Is Childhood All About Getting Trained For Adulthood?

By Author: The Star Global School
Total Articles: 77
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Children are more or less the same as tender clay. Just like a potter gives shapes to his clay, they too are ready to get molded in the manner we mold them. Hence, as adults, it becomes our responsibility to cast them in a way so that in the future, they emerge as personalities who are confident and in charge of their lives. And we, at The Star Global School, one of the leading schools in Rohtak, sincerely try to practice the same.
We deem that rearing a child is “not” a bantam task! And to assist parents in this process, we would like to share some crucial insights in this regard.
 
Each phase of life has its own significance
One of the leading Psychiatrists in the field of Child Adololesnce, Dr. Shilpa Aggarwal, emphasizes that before teaching or preaching to the kids about nuances of life, we, as adults, must first acknowledge that any human life is divided into certain phases, each with its demarcations and spans, be it childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. And each of these phases of life has its particular importance.
However, sometimes, it so happens that ...
... many parents tend to forget about these invisible demarcations and expect their children to demonstrate signs of mature behavior. Such unrealistic expectations end up a lot of stress on the mental and physical growth of kids, which gets impacted unconstructively.
At The Star Global School, we firmly believe that childhood is the first step towards the constantly judging world, and this is the phase when children get prepared for the infinite challenges that they are likely to deal with in life ahead. From getting to know the family members around little by little to taking the first small step on their own, children have to cross countless milestones in life, beginning from the very first day. As such, expecting them to conduct in tandem with adults in their raw years only appends additional pressure on these already encumbered beings!
 
Key issues that children face when burdened with unrealistic expectations
Dr. Nancy D. Chase, the author of “Burdened Children: Theory, Research, and Treatment of Parentification," talks in her book about the negative effects on children when they get overburdened in this so-called training for adulthood. Some of the key issues that children face include:

Impulsiveness

Children are not yet fully ripened during the childhood phase, and hence when burdened with any extra luggage of maturity, they start behaving recklessly. They begin to act without giving any thought, interrupt conversations, choose to take unnecessary risks and show many other signs of impulsive behavior.
 

Anxiety

When children are expected to behave like adults, they gradually get caught by anxiety issues, which impact their mood, sleeping routine, eating order, and play activities.
 

Guilt

When children realize that they cannot meet their parents' expectations of behaving like adults, they go deep into guilt mode. They start judging themselves too harshly and blame themselves for even the things that are way beyond their capacity.
 

Depression

According to the statistics, depression occurs at a rate of about 2% prior to the teenage years and at approx 5%-8% when both adolescents and children younger than adolescence are considered. A child, when doubts herself/himself, sets in the feeling of incompetence, which has the domino effect of putting the child further into depression.
Culminating, we, from the dais of The Star Global School, one of the leading schools in Rohtak, would grab this opportunity to highlight the bottom line here, that childhood is the principal phase in a child’s life. And by overburdening this pure and chaste period with unwarranted, never-ending expectations, we risk our children’s innocence and spontaneity. A whole life lies in front of them to behave mature and act adult, but these guilt-free, clean, and honest years of their lives, once gone, are never going to come back!

Hey! Myself Tanya! I work as a marketing strategist. I have been working as a content writer for various educational institutions.