Tag: Childhood

Safe Neighbourhood Is A Right Of Every Girl

Whom does the safe neighbourhood belong to? It belongs to people residing there and also the society and country, at large. It belongs to trees, birds, insects; and in India, it belongs to cars also! If the safe neighbourhood is a common resource, which it is; and an essential resource at that, I suppose a safe neighbourhood belongs to girls too.

(Neighbourhood is the area outside the gated community. It is the area outside the boundary walls of the apartment. It is a place with free access and not a restricted entry. With the shrinking of open spaces in India, the neighbourhood gets limited to by-lanes).

When there are so many burning issues around that require immediate attention, I know the safe neighbourhood for girls is an issue that easily goes on to a back-burner. Also, the refrain would be that the neighbourhood is already safe. Good people reside here, and anyway, there’s no issue as such. What’s the fuss?

Well, I also thought the same till the time B +ve and O +ve started cycling around – independently. What would be your reaction when you see six and half-year-old girls pedalling on the by-lanes in the neighbourhood? What would be your thoughts? You might say – What’s there to think? The girls are cycling. So, what’s there to react and speak?

I will share with you the exact reactions that our twin daughters get on their cycling expeditions. “What are you doing alone? Why are you alone? It is not safe for girls to be alone like this. Girls should not venture out alone. Why are your parents letting you out alone?” The girls get stopped on the neighbourhood by-lanes and are bombarded with these queries/statements.

The keywords are – Girls and Alone.

Why Can’t The Girls Be Alone?

I have been told by people who raised the questions about the girls cycling alone is that they are doing this out of noble intention. I don’t get the noble behind their intention. If they are scared about the well-being of the girls, they can ensure that no untoward happens to the girls – till the time they can see the girls (nobody would expect them to tail the girls).

They say that strangers can be bad for girls. Well, the people stopping my girls are strangers too and if they are claiming to be good, why would they allow any bad happening to a girl, or for that matter anyone, in their physical presence? They say that it is not their duty to ensure the safe passage of the girls. Well, if that is not their duty, what is their right to stop the girls from venturing out alone?

Everybody knows that India is no country to raise daughters. So, how shall we go about making India safer for girls? By locking them up at home (though, there is no guarantee of their safety at homes either) or by making the country secure – starting with safe neighbourhoods.

It seems that, for girls in India, the right to safety and the right to independence are mutually exclusive. If they have to be safe, they cannot be independent and if they have to be independent, they cannot be safe. It is nobody’s case that safety and independence have to be integral rights for every citizen and girls are citizens, too.

You might say that I am exaggerating/imagining. In that case, what are the premises under which my daughters, invariably, get stopped on their cycling independently? And yes, why only girls? Why not boys?

The Self-Confidence Of Girls

The continuous forewarnings hurt the self-confidence of my daughters. For that matter, they hurt the self-confidence of every girl who has to endure this. The “noble” counsel raises the fear/worry in their young minds that when they cannot even roam freely in a neighbourhood, what else can they do alone in this big world?

It becomes a difficult situation for a parent. You would want your daughters to sail the world, and then you realize that the neighbourhood, the very own neighbourhood where you stay, is beyond their reach?? The messaging that goes to the young minds is surely not motivational or inspiring.

When the girls, who have faced non-stop queries about their independent moving around since childhood, go on become young women, surely they do not feel emancipated all of a sudden. Rather, it would be more like they are used to be at the receiving end which they have accepted/forced to accept and they do more of the same to young girls in the neighbourhood.

Needless to say, it becomes a vicious circle wherein girls get ensnared right from their childhood in the name of being safe.

Safe Neighbourhood Is A Right Of Every Girl

Girls have a right to feel safe and be safe where they live. A lot is spoken/discussed about the rights of young women. This is, of course, par for the course – absolutely needed. What is also needed is that the girls get wings too, not far away but, in their very own neighbourhood.

The least a society and a country can do is to allow the girls to have the freedom to play and explore by the making of a safe neighbourhood. Girls have a right to enjoy their childhood and be treated as equal citizens of the country. The first step is letting them be, rather than locking them up.

