Mistakes happen and they happen all the time. Even the great poet Alexander Pope says, ‘To err is human’. “ Galti karenge tabhi to badenge. Galti karne do, jaldi badne do ” says the new ad from Complan, one of the iconic kid’s brands we have all grown up with — better known for its “I am a Complan Boy/Girl” jingle.

The message on the wall is clear — It’s perfectly fine for kids to make mistakes as they grow and parents should, in fact, let them make mistakes so that they learn important lessons from it and eventually progress faster.

A majority of parents continue to believe that the only way to succeed is to excel in education. Moreover, in our society, failure has never been considered to be a learning mechanism. In fact, it was equated to a child’s inability to succeed. Parents usually gave very little support to children to experiment with and take risks in their areas of interest. Children were brought up in such restricted environments that sometimes that they found it difficult to adjust to new situations. All these led to stress and kids started looking for ways to escape.

Young...and stressed According to a news report in 2014, a reputed psychologist from Mumbai states that 60 per cent of his younger clients have stress-related conditions — that’s close to 25 cases a week! As a consultant with various schools, he has clients of all ages and the youngest one is six. Who is finally responsible? Can the blame be put on parents/mentors/teachers for expecting too much from a child, killing his/her own creativity and curiosity?

The reality is that we, the millennial generation, were brought up by parents who themselves grew up in an India which was a scarce economy with limited resources and limited opportunities. With the burgeoning middle class and increased competition, parents had started to expect too much from their kids. Sometimes they even tried to achieve through their kids, what they couldn’t achieve in their lives.

The result was a lot of pressure on children, who were unable to cope with it. On the other hand, millennials who have become parents now seem to be more logical in their approach and understand that their child can learn from mistakes and needs to explore in order to grow. They are exposed to a lot of information on the internet/television and from peers, which helps them change their ways of parenting. Parenting among this group is more team-oriented as millennials deviate from traditional gender roles in raising children. This deviation has also led to things like cultivating the kid’s identity and promoting gender neutrality, unlike the generations before.

When we delve into human psychology, we find that children are inherently indifferent to committing mistakes. It’s only when they grow older and become socially conscious that they associate mistakes with shame. So it’s the fear of parents’ response that guides their behaviour towards a blunder.

Brands directly connect with the audience through human emotions and stories. A lot of human perceptions and beliefs are formed through popular brands and their messaging. The attitudes and perceptions are changing gradually and some of these brands are trying their best to promote a new outlook altogether.

The new Complan ad does remind me of a Parle-G 2013 ad jingle “RoKo Mat, Toko Mat”, written by Gulzar and sung by Piyush Mishra. It depicted kids doing weird experiments, ultimately leading to some creative solutions. The ad ends with the beautiful lines, which almost sum up the essence: “ Bachpan se bada koi school nahi, curiosity se bada koi teacher nahi. ”

Parents, take it easy While you will notice that this new ad of Complan is more of old wine in a new bottle, it springs from a changing consumer behaviour and a gradual change in the societal thought process overall. Both the campaigns urge parents to take it easy — let the children err, don’t let their curiosity be dampened by pressure from peers or parents. Brands are becoming more and more responsible today and they try to resonate with the consumers’ thought process.

Breaking stereotypes, inculcating social change and progress has been the theme for a lot of brands in recent times.

A child-like behaviour is crucial to foster imagination and creativity. In today’s Indian context, where we are talking about encouraging start-ups, if we want to truly build a society that is pro-innovation and entrepreneurial we need to encourage:

1. Inquisitiveness among children, so that they can challenge the status quo , go beyond assumptions and see the world through a fresh lens

2. Independent play, where children are encouraged to make their own decisions and express their own interests, make mistakes, learn from them and, in the process, boost their confidence

An innate and undeniable trait in a child is that of curiosity. It’s the single most powerful tool for him to understand the world around, test its boundaries, explore and create. It’s the only thing that can keep the burning desire of new ideas and experiences as he/she grows up. It gives adults the confidence to keep discovering. It’s this ‘thinking like a child’ approach that inspires us in creative problem solving in the design thinking process.

A child-like curiosity and passion for problem solving helped the Bansals and Agarwals of today in building million-dollar start-ups from scratch! It is a child’s mind that drives you to do it, but it is definitely not child’s play!

Saswata Das is CoFounder & Director at WOW Design

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