Psychologists hold disjointed families, fractured relationships and intrusive technology responsible for breeding this present-day problem.
The story of the “lonely child” is almost the same all around the world. They sulk in a corner or clam up in depressing doldrums for lack of proper interaction, one-to-one dialogues or quality time spent with their peers.
Psychologists hold disjointed families, fractured relationships and intrusive cyber technology responsible for breeding this present-day problem, with most parents and caregivers tackling a hectic schedule find it really tough to ensure quality time to their children.
Kolkata-based psychotherapist Dola Das Majumder observes this trend as a modern-day by-product of divided families.
“Even in broken marriages, the separated partners arrive at a mutual consensus to devote a stipulated stretch of time after their child-caring,” she said. “They maintain that their children are their only priority, and accordingly, plan out short days-out, dinners, amusement park visits and so on,” she adds.
Delhi-based homemaker Shefali Kapoor reminisces on her childhood: “I still relish those sisterly gossips we had as college-goers forgoing our sleep. There was no discotheques to dance the blues away at night like today’s next-gen revellers do. We were content in our comfortable cots seeking pleasure from the simple things in life.”
“The current-day progeny is marked with contradiction,” she said. “They appear so well-connected through mobile phones and well-networked in the wi-fi areas of A-1 cities, yet they hardly talk to their next-door neighbours on the other side of the compound wall, colleagues in their adjacent cubicles or family members under the same roof,” said retired government employee Alok Shah from Ahmedabad.
The current world seems to offer everything from the quaint to the ordinary in the form of ordered services to its target customers.
Event management companies often step in as Santa Claus to gift nuclear families with their biggest missing link — togetherness and family bonding.
As a result, a weekend trip to the wilderness gets substituted with packaged indoor activities.
Having been affiliated to a number of schools and social-welfare clubs, Mumbai-based Amit Solanki of Zodiac Entertainment has spearheaded “green” activities to champion eco-friendly causes.
“We flocked to different locations with students and make them take part in plantation drives, pet-caring, gardening, environmental protection, water conservation and the protection of other natural resources for a better tomorrow,” Solanki said.
“A school campus should ingrain the significance of fun with learning. Only then, education will be more useful to pupils who are visibly drawn towards engrossing practical classes rather than attending empty theoretical lectures,” he adds.
Premium city bookshops offer plans to dole out a series of storytelling sessions to nurture the developing brains and imaginative skills of growing kids.
“We need to address this area urgently. Surely there’s a dearth of a sufficient support-system that enables our ward to respond and react to their surrounding world positively,” notes Sejal Arora, teacher at South City International School in Kolkata and brand ambassador of Toy Story bookstore.
“It facilitates confidence-boosting and spreading a feel-good vibe among a bunch of smartie smallies who are thrilled to the bone. We also teach them a Best-from-Waste activity that deals with narrating stories through craftwork. For instance, painting toilet paper rolls and converting the same into octopuses, cutting coke bottles into bowls and containers, deposited egg cartons into caterpillars. The moral of the lesson is never to discard things but utilize them as items for preservation,” she concludes, sounding overly pleased with the burgeoned footfall of children from a meager 15 to 75.
“We regularly welcome infants from nurseries to kindergartens to standard one from reputed city-schools. After reciting the story, we throw open the floor for a Q&A round to test the concentration levels of listeners, if they have comprehended the text well as well as its characters and also enjoyed the whole experience or not,” says Amarpreet Khurrana, senior teacher at Shemrock, a leading preschool chain and an associate with the plush Oxford bookstore. Mothers dropping in with their babies also make it a point to sit beside and overlook the complete session. They take a leaf out of the teacher’s book in matters of handling their offspring at home. “We always instill a strong parent-child involvement. Both should show equal eagerness to participate. Stories are usually designed around fables and fairy tales as per children’s preferences. E.g. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, et al,” she chips in. Using paper plates and glasses, the children also dabble in festi e-craft and flower-making.
