Kid of Your Dreams – My View of Parenting

Over the last week I had the chance to interact with kids and contrast parenting styles today and from my own childhood / adolescence.

Two things have changed since the time I was 12 (I am 19 now):

• Indians now are a lot more optimistic about the future of the country. When I was a kid it wasn’t uncommon to hear stuff about how India would find itself in the gutter and how there was a special place reserved in hell for the super-mediocrity of the people here(not a lot, but definitely pretty common among several walks of life).
• Kids have a lot more stuff to distract them and they are not immune to the information explosion (and a lot of TV programming in India has diminished in quality since early 2000).

Let it suffice to say, I believe the standard tenets apply:

• Assessment:
  It must be rather awkward to admit but kids need to be taught to evaluate themselves in such a way that they can perform better over time. For better or for worse, middle school onwards, Hyderabad’s education factories and the Nallakunta twist in kids’ education means that kids will end up spending 20 – 30 hours a week prepping for tests (this does not involve homework at both school and IIT Prep). I do not have any opinions on this system, the best in this system are a lot more successful than I am. One sure-shot way to ensure improvement is training your kid to pick up weak spots and evolve their study style over time.
• Faith:
  Far too many parents made the mistake of thinking their kids were dunces. Just look around Sharma in Nallakunta and you see parents engaging in such solid kid-bashing it is not even funny. One pattern I have observed consistently is that those kids whose parents trusted / backed them did great at school and at IIT Prep. Those who treated their kids like compost could only elicit rebellion.
  I attended FIIT-JEE in grade 11 and 12 with a kid whose parents wouldn’t let him sleep at night (they believed the crusty-old farts when they sold them on the midnight oil story (seriously I hate crusty old farts who all studied under a street lamp from 12:00 to 8:00 and worked in a coal mine or some other rubbish to buy the book they would read under the street lamp)). This kid slept through class (seriously what else could he do).
  Long answer short, stand behind your kid. If you can’t trust them to deliver, do not ask them to work hard.
• Stop Listening to Old People:
  There is no dearth of this species in Hyderabad. They throng temples, condominium gardens etc. This tribe is the worst to approach for advice. First, everyone has a son/daughter/nephew/niece in the US. Next, they know squat about engineering, science and education in general. I was told by one of these esteemed 60+ dunces that computer science was a useless field since some nephew of his (a computer guy) wasn’t doing so well. I was extremely close to mentioning to the idiot that his nephew was probably useless too but I didn’t have it in me to try and break the metaphorical cataract that this generation carries. Do not take advice from this group, they are ignorant (and extremely proud of it).

Now, a visit to Nallakunta / HPS proves that this is still true. Superstars who will change the world are still made in Hyderabad in large numbers and the environment they get at home has been pretty much consistent. Their parents did all the things mentioned above and the kids did great (they stumbled at times but that is normal).