Girls Can Do.

PS: I am a stay-at-home father to six-year-old twin daughters, neither an educationist nor an expert, just growing up together with my children. The above thoughts are an expression of parenting is having an opinion, getting involved and trying to better.

Stand UP, Speak OUT!!! #IAmAParent.

Entrance Exams Bypass Childhood To Adulthood Rat Race

These days, the conversation about the kids starts with the only question: “Which School?” We answer that our six-year-old twin daughters do not go to school because they are children. Invariably, regardless of the background of the person, the second question tossed to us has been “But then what about the entrance exams?”

The follow-up questions could have been raised about their learning, education, exposure, interactions, experiences etc for they do not go to school. We, parents, could have been grilled about our thinking and approach for not sending our daughters to school. However, none of these queries gets raised. The second question has always been about the entrance exams.

I don’t get this, at all. Why should anyone raise a question about an event that is a decade down the line? That too, with an air of certainty that the said event is a must-happen occurrence which the child should/must/ has to compulsorily get through. Why the rush? What’s the hurry? Why the unreserved single-minded focus and dedication for entrance exams?

Entrance Exams Are The Reality

I agree that the people who raise a concern about our six-years-old daughters’ lack of preparation for entrance exams have a valid point. In the Indian context, that’s the only point. It is true that unless for the entrance exams, the child does not seem to have a future in today’s India when s/he grows up to be an adult.

Be it the JEE/NEET/CAT/CLAT/CA/CS/IAS or whatever/wherever, there is no escaping the claws of the entrance exams. The private institutions, not to be left behind, have entrance exams of their own. The Institutes of Eminence need to be Eminent. So, how do they go about it? Entrance exams, of course (if only, the world rankings were based on the number of students taking the entrance exams).

There is nothing “New” in the New Education Policy (NEP) to make tomorrow’s India any different from today vis-à-vis entrance exams. When there is no alternative, when there is no notion of a substitute, what really is left to be done? Fall in line and fight it out for the endangered seats. It is a dog-eat-dog world when it comes to college admissions – public/private, JNU/Amity, even fly-by-night!!

All these mean that as soon as a child is born, s/he starts getting wired to be prepared for the impending entrance exams. That’s what the “well-meaning” people ask us when we tell that our children do not go to school. Just that the meaning remains limited to the future of the child decade from today and not today per se. What’s the fuss about childhood?

The Double-Standard Adults

Ask any adult. What’s the life-stage they would want to re-live? What are the memories they cherish? The answer will be childhood. There is a distinct possibility that an adult of today might have an abused childhood. In this case, re-draft the question: What’s the life-stage they would want to re-live “better”? The answer, again, will be childhood.

Today’s adult (parents and grand-parents included) attaches utmost importance to his/her by-gone childhood. But, the same adult has scant regard for the childhood of his/her children. S/he cannot think beyond the entrance exams. What else?

Ask any adult. What do you think where would you be a decade from today? Please list out the sacrifices for today basis the deliverables to your family in future. For example, save on your OTT subscriptions so that the child’s future can be invested in. A realistic question: What’s the contingency plan should you lose your job/vocation? In all probability, the said adult will laugh/scream out.

The adult that cannot plan for his/her future, essentially no thoughts or at best, some hazy ideas, has already thought through the child’s future and put into action. Entrance exams. What else?

As adults, we say that we prioritize creativity, fresh ideas, out-of-box thinking (I would have used more jargons, but I left the corporate job 4 years back). We say that individuality matters. What’s more, we want our child to be unique, just like us!! To back the pretending parents, the schools, with assembly lines (pun intended), promises to churn out exceptional and exclusively chiselled, only one of its kind, child!!

So, how do adults/schools go about this project of raising/schooling a “distinctive/innovative” child?

Common Entrance Exams for all the children, with not a single child left behind. Mission Accomplished.

The Missed Childhood

It is the sign of the dysfunctional and dystopian society wherein the success of the individual gets decided as early as the coding taught to a six-year-olds. What if STEM learning does not teach a child problem-solving skills? How will a child cope unless s/he is skilled and qualified to excel in the future entrance exams?

