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Soumya, reacting to my post, 'No kidding',

...Well, I come from the state which is one of the biggest victims of this trade, Kerala, the very state where parents fight over a state youth festival award , where if your kid ain't an engineer or a doctor or at least an IAS officer there is something seriously wrong with your child .Or even worse you as a parent is tagged as a failure. Well this phenomenon is so deep rooted that a person’s success is measured in terms of not whether he/ she is happy at what they are doing but at the number of times he/she has hit the limelight, and for the very same reason, shows like Idea star singer are a major hit. A sure indication of the fact that people are indeed moving towards the worst is the fact that more and more children nurture dreams of becoming reality TV stars or singers or VJs, thinking that’s what success is all about. It has spread across the state so badly that now kids who are supposed to be playing in the parks during vacations are opting for music, dancing, painting classes irrespective of the fact that he/ she may not have any interest in it. They are dragged down into these ‘personality development’ workshops where they are forced to spend their time nurturing the dreams of their parents not knowing what they really want. Every time parents do this to a child the parent actually takes away a part of childhood from the little boy or girl. The larger ramification of this act is that as adulthood approaches, kids end up with no dreams, no aspirations, sometimes they don’t even know who they really are. This could partly be held as a reason for high levels of depression among children for trifle reasons such as not doing well at a single subject at school or college.

Having a mind that’s truly your own has become a thing of the past. The even sadder part is that, schools and colleges which are suppose to be places that help one discover and develop oneself, build one’s dreams, seem to follow the ‘parental trend’. Now even play is all about competition and winning, and it’s only the winner who is encouraged, and the one left behind, stays behind for ever...

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