"Did you know there are tuition classes for children to train them to pass the admission interview of the best schools in the city?"
My friend informed me over dinner. I was in Mumbai for a couple of days and I was catching up with her after a long time. This was the first time I was meeting her after she became a mother. I was hoping against hope that motherhood had not changed her much and that she would still be the wild carefree person that she used to be in the past.
After her last titbit of news, I looked more closely at her, wondering if she was joking. She quickly went on to say that of course she would not think of doing anything like that. "But you know Ara..." she said, "there is so much competition these days. It is better to let kids get used to it. They have to live in the real world after all, and it is the parent's job to prepare them for it."
"But," I intervened, "that is not how we were brought up. And look at us, we have done well enough for ourselves. Why can't we give our children the freedom and the space as well? How important is it to get into the best school? How do we know it is the best school? What is the definition of a best school? Why are we so driven to eliminate the possibility of our children making a mistake or doing something wrong? Why do we want to insert them into a sterile equation, and then expect that the proven formula will carry them towards success? Don't you think that the fact that we were not always given the best of everything made us better able to cope with the real world? That it helped us in thinking differently and uniquely to attain the same state of equilibrium that we are all after?"
"No Ara, you don't understand because you are not there yet. Maybe once you are a parent you will understand how it feels and you will see that you need to change too... anyway forget about all this, tell me more about your life..."
And we continued chatting about things in the past, things we had in common. I wondered if we will ever have anything common in future at all. Only time would tell I guess, but for now I knew that my childhood friend had changed. She had somehow become one of them and this was not a good feeling.
I came back and googled about tuition classes for toddlers in Mumbai, and sure enough my friend was not joking. Here is one report.
My friend informed me over dinner. I was in Mumbai for a couple of days and I was catching up with her after a long time. This was the first time I was meeting her after she became a mother. I was hoping against hope that motherhood had not changed her much and that she would still be the wild carefree person that she used to be in the past.
After her last titbit of news, I looked more closely at her, wondering if she was joking. She quickly went on to say that of course she would not think of doing anything like that. "But you know Ara..." she said, "there is so much competition these days. It is better to let kids get used to it. They have to live in the real world after all, and it is the parent's job to prepare them for it."
"But," I intervened, "that is not how we were brought up. And look at us, we have done well enough for ourselves. Why can't we give our children the freedom and the space as well? How important is it to get into the best school? How do we know it is the best school? What is the definition of a best school? Why are we so driven to eliminate the possibility of our children making a mistake or doing something wrong? Why do we want to insert them into a sterile equation, and then expect that the proven formula will carry them towards success? Don't you think that the fact that we were not always given the best of everything made us better able to cope with the real world? That it helped us in thinking differently and uniquely to attain the same state of equilibrium that we are all after?"
"No Ara, you don't understand because you are not there yet. Maybe once you are a parent you will understand how it feels and you will see that you need to change too... anyway forget about all this, tell me more about your life..."
And we continued chatting about things in the past, things we had in common. I wondered if we will ever have anything common in future at all. Only time would tell I guess, but for now I knew that my childhood friend had changed. She had somehow become one of them and this was not a good feeling.
I came back and googled about tuition classes for toddlers in Mumbai, and sure enough my friend was not joking. Here is one report.
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