention, they seem to be listening to us, but we can never be quite sure. Teachers stare at blank faces. The young spend time poring over books and gadgets but adults cannot tell if they are absorbing anything. They seem to be mocking us with their expressionlessness. In reality, most of the time they are punishing themselves with guilt, self-blame and shame, even if they look like they couldn’t care less.

Education systems, like all other symbols of modern civilisation, were supposed to get more progressive and freer in the 21st century, but the state of our children and our frayed relationships with them tell a different story.

In his 1991 book, ‘A Letter to Teachers: Reflections on Schooling and the Art of Teaching’, Vitto Perrone writes, “There is, it seems, more concern about whether children learn the mechanics of reading and writing than grow to love reading and writing; learn about democracy than have practice in democracy; hear about knowledge… rather than gain experience in personally constructing knowledge… see the world narrowly, simple and ordered, rather than broad complex and uncertain.”

Across ages, parents are constantly realising that the education industrial complex does not centre their beloved children in the process of educating them. Despite our privilege and understanding of the psychology of relationships, we continue with methods that diminish children. Demanding obedience above all from a child (whether by psychological means, by physical punishment, or through some combination of both), elders inhibit the child from fostering an authentic sense of self.

Dependent on adults for their survival, when children are punished — even if they are punished for no reason or for a reason that makes no sense — they blame themselves and believe that the fault lies within them. Trapped in a corner, the child cannot allow himself to experience fully his own pain, because that, too, might lead to questioning of his parents and other significant adults. It is easier to turn the hurt inwards than to confront the brittle authority of others.

We despair that none of our disciplining tactics seem to work on the new generation. “Children these days are very smart,” is a constant refrain across generations. This isn’t spoken in admiration, but in disdain.

We forget that good discipline requires time. It needs attention. When we have no time to give our children, or no time we are willing to give, we cannot stay in touch with their needs and developing personalities. We outsource attention. Our time is dedicated to work and gadgets. We hire others to pay attention to our children.

Sometimes after I have been angry with our first-born child, or after her father has snapped at her and she has quietly, purposefully left the room, I worry that our daughter may be plotting to leave our home as soon as she is able to. And go very, very far away. Of course, it is embedded in the process of raising children that we will often find our emotional states mismatched.

I want our children to be independent. I also want us to be deeply emotionally connected. I want our home to be their safe space, not a place where they feel un-seen.

“I dream about a room of my own. A kitchen that belongs to me,” our daughter shared one evening. I remember my own fantasies from my teenage years. I made them come true. I shared about them with my daughter.

I also made a mental note to create enough loving, confident space between us for her to feel that the home and its landscape belongs to her. It’s not just about space or gadgets, really. It is about freedom. Children flourish when they are free to express themselves. Discover their own preferences without fear of judgment and a reminder of taboos.

To return to this time of the year when examinations loom ahead, let us not develop seasonal allergies all over again. After two years of living with the uncertainty of death and loss brought on by the repeated waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, we must find it in ourself to look anew at old fears.

Raising children can empower us; it offers us a chance to find our agency. To realise that what makes us most vulnerable as adults is also the source of our greatest strength.

—The writer is a filmmaker & author.

natasha.badhwar@gmail.com