The changing times and the growing children

Many people might say that at my age, I haven’t seen and experienced life at all. But I would just like to say (and my fellow research scholars would agree) that in 5 years of PhD, we seem to experience almost every facet of life. My journey as a research scholar began with my sister’s wedding and it is sort of ending with my father’s first death anniversary, with the birth of my niece in between. However, something else has shaken me up quite as much and led me to write this piece.

I was educated from an all girls’ convent in Guwahati in the late 90s’.  I remember how innocent and naïve we were in those days. In high school, if some boy from Don Bosco (an all boys’ school at that time) just looked at us, it used to be a huge discussion in the class.  The topics that are sort of ‘in vogue’ today like “one night stand, live-in relationship” and most importantly “sex” didn’t really grab our attention; in fact, I don’t think any of us knew the proper meaning and use of ‘condom’ till class 9, when a substitute teacher had discussed this with us. The most that we did in terms of growing up in the absence of the opposite sex in our midst was finding out love percentages and FLAMES (SMC girls, remember this???!!) with the boys we knew from tuitions.

However, something that led me to pen this down occurred when I visited my expecting cousin few weeks back. Her brother-in-law has a beautiful daughter, Jia, who was studying in class 2. Over tea, we were sort of discussing about the changed times, when she told me that her niece, (after coming back from school) had asked her what is meant by “live-in relationship.” Hearing this, I choked over my tea and asked her, “What did you tell her?” She said, “I told her ‘relationship’ meant ‘our bonds with family and friends’ and ‘live’ meant ‘to stay’. So, ‘live-in relationship’ meant ‘staying together with friends and family’….what else could I tell her?” Yes! This is the reality of today – a 8-9 year old knows about the existence of the concepts like ‘live-in.’

Though we passed this incident with a laugh that time, it stayed with me till now and got me thinking – if some class 2 kid knew the phrase ‘live-in relationship,’ surely sooner or later some other kid would come up with its correct meaning; after all kids nowadays are born fast! I am sure it wouldn’t take them long to figure out the million dollar question – where do babies come from? They are a thousand times more curious than we, 90s kids were at that age and thanks to the modern age technology, they know how to get answers to their innocent, yet curious questions. It wouldn’t be long when tender-aged Jia, along with many other kids of her class would realize that the elders of the family lie to them on ‘such topics.’ As they grow up, learning new things, amidst chaos and confusions, discussion with friends might seem more realistic to them. Conversations with family would become limited and learning from them would decrease substantially. Hard may it seem to believe, but this is the bitter truth with our growing children. Hence, it might happen that whenever they have any bigger problems later in life, it wouldn’t be their parents and family with whom they seek solace and advice, but those friends who tell them the truth!

I am not saying that the changing times are bad – we are growing unfathomably in technology, science, literature and what not. But the children, our little things, are innocent beings. I fear that the changes happening in our society can have some detrimental impact on the minds of our growing children, which in the long term can have deleterious effects on their relationships with their family. I know I am not a parent yet (but I am a Maasi) to give any advice in this context, but it is my heartfelt request to the parents and elders of growing children to carefully (but SURELY!) monitor their kids and their growing knowledge. After all, as the saying goes “All that glitters is not gold,” not all change is good, isn’t it?