Cityblog Live

CityBlog is back with all fresh local news, views, opinions, jobs, food and entertainment. Do send us your blog contributions to us for publishing at cityblogpuneonline@gmail.com

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Edition2: Parental Guidance

Don’t be surprised by the ratings of my blog. I don’t intend to publish any material which is rated as PG. My point is something which is an eternal dilemma for all fellow parents.Last year i used to follow Little champs on zee marathi. These kids are phenomenon. They sing excellent songs. Be it classical based, folk based, emotional, natya sangeet and what not. How can they perform without fear of established guests and jury, TV audience, popularity? God knows. God only has created them.But I would like to focus on thought process of their parents. They had supported the decision to devote sizable months in academic calendar of their children for music show. One would argue that what is compared to this level of publicity and break. One would also argue that they will also manage the academics. But to reach that level of greatness in non academic careers requires dedication and all out approach. There is a sizable risk. I have seen many music careers pursuant who wanted to be renowned performers but ended up as also rans and some at best may have reached music training. I don’t want to demean job of these foot soldiers but in India we do not have infrastructure to make a decent living. So is sports field. Not all reach levels of dhoni or tendulkar. I have seen great cricketing talents ending up taking sales jobs with private bank franchisees. Are the returns so great to justify this risk? But when they succeed they are one out of millions. This is on one side of the issueOn the other hand, i have seen some who were failure in academics, but still are managing international lifestyle thanks to IT revolution. They struggled initially but after a first break, they were persistent to look that as investment and made career. So is it a safe bet to let children focus on conventional academics. They live happily but just one of the millions.Question is to aim to be one out of millions or to aim to be just one amongst the millions. This is eternal parental dilemmas.My take: Its very difficult at young age to know what one loves. So it is the duty of the parents to expose the children to various things. It’s our duty to find something that he or she enjoys most. (This process can start at age of 5 and can go on till age of 8). Evaluate if he/she really has the required iota of skill combined with interest after a certain years of singular exposure say at 10. Then take a call. Work out fallback options. And then let it go... get her/him a great dedicated guru (that’s what makes difference)Its not very simple, that’s where destiny plays major role. But don’t ever teach her /him to give up on anything.

No comments:

Post a Comment