We are almost made to believe that if our children are not prepared for the entrance exams, we are doing a disservice to them. We are robbing them of their chance to have productive adulthood and setting them up for a failed future. Fair point.

I have not been able to raise a counterpoint that the child who is being groomed for entrance exams, throughout the childhood, can/might raise a minor query sometime in life that s/he was robbed of his/her growing up years. Won’t a childhood endowed with stress-free play and learning, along with, lead to a better chance of being a well-grounded adult? Isn’t this a fair point, as well?

What’s your view about the fait accompli of entrance exams on children’s formative years?

Reclaim Open Spaces For Children: Car Parking

Children lack access to open spaces to play, have fun and live their childhood. Everyone agrees that open spaces are important for a wholesome and enriching childhood. But, the key ingredient – open spaces are in short supply. So, what can parents do about it? How can parents help the children to run around and well, be children?

It is a hard task. On the face of it, parents can say that children do not have access to open spaces simply because there aren’t open spaces around. What can they do about it? It is the Government’s responsibility to ensure the availability of open spaces and make it accessible to children. That’s all. The buck is passed and we, as parents, can have the satisfaction of having done our duty.

I also thought like this. What a single person or a group of people can do for a civic amenity? Then, I happen to look around. You also look around wherever you stay. Can you locate the open spaces? Actually, they are right outside your house/below your apartment/round the corner. Ok, they may not be huge but there are open spaces all around us, good enough for children to play and enjoy.

Where and what are these open spaces hiding in plain sight robbing the children of the opportunity to indulge in their childhood? If there are open spaces all around us, why cannot we see them and make it available to our children? Well, these open spaces have been taken up by a certain thing that has come to rule our lives.

Cars

Walk the area surrounding your house/apartment. We may or may not find the trees and bushes, or the stray animals. However, we are sure to find lots and lots of cars. The parked cars, stationary and lying idle, not going anywhere. These cars, in the process of going nowhere, take up lots and lots of open spaces.

All of us are aware that cars are hazardous when they move. Cars cause pollution – air and sound, traffic snarls, road rage, accidents etc. Yes, the cars on their own do not do any of these, the people driving them do. Similarly, when the cars are parked, they don’t do any good either. Again, it is not the matter of the cars per se, but the people owning the cars that create the issues.

A car owner shall not allow any play involving a ball in the vicinity of the parked car. Actually, a car owner shall not allow any play equipment to come near the car for the glasses may get broken.  Even worse, a car owner shall not allow a child to touch the car or even come near for the car may get scratches. Leave aside football/cricket, even tag/hide and seek are not allowed when a car is parked.

The car does not just occupy space as per its dimension/size when parked; it actually occupies space as per the car owner’s whim and fancies to keep the car unscathed. And, this space is much larger than the physical size of the car. After accounting for this mental space of the car owner around her/his car, there aren’t any open spaces left for children to play. Rather, even stand and talk.

Car Parking

One might say that cars are a required evil. But, how can even the parking of cars be evil? Per capita land availability in Indian cities is abysmal and that gets further compounded by cars parked indiscriminately, everywhere and anywhere. Why a dedicated underground parking lot is not considered a mandatory requirement to buy a car?

Some people might get offended by the idea of compulsory underground parking that it is too expensive and not a practical idea. For that matter, aren’t cars pricey enough to deserve a covered and committed parking? Why are cars parked on road-sides like stray animals and they can’t even be shooed away? Be it RWAs or commercial establishments, cars will be chaotically strewn around.

Have you ever tried speaking to a car owner about moving her/his car so that children can play? We try, the responses have been stares and outright indignation. For the car parked in front of our house, the truant owner removes the entity in question mumbling under the breath. For other cars parked in the lane, we are told to mind our business and not disturb the resting place of the prized possession.

If the cars have a utility to be driven, why can’t it be parked unobtrusively when not in use, without trampling upon the right of open spaces for children?

Reclaim open spaces

Imagine the open spaces that would be available for children to play and fool around if there are no cars on the ground except for moving on the roads?

