Children's Day Special

Children’s Day Special

This day takes me back to my days as a kid where we used to get chocolates in school and someone would dress up like Chacha Nehru and give a speech. It was told to us that Baal Diwas was celebrated especially on 14^th November as it was Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru’s birthday. This was an official day for we as kids. We looked forward to this day every year.

As we grew and reached beyond Std 8 we felt that Children’s Day was a very childish affair as we had already become seniors of the secondary section. When we reached college we were all busy celebrating other critical days to prove our adulthood such as Rose Day, Chocolate Day, Friendship Day and not to forget Valentine’s Day (although NA to all). Hence we eventually forgot Children’s Day.

Now that I am a father of a kid again this day has started enthusing me a lot. With every passing year I can see some changes on Children’s Day. There was an event in my office and even when I visited a local mall there was a celebration happening. What I observed was the parents were behaving more like kids and the kids on the other hand had seemingly already become adults. The parents were indulging in games and the kids were busy clicking pics of their parents. Then I realised what was so different this year. The difference was this year I saw much more kids with smart phones in hands. It was disheartening to see kids been more interested in wats app and clicking selfies with some fancy backgrounds rather than been interested in the games that were played.

When I was a kid, the various ways our parents flaunted us was by making us sing, dance, do mimicry or to play a musical instrument. The moment the kid performs well in front of other you would see proud smiles on the parent’s faces. Nowadays parent flaunt their kid’s technological skills. I hear parents talking about how expert their kids are in using cell phones, ipads, laptops etc. They take pride in saying that their kids know the smart phone features better than they know themselves. Wow, are you saying your kid is doing few things on a smart phone which even you don’t understand and are you seriously feeling proud about it. Isn’t it a threat?

Kids are behaving 2 – 4 years ahead of their actual age, all thanks to the huge exposure they are getting through smart phones and other devices. Just because parents have money doesn’t mean they provide kids with gadgets and devices they are not yet ready to use. With the You Tubes and Wats apps of the world we ensure our kids have lot of knowledge and exposure. Let’s not miss out that knowledge and exposure would only enable the kids to get started with few new things but the wisdom of which thing to continue and which one to stop would only come with age and experience. One of the classic examples of recent times was the Blue Whale game where the kids had the knowledge of starting it, but didn’t have the wisdom of stopping it after one point and the result were fatal casualties. A real example of how we expose kids to technology even before they are ready for it. While few parents would always claim that they are vigilant while introducing technology to their kids but the fact remains that, what our kids are doing in front of us today, the same things they may want to do while they are alone and no parents can keep a watch on their kids 24 X 7.  

As heard in one of the TED Talks, in 2010, Steve Jobs when he was releasing the IPad, described the IPad as a device that was “extraordinary”. He claimed that it was the best browsing experience, way better than a laptop or a smart phone. A couple of months later he was approached by a journalist from the New York Times, at the end of the interview the interviewer asked Steve Jobs that ‘Your kids must be loving the IPad?’ and Steve simply answered that ‘They haven’t used it yet, we limit how much technology our kids use at home”. Indeed a staggering response by someone who headed Apple.

In fact there is a school quite near the Silicon Valley called the Waldorf School of the Peninsula and they don’t introduce Screens until 8^th grade. Whats really interesting of this school is that 75% of the kids who go there have parents who are high-level Silicon Valley tech executives.

Now if a Steve Jobs doesn’t introduce a IPad to his own kids who were around 12 – 15 yrs in 2010. If the top executives of the Silicon Valley send their kids to a school where screens aren’t introduced to the kids until 8^th grade then are we in a little haste of introducing our kids to technology. The producers of technology (silicon valley) are keeping their own kids away from technology upto a certain age and we who are consumers of technology are rampantly making technology available to our kids.

When I say all this somewhere even I am a defaulting parent here. We have apparently started taking pride when our kids start behaving older than their actual age. Let’s ask ourselves that is it something to be proud about or something to be worried about. Blessed are the parents who have kids that behave their own age because only they are naturally evolving without any external forces. So the next time when we are exposing our kid to anything new, let’s ask ourselves whether they have the wisdom to handle the new thing. Giving our kids knowledge and exposure is important but allowing time for our kids to gain wisdom is utmost important.