Your child’s future doesn’t have to be signed and sealed on the basis of exam results.
Once board exam results are out, every family with a child in the Xth or XIIth comes to the end of an extremely demanding year of academic life. The results bring parents some surprises, pleasant and unpleasant, as well as confirm some of your readings about your child – his study habits, her abilities, his academic strengths and weaknesses, her aptitudes…
If you look at the year that has gone, or even the last two years, it is quite possible that your relationship with your child has been severely taxed and affected by the pressures of preparing for one of the first educational milestones. You will have been forced to nag, cajole, bribe, threaten and punish your 15 or 16-year-old to focus on studies, work hard, put in certain number of hours of study, concentrate. Also, during this time, your child will have had to, unfortunately, leave behind some of the essentials of growing up: all ‘non-productive’ pursuits like music, hobbies, sports, even good old day-dreaming will have been virtually banned or suspended.
However good or bad your child’s Board result, it is perhaps now time to turn to some neglected areas. It is thus truly a time to a) mend and strengthen some aspects of your relationship with your child, and b) encourage him/her to reconnect with hobbies and pursuits that nourish the soul – in ways that cannot be quantified in any marksheet or anygrand total.
These two ‘agendas’ are bound together, because they are areas in which you can return to the more healthy and holistic role of parent as facilitator rather than as ring-master. This will, quite naturally, help in mending the frayed nerves and tempers of the last one year and healing your parent-child relationship.
How can we go about doing this?
Firstly, consciously and actively disconnect from the ‘Board exam mode’. Undertake non-goal-oriented activities with him – listening to music, a ramble on the hill, watching a favourite film/animation movie, letting her experiment on her keyboards without insisting on practise, practise…
Draw up you own ‘marksheet’ of ‘subjects’ on which you would rate your child – which no Board exam ever will. ‘Subjects’ could include: Caring, Sharing, Sense of Humour, Helpfulness, Curiosity, Talent, Application, Friendliness, Self-confidence, Self-worth…You may or may not choose to show the ‘results’ of this examination to your child, but it will definitely help you to reconnect with the inner core of your child.
Suspend your and the Board result’s ‘judgement’ of your child as ‘lazy’, ‘careless’, ‘average’, ‘poor’ ‘not meant for science’ etc. Introduce her to people from different walks of life who are doing well for themselves and are responsible and happy citizens. This way, the results don’t put a full-stop to your child’s (and your) aspirations, interests and choices.
At all costs, avoid holding the Board exam result as a ‘tool’ to taunt your child and ‘put him in his place’. This achieves nothing but a bruised and shrivelled spirit. If your child has an obvious weak spot in some area of studies, find constructive ways to help him overcome these so that he will be able to learn from any setbacks and do better next time, without loss of enthusiasm and self-worth.
Each child is precious and unique – something that the education system at times doesn’t allow us to take into account. Let us cherish them for what they are and watch them bloom in their own way, at their own pace.