Imagine the sounds of children revelling in joy and banter as compared to the ghastly silence of the parked car. Both of them vie for the same space in India and the car wins outright, as of now.

Along with children, imagine the space available for trees and plants, shrubs and bushes, if not for the idle cars lying around?

All the above and more are possible if we reclaim open spaces for the sake of children from cars.

What are your thoughts about the availability and accessibility of open spaces for children? Have I tried to over-simplify the problem by blaming the cars? What will it take for children to reclaim open spaces that are rightfully theirs?

Open Spaces For Children In India: A Myth

What is the ultimate joy of being a child? What should be the perk of being children? Where and how children get to live their childhood?

Few more questions. What is the most blissful for an adult in watching over children? What is it that delights adults, which a child engages in? For adults, what would be their childhood memories?

These are no trick questions. Think hard. A hint – All the above questions and even more questions that you can think of, similar to the above, has a single answer. Irrespective of who you are, where you are, varied social/economic class, the answer remains the same and yes, again an only answer.

For me, the answer is children in their natural surroundings, exploring, interacting and playing with other children, oblivious of the world around, just being children and having fun. There cannot be any other answer.

A child is not going to remember gadgets and toys, clothes and gifts when s/he grows up. A child is surely not going to recollect when s/he first saw the mobile and the countless mind-numbing screen time s/he had. But, a child is surely going to remember the experiences and the events that s/he has lived through; outside the home and more so, with other children. Come to think of it, these are the memories of your childhood that you still carry with you.

By default, these memories and experiences will have a common thread – open spaces. There is no exact definition of these open spaces. They can be a playground, an empty plot of land, a vacant parking lot, a gully/road with less vehicular traffic, with/without shade, but open nonetheless and also, safe and secure for children to mingle and goof around without adult/parental supervision.

Importance of open spaces for children

Open spaces and children obviously go hand-in-hand. Childhood connotes freedom and being self, uninhibited and natural. What better place to express this, than open spaces? Not just outside the confines of the four walls, but also beyond the endless directives of overbearing parents/adults?

Open spaces expose a child to all kinds of environs and interactions. It gives an opportunity to children for hands-on and experiential learning that no amount of simulated and artificial set-ups can ever do. And, yes it is free of cost, available any time of the day, never stocked out, fresh and novel every time and a lot more.

I can go on and on about the importance of open spaces for children. But I suppose, each one of us is aware of it and that’s not the point. The point is that even though all of us know about the benefits of open spaces for kids, all of us are blissfully unaware about the conspicuous absence of the open spaces, anywhere and everywhere, for children to express themselves.

Where are the open spaces?

Try to recall open spaces for children in any of India’s cities of today. Try harder. Come on, there has to be at least one, hidden somewhere, in the neighbourhood, in the ward/locality, or maybe in the entire city/state/country. Sigh, I cannot find any. You are lucky if you have found one for your child.

Mind you, similar to a spontaneous childhood not amenable to exacting adulthood, open spaces do not fall in the realm of adult understanding.

A playground is not an open space. It is not accessible to children across age-groups/it may not be free. More so, most of the playgrounds have now been taken over for some sort of sports coaching or the other purposes.

A park is not an open space. Do not believe me. Try visiting any large-enough park that is open from dawn to dusk. The trees will be taken over by swarming couples in dire needs of privacy. Surely, they are no places for children to be left alone. A community park is a shared resource between the retirees and children. Retirees do not like to have any kind of disturbance in their eternal chit-chats. The result – children of all ages are driven out from the parks or caged in one corner.

A play-area of a gated community is not an open space. Yes, it is open and accessible, but selectively. It is not within reach of the children of maids and drivers working there, children cutting across social and economic strata. This is a must-have condition of open spaces – kids getting diverse and heterogeneous exposure and not a mono-culture of ivory towers.

Vacant plots and parking lots, empty roads and by-lanes hardly exist in today’s urban India. If they do, they are not safe and secure.

Options, Choices, Future

In such a scenario wherein open spaces for children in India have turned into a mirage, what could be the options, the choices that we could have made and have actually made? What does the present herald about the future of open spaces for children? I have written about this in the second part to the current article. Publishing soon.

