Wednesday, 11 January 2023 | PNS | Dehradun
The time of the year has started when students start preparing for their board examinations and when many parents start to take pressure too as they want their wards to perform better in examinations. Many students said that though they feel the stress of getting good marks on the exam, the parental pressure to score the highest in the examination puts an immense extra burden on their shoulders. “I have been preparing for my board examinations well but the only subject I have been worried about is Mathematics. My parents have been constantly reminding me how I am not as intelligent as my siblings who have been good at mathematics. Though I am working on improving in the subject, my parents’ constant nagging often hurts me” said a 17-year-old Class XII student Manisha Gusain. Another student Avinash Tiwari said that parents unintentionally project their insecurities over their children and he has learned with time to not take their negative comments seriously. Experts suggest that parents need to be supportive irrespective of their feeling towards their child’s abilities as lack of their support can hamper their self esteem during examinations as well as in future. It also affects their mental health causing issues like depression. Many children take extreme steps like committing suicide if they feel they have failed their parents. Even if they survive their adolescence, it can affect them at any stage of their life, as per experts.
According to Dehradun-based clinical psychologist, Dr Mukul Sharma, many parents subject their children to emotional abuse, mostly unintentionally, to push them to achieve their goals. Such behaviour from parents causes drifts between them and their children which continue to get worse with time. Such children do not approach their parents with any problems in future as they assume they would not get their support, said Sharma.
He said that number of young people committing suicide, especially those between ages 16 to 24 years old, is increasing because they usually feel disconnected from their parents as they never got support from them during their childhood. “In a recent survey in Uttarakhand, it was found that 38 per cent of students feel scared and pressurised during exams because of their parents while 21 per cent of parents do not pay attention to their children’s education at all. Both scenarios are not ideal for a child’s growth and mental health. Parents need to understand that children need their support during exams rather than a projection of their fear and insecurities. They should not guilt them with statements like ‘You should be able to score over 95 per cent marks because we are providing you all facilities’ or ‘you would fail in life if you fail to score good marks’. Such kind of emotional abuse can scar children for life,” said Sharma.
He said that parents need to make their children feel secure in emotional ways too. “A child should be nurtured in a way that it feels completely comfortable in sharing his/her problems with its parents at any stage of life. Though not always directly, parental pressure in the form of emotional abuse does not just end with studies but continues to affect them at later stages too,” said Sharma.
