A Case for Children

Sivaram

“Your daughter wants to go to the washroom at least three to four times whenever I take Hindi class for them almost everyday” reported one of the teachers to the parents during a Parent Teacher meeting. The little girl was in class II. This was happening for almost a month and parents did not know about it. The first reaction of these urban parents was shock.


The parents straightaway concluded that this was a serious medical problem and decided to go to the doctor. The child however, said she would not go to the doctor. Child’s resistance and the teacher’s message both added to the stress of these parents. Believe me, for many parents attending PTMs itself is a stress factor. Perhaps better sense prevailed and the parents approached a counselor.

It took almost two hours of interaction for the counselor to develop a rapport with the child followed by the fact finding session. The outcome turned out to be amazing. The problem was that the child actually did not like to write Hindi and the teacher used to give a lot of writing work in the class. The child chose to find a way out to try and stay away! Perhaps these are the children who would decide to take sick leave or bunk classes as they grow up.

While the fact is that the child thought of such an excuse is - the smartness of today’s children, one needs to analyze this further. We might well be amused until we really empathize with those parents. Had they not met the counselor, they could have landed at the doctors clinic. Of course there are abundant medicines in the market waiting to be prescribed.

A lot of questions come up when we have a close look at this situation.
Was it because the child at that age was not yet prepared to take on that kind of writing pressures?
Was the teacher struggling to achieve targets because of other responsibilities on her?
Do we have any norms in place limiting the writing work for a child per day?

Ultimately these issues filter down to the PTMs where messages are conveyed to the parents that their child is a slow learner and they should do something about it.

It is a different matter that during the time and attention of the counselor, the child not only started writing but also developed a good handwriting, often getting smilies on the note book from the teacher


Kids who are unable to get attention to understand their side of the story; develop into restless, angry children with low self esteem. Perhaps few situations such as these are the beginning of low self esteem setting in. Constant suppression of feelings gets bottled up over a period of time. These feelings then show up by means of emotional outbursts. When they grow up physically stronger, they may protest vehemently and may become violent.

Such children could be identified and corrective measures taken, instead of straight away branding children as slow learners and dyslexic or children with attention deficit disorders.

There are certainly several excellent teachers, whose popularity among the children makes them visible in a group. But they have their own pressures both from their work place and family. The number of children in each class is well beyond the manageable norms. The demand and supply gap for schools does not allow us to reduce the number of children per class.

Every effort should be made to address such issues in totality by giving focused time and attention. While increasing the number of schools may not be in our hands, the quality issues could substantially be addressed by appropriate interventions.

Counseling is indeed a solution and a lot of attention needs to be given in this area. Some Possible steps:

Get a list of poor performers in terms of grades or marks e.g., on a scale of A B, C & D.
Each of these children could be studied separately by a Counselor to assess the reasons for poor performance
Give special time and attention over two to three months (just about 4 hours a week) and try to get these children on right track.
It would indeed be a great challenge but there has to be a beginning. Even an iota of success in bringing about such changes would mean a quantum leap in terms of quality. Debates, and discussion forums can go on – time of action is now .

The author is a renowned counselor.

Email: Siva61@indiatimes.com