What are your thoughts on the open spaces, rather the absence of it, for India’s children?

Parenting Is Growing Up Together

Does parenting impact a person’s world views and her/his inner self? Would spending time and engaging with child/children have bearing on how a person would have conducted herself/himself otherwise? Is parenting all about raising children or does it influence parents too? Everybody will have their thoughts. I can answer for myself. For me, parenting is growing up together.

O +ve and B +ve have turned six. I have completed three and a half years as a stay-at-home father. What started as an impulse has turned into a full-fledged passion, with my wife’s staunch support. Turning back, I don’t think I would have done anything different than choosing to be a part of my children’s growing up years (yes, the finances pinch, that’s another real-life story).

What have I learnt with this experience? Was I better off in the corporate rat-race? Has this been the time of reckoning that I had been trying to find all the years before? Is it worth the deriding looks and scorn that I generate with my answer that I am a stay-at-home father? How has it been for the girls, their mother and me?

My answer, again, would be the same – Growing Up Together. Not anything but Growing Up Together. Why? Here we go.

Parenting is a never-before experience

Look at it like this. Whatever we do in life, we are taught/trained/instructed all along. Everywhere, school/college/job/profession, there would always be somebody’s watchful eyes over our actions. There are text-books/manuals/SOPs for outside/professional world. We have norms/customs/rituals for family/personal world. But what about parenting? Nothing but the instincts of parents.

Yes, the grandparents get involved. But, apart from their physical babysitting, their value-addition in other spheres is a matter of debate for parents. When parenting is such an experience without any precedence, without any prior preparation, without any hand-holding; how can there be no learning at every step?

In a job/profession, when done long enough, the surprises aren’t many. The situations/decisions repeat themselves. But for a single-person enterprise, there are dedicated functional teams to take care of peripheral stuff around you. You are the boss of your work.

Compare it with parenting. Here, no two days are the same. Even two hours aren’t the same. The situations, routinely, are never-heard/never-seen before. And, there are no teams to support a parent, except for an equally exasperated life-partner. You are the subordinate to your off-spring.

Tell me, how is it not possible to learn in situations like these, day-in and day-out? Every competency listed out in the performance appraisal charade will find resonance in the parenting. Every management jargon taught in, alienated from ground realities, B-Schools will find an echo in parenting. All the life-lessons emanate from life experiences and parenting is a key on-going life event, should you choose to be a parent.

The above is what I encounter/feel every day, hence I feel parenting is growing up together. At least for me.

Learning happens from children, too

On the face of it, adults teach children. Children are the receiving party to any learning and parents, along with schools and society, strive to make children life-ready. Can there ever be anything that parents can pick up from their progeny on whose education they end up spending a fortune of money, time and efforts? Unlikely, one might say.

My wife is an ardent believer that there is ample enough to learn from children. Only if, children are given a chance to express themselves and parents keep a receptive mind. Do not believe this?

Try teaching curiosity to children. What about exploring? Playfulness? Resilience? Spending an evening or morning with nature/plants/insects? Try teaching “having fun” to children. Or the dreadful “happiness” as defined by the equally dreadful Delhi government (do adults need to be taught to be happy or children)? I have not even reached innocence, simplicity and the likes.

Accept it. There are enough and more things to be learnt from children, only if we are game. We might teach them the hard skills, they can teach us the soft skills that we have long forgotten and stopped attaching any importance to. We can learn from kids if we get rid of the fascination and urgency to make them reach adulthood and be our replicas, sullen and inept.

I have bought this concept of child-led parental learning. It needs a lot of re-programming of the mind, my mind that is, and I am trying hard.

Growing Up Together

All of family/social/school/corporate learning is not of much use to me in hands-on parenting. I have nowhere to hide my weaknesses in front of my children. Even worse, they pick up from me. If I do wish good for my children, I have no option but to improve on myself, which I avoided/cooked up excuses not to do, all these years.

To do this course-correction for self, I also have the biggest of enablers – my daughters. Through their daily actions, I get a dose of what all is possible should I try and see the world through their eyes. Life is not as convoluted and mind-numbing as I have made it out to be. I can live a life if I give life a chance – my daughters’ teaching.

