By Rashi Kaushik
It is so uncommon in India to talk about mental health specially with your parents. They just don’t consider it a problem no matter how much of suicide and depressed stories they hear. They simply assume it’s not going to happen with their child but that’s not true. No body has survived without facing mental health issue. We all have went through that phase where we felt like we needed to talk to a person to feel better or just needed help to deal with the overthinking. We look for that comfort in a friend or in a boyfriend/girlfriend who are also of same age and dealing with the same issue in one form or the other. It’s not wrong to find comfort in another person but the best would be to talk to parents about it. Not necessarily both, any one you’re more comfortable with but there should be one. They can be the best to comfort you and understand you but they simply don’t get this. They think children and teenagers have no issue or even if they have then it’s not worth talking about because it’s not related to business, job, politics and all. They only think their problem is big enough to be talked about and to be worried about but even a kid who has no friends at school is a major problem to be discussed and solved. Problem at every phase of life is different but that doesn’t make it any less important than adult. Teenager is the most crucial phase of life. Every adult is well aware of that yet they ignore it like it doesn’t matter. Teenagers go through a lot of changes during their adolescence period. Several hormonal changes and adjusting to the surrounding make it difficult for them to understand a lot of things at that point. Some manage to go through it really well while others are just compared to better ones and forced to act properly. They are scolded like children for every small thing they go wrong with and expected to act mature like adults. The more understanding environment they need, the less they get.
Nobody understands the loneliness they feel from inside irrespective of the fact that they are surrounded by closest of people all the time. Yes, some might be extremely notorious as well yet they all can be handled with talk and giving them comfort and understanding. They should consider their parents as their best friends but that’s only possible when parents have the capability to listen to them like a friend. A friend who won’t immediately pass a judgement on every small thing. Parents should know when to give a pass and where to oppose and make them aware of the consequences of the wrong. A balance is need to be maintained between them. If they react all every small issue then they will just stop sharing all the stuff and if they become absolutely lenient towards everything then the child will lose track. Parents job is not just to take care of the food, shelter, clothing and education. it takes a lot more than that to be a good parent. Give time towards understanding your children. Instead of creating fears in their minds, give them comfort. I have seen many students shivering out of fear is they fail academically, why? Why fear? Why not feeling bad about disappointing their parents? Because they know the moment their parents see the result, they will either get scolded or beaten. Neither mom nor dad will come and talk to them with love on what went wrong. Why they couldn’t perform well. They will just shower their anger on the child by saying that, this kind of result was expected as the outcome of the behaviour they have. What were they doing when they saw they children not studying. Why they didn’t sit with them and study something. Even if one is busy with work, the other person can do that, or if both are busy earning then they can provide a home tutor. Anyhow its their job to care of their children in ever way possible apart from providing the basic needs in life. A child needs a lot more than that and it should be the job the parents to provide them and give it equal importance as other needs because such pressures and other things force a lot of teenagers to turn towards smoking, alcohol and drug abuse. This will spoil their whole life and they might they addicted to some for a lifetime. Talking about all kinds of things that exist or giving them that comfort to talk should be on parent’s priority list for their children. There are no problems in this world that can’t be fixed without anger. Gandhiji got independence without any violence and anger and yet Indian parents think they need anger to control their own genes.
By Rashi Kaushik