The Hindu Business Line : Handle with care

It has probably never been so tough on the teenagers, who have to deal with the pains of growing up and the pressures of being "in" with the crowd. But it's even tougher on the parents, with children growing up faster due to information explosion.

When your 17-year-old young lady wears a spaghetti-top with her "dangerously low" pair of jeans to a school function or your 13-year-old master of the house thinks it's time he added a mobile-phone to his ever expanding list of accessories, you know it's time to unlearn the old lessons on "bringing up baby"!

It has probably never been so tough on the teenagers of today, who have to deal with the pains of growing up and the pressures of being "in" with the crowd. But it's even tougher on the parent, with the exposure to information resulting in children growing up faster and being more empowered, says Aarti, a Mumbai mother who is trying hard to keep pace with her 16-year-old tech-savvy son.

But she makes it a point to talk to him and get to know the company he keeps — a luxury fast disappearing from a number of households, where parents are increasingly spending less time talking to their children.

Says Mumbai-based psychiatrist Dr Amu Kant Mital, "Earlier, grandparents used to be part of the family structure. So even if both parents were working, the growing child had the grandparents to fall back upon. But today the scenario has changed and teenagers are increasingly finding that they have no one to talk to at home." And the need for youngsters to talk to someone at home is seen to really peak around examination time, not only before the exams, but also after they are over. Not surprising then that the metros are seeing an increase in the number of `help-lines' for students in schools and colleges.

"There are youngsters who start their day at 6.30 in the morning with school or college and then there are tuitions that keep them out of the house till as late as 11 p.m. So, where is the time for friends? Where is the time to socialise, let alone seek the company and advice of parents? The present marks-oriented system is putting additional pressure on youngsters. Mercifully, the CBSE system has recognised that grades will do and are stopping the marks system," says Dr Mital.

Often, one finds that parents tend to worry too much about their children and their expectations put more pressure on the child, he points out. "I have parents coming to me with children wanting to take up careers in bio-technology, without much understanding of what the segment is all about," he adds.

Academic and career-related pressures apart, is there an ever-widening social gap between parents and children? Take a scene in the Mumbai-local — as trains are referred to in this city of youthful energy. Teenyboppers going to college dressed in spaghetti tops that bare their mid-riff may have the average middle-class co-passenger raising an eyebrow in disapproval. But the attire is "cool" or "hot", if you will, for this group of girls.

Who is going to tell these young girls that you wear spaghetti tops to a party, not to school or college, asks Reema, mother of a 15-year-old in Mumbai. And even if you tell them, will they listen? Aren't parents always the party-poopers for teenagers who love to rebel without a cause?

"Not necessarily," says the psychiatrist. "Communication does not happen overnight. One needs to get into the practice of explaining issues to children right from their childhood. If a parent does not know who his or her child's friends are, their names, their favourite teachers, the things they enjoy, then they are not talking enough to their kids. A generation gap comes from childhood in such cases," he points out.

The information explosion too has changed a lot of things in the life of teenagers and their parents. Ideologies are being turned on their heads, there are changes in almost everything, be it music, morality, family-values and what have you.

But the one thing that should not change is the bonding that parents have with their children. They need to make constant efforts to keep talking to their children. Only then will they be in touch with what is going on in the mind of the growing young man or woman at home, says the doctor, a parent of a 13-year-old son himself.

Picture by A. Roy Chowdhury

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