Needless to say, the change is not easy and there is a lot of friction as the old self refuses to let go.

In nutshell, parenting for me is – Growing Up Together.

Toys And Games For Indian Children: A Missed Childhood

Have you ever tried buying toys or games? I tried in a shop claiming a decent assortment of toys and games. I found a Scrabble, a Pictionary, a Monopoly, a Battleship, 5-6 more games and that’s about it. For lack of options, I tried out online portals. It had a plethora of games claiming to be fun with learning, but for an exclusive game or a toy option, it was nothing more than what I saw in the store.

I walked all the aisles of the toys and games section in the store. An entire section was devoted to the assortment of Barbie dolls. One section had only the guns. One section was for blocks and one was for battery-operated toys. The last section dealt with the games mentioned above. I could not understand what were the options for children to just play?

I did a Google search on the Indian toys industry, found an article from The Hindu. It was a shocker.

3 facts about Indian toys industry

“The Indian toy market is about 0.5% of the world’s toy market,” says R Jeswant, VP Sales & Marketing, Funskool India Ltd (Source: The Hindu, March 14, 2020).

This is outrightly crazy. India has 17.7% of the world’s population (Source: Worldometers). If we talk only about children, India’s share in the world would anytime be more than 17.7%. Meaning, we have more than 18% of the world’s children in this country and they have only about 0.5% of the world’s toys to play with.

“85% of what’s sold in Indian toys market is imported. Again, 85% of the toys India imports is from China”, (Source: The Hindu, March 14, 2020).

This is another bummer. We have a pitiable share of the world market and whatever we do have comes from outside the country. China supplies 72.25% of Indian toys. If we ban China, and that we should, our children, for the time Make In India ramps up production, will have nothing to play with. A real nothing.

“India has $1.5 billion toy industry”, (Source: The Hindu, March 14, 2020).

$1.5 billion comes to 11238 Cr.  In 2019, about 26.62 % of the Indian population was in the 0-14 year category (Source: statista.com). This will come to 36.75 Cr below 14 years, though this is necessarily not the cut-off for toys and games. Combining the above 2 numbers will give us a budget of Rs. 305/- per child in India for buying toys and games for an entire year. A princely sum.

Unanswered Questions

  1. What would the children of the rest of the world be playing that Indian children are missing out on? Would the difference be limited to quantity or variety and quality of toys and games?
  2. How would this differential availability of toys and games manifest in Indian adults and adults in other parts of the world, who had access to them in their childhood?
  3. Is the limited access to toys and games for Indian children a recent phenomenon? Or has it been like this, historically?
  4. The Indian toy market is very small. What could be the reason? There is no demand because there is no supply. Or, there is no supply because there is no demand.
  5. Pictionary, Scrabble, Monopoly etc are games with a Western origin. Why aren’t these or for that matter any of the games not available in the vernacular avatar? Not even Pictionary cards?
  6. What about the Indian traditional toys and games? What are they? Where are they? Why there has never been scaling up for those 40-50 families in Channapatna, Chitrakoot, Kondapalli etc?
  7. China manufactures 72.25% of toys and games in the Indian market. How did this happen? How did we let it happen? What was the scenario earlier?
  8. India has hardly any outdoor spaces left in the urban areas for children to come out. If the toys and games are minuscule, what are the avenues for Indian children to play? Do they play at all?
  9. India has a plethora of institutional set-ups for children. If their buying of toys and games is taken out of the Indian numbers, what exactly would be left for the children at home?
  10. Lastly, what would be the thoughts of Indian parents about toys and games that it leads to such abysmal numbers?

My views

  1. Weight of school bags gets heavier by the day in India.
  2. Weight of parental expectations gets heavier by the day in India. (Why bother for anything that does not count towards JEE/NEET?)
  3. Parents who have not lived their childhood perpetuates the same with their children.
  4. As on date in India, malls are open, restaurants are open, religious places are open. But, the children parks are shut. Why? We don’t expect the children to play, only study online education. Hence, the continued lockdown for children below 10 years, 4 months over and counting.
  5. Letting children be themselves and have fun is a losing proposition in today’s world.

