After going through the newspaper I found several leaflets mentioning about enrolment of children for summer camps. There were several advertisements inside the newspaper as well. A quick glance of these summer camp offerings is all about Spoken English, Abacus, increasing memory power, memorizing techniques, personality development starting from three year old children, Robotics for Class 5 students and so on. There were few activities for sports and music as well. I remember a parent asking me (in one of the counselling sessions)
as to how his son who just finished his exams the day before, is sleeping till 7 am and wanted my advice on which class he should enrol. Thinking about it I guess we have lost our mind completely. Summer vacation was something kids really looked forward to in the past but I am not sure if the same can be said now for a vast majority.
Why can’t a kid sleep a bit extra, play with his/her friends in the apartment, eat well, rest well, visit relatives/friends and more importantly just being the kids they are supposed to be. If they are really interested in a class let them join but this summer camp craze is heights and really puts so much pressure on the kids even during vacation. One should rather… really look forward to children’s vacation, not for anything else but for those few extra hours one could get to spend with them! The best personality development trainer for the kids can only be their parents and if at all we really want to give them a good time, try and check if you can bargain some time from your schedule and spend that time may be playing a game together or having fun by what our kids would like to do. When I see a kid speaking like a grown up adult it just scares me and there’s nothing to be proud about.
A good balance must be maintained between study and sports. Too much of either is not good for children. In our times, we started going to school only at the age of five. These days kids start pre-school at the age of two or so. The sight of small children carrying school bags of almost their body weight will bring tears to your eyes.
(This is a first part of the article and the remaining portion will continue tomorrow)
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
