Parents’ failure to monitor their wards’ changing behavior as they progress from school to college can be blamed for the unfortunate outcomes. Most parents do not visit schools and colleges even upon invitation. For example, in a recently-held interaction program which I conducted for parents, very few attended despite having sent invitations to hundreds. The ones who came were those who genuinely cared and stayed in regular touch with the college to keep a tab on their ward’s behavior. This article is not meant for them. It is for those parents who have placed their sons and daughters in expensive private plus two colleges and then conveniently excuse themselves from rest of the duty. It is meant for those who boast about fulfilling their ward’s every demand, who believe that it is school/college’s sole responsibility to improve their ward´s behavior, who do not visit the college and meet their ward’s teachers, who pamper their children excessively and then regret later. And for those who allow excessive liberty and believe that education is just something you can buy.
Indifference of parents toward their children coupled with lack of communication between them and the college is the root cause of the problem. Generally, parents display one of the following manners: Either they do not care at all, they find out about their ward´s wrongdoings much too late, they take their wards for granted or they over trust them. All these inhibit hidden dangers.
Let me cite some examples to prove my point. The first example is about a hardworking mother and her troubling son. She had a lot of grievances regarding her son but she was very fearful he would find out that she’d talked to me. When her son came to my office he was restless and impatient. He gave his mother a vicious look and grunted “sabai gharko kura bhannu parchha? (do you have to tell everything that I do at home?)” The mother was literally trembling.
Deep inside young people are honest with themselves and the world they are living in. Every wayward adolescent is capable of reforming—it only requires a collaborative effort of parents, teachers, and students.
And then there was a middle-aged man who considered his son a role model. “My son can have as much pocket money as he wants. There is no limits. After all he is my only son,” he boasted. Apparently he was not much concerned about his son’s progress in his studies.
The third case concerns a girl student. Even on Saturdays she’d leave home on the pretext of attending ‘extra classes’ and go elsewhere. She’d also tell her college coordinators that her parents held her back for household work and then tell her mother that classes were not being held at college. That way she had been fooling her parents. The mother was aghast when I informed her that her daughter had been absent all the while and had even dropped her exams. The poor woman almost collapsed in my office. Perhaps she visualized the possible activities her daughter may have indulged in. She felt that her daughter had fallen from grace.
These three examples cannot explain all that has gone wrong with our plus two students. Neither do they point out to parents everything about how they should treat their children. But these examples tell us how children take undue advantage of their parents’ trust, ignorance, and affection. These examples also illustrate how the lack of communication between college coordinators/teachers and parents contributes to further worsening the problems. Evidently, all three parents had made mistakes. The first parent had not contacted college coordinators on time, the second had pampered his ward too much while the third parent had too much faith upon her daughter.
The consequences of parental lapses start to take concrete forms sooner or later. Youngsters leave home for college but go elsewhere, either to a café or early morning movie shows. They often fail in exams or pass with very poor grades. They can be seen loitering in the streets of Kathmandu: Earphones jammed in their ears, bowed heads and humming songs the lyrics of which they hardly understand and yet consider themselves modern. They sneak off to discotheques and gloat about being ignorant as to who the country’s prime minister is and about being totally unaware about the country’s sociopolitical situations. They hypnotize themselves not to like Nepal and call it gidi, veja, auda (meaning this country is good for nothing). Being impulsive, they can do anything due to emotional disturbances if they are not counseled in time. Colleges simply cannot act alone to curb this culture of anarchy without the parents’ support.
However, parents need not panic over the dreary pictures I have portrayed and other possible indulgences their ward may take to. There are things you as a parent can do. Make sure that your ward goes to college when s/he leaves for it and gets there and back home in time. Take note of the kind of company s/he keeps, jot down phone numbers of your ward´s friends and also their parents and make sure where s/he is when away from home. Visit college to update yourself about her/his behavior. Meet college coordinators and teachers at least once a month and tell them how s/he is faring at home and learn how s/he is doing at college. Tell them of the emotional problems if the child has any. Remember, education up to higher secondary level is a tripartite affair between parents, teachers and students. Even the most spoilt wards can change for better. I can vouch for it based upon my experiences of having helped troubled students some of whom were in critical conditions. Young people deep inside are honest with themselves and the world they are living in. Every wayward adolescent is capable of reforming—it only requires a collaborative effort of parents, teachers, and students. We need to understand this as something more than just a rhetoric.
(Writer conducts programs for plus two students at Kathmandu Don Bosco College where he teaches.)
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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