Above mentioned points are my guesses. Maybe, all wrong. After all, no children have ever complained; not even after becoming adults.

What would be your views about toys and games for Indian children?

PS: I consider Barbie a stereotype, not a toy. Similarly, the guns are meant for Army and Police, not for children. With all these STEM fun & learning combinations, why can’t we let children have just unbridled fun without the prerequisite of learning?

Temper Tantrums: Don’ts And Do’s

In the first part, I wrote about the temper tantrums as an inevitable element of growing up for children as well as parents. The first strategy to deal with temper tantrums is to try that they do not occur in the first place. However, they are bound to happen. So, how to deal with them?

Temper Tantrums Don’ts and Do’s

Basis first-hand experience as a hands-on and stay-at-home parent, I have a laundry list of Don’ts to deal with temper tantrums. The Do’s list consists of just one.

  1. Don’t focus on the surroundings.

The child is throwing up in public. The child is bad behaviour personified. Everybody is looking in the direction of the child and the parent. A parent is feeling ashamed, wants to run away from the scene, wants the earth to open up below the feet.

What should a parent do? Just forget about the people around. Believe me, everybody has only sympathy for the parent facing the child. Each parent in the audience has gone through this ordeal herself/himself. Why should they look down on anyone who is going through what they have endured themselves? For the others, either they do not have children or they had children so long ago that they have forgotten how it was way back then.

The child in rage deserves the sole attention from the parent, and not the notion of being a cool parent. It is fine. Simply put, everybody understands a parent’s position.

2. Don’t distract the child. If the distraction would have worked, temper tantrums would not have happened in the first place. It has failed, do not repeat it. It will make matters worse.

3. Don’t reward/punish the child to get rid of the situation. Even under normal circumstances, rewards and punishment are not the suggested parenting tools. When the storm is at the peak, they are not going to deliver. It will be further detrimental to the situation.

4. Don’t give in to the child. Once a parent does this, temper tantrums become a part of the learned behaviour of the child.

It is a split-second decision. If the parent wants to give in, do it before the explosion. Not as an afterthought.

5. Don’t reason with the child. Again, this could and would have been done earlier to avoid the situation. But, the fact that it has happened means either the reasoning has failed or the moment has gone to engage in a dialogue.

Come to think of it. When an adult is in a fury, s/he would not listen to anyone. How does one expect a child to do this? Not a worthwhile proposition.

6. Don’t leave the child alone. When the child is angry, s/he is the most vulnerable and needs emotional support. How can anyone be left alone at the moment of crisis?

Again, consider an adult in a child’s shoe of being infuriated. The adult needs a venting out, more so for a child. A child’s healing can never happen in isolation. But, only with a helping hand, body and soul of a parent.

7. Don’t trivialize and laugh out. It is a matter of life and death for the child that s/he is in a rage. Belittling and playing down his/her emotions is only going to make the hurt ingrained further.

8. Don’t remind the child of the previous temper tantrums. This will be adding fuel to the fire.

9. Don’t show and give examples of other children. How would an aggrieved adult feel when given an example of an irrelevant another adult? It is a foot in the mouth, with the additional negative of damaging the self-image of the child.

10. Don’t hit the child. A non-negotiable.

The simple way of arriving at all the don’ts is to think of what an adult would not want to be done to herself/himself when mad with anger. One cannot do with a child, what one does not want to be done to one’s self.

So, what to do with a furious and rampant child? I have only one suggestion.

Hug the child. Keep hugging the child till the moment passes through. Keep comforting the child. That’s it. Basis self-experience, this is the only mechanism I have to deal with temper tantrums of my twin daughters.

To be honest, it is easier said than done. I just keep telling myself that whatever else I do is going to worsen the situation, so keep quiet and just hug the girl throwing up.

The objective is to help the child identify, know and manage her/his emotions better. It is essential learning for children and also, the parents in growing up together.

What would be your suggestions to deal with temper tantrums?

PS: I also try and remember the trigger of the temper tantrums to avoid the history repeating itself.