Adolescence has become a dangerous phase for parents. You can be the best parent and still be wrong without knowing where you went wrong.
Who is at fault?
Who should decide?
The parent or the child?
If parents decide and go with their understanding, the child finds them wrong.
If the child decides, then anyways, parents are wrong.
If no one decides, still with the current trend, the child doesn’t count on his parents and feels he is alone.

Thanks to social media, which is forcing children into creating an identity of their own ….very different from their parents at an early age. Bear the pressure of the opinions of peers and unknown people about the created status. And finally get into depression, distress, or commit suicide. Social media is giving the children unwanted importance, and they are building a wall of prejudice for themself.
And then parents are left with only regrets and questions which have possible illogical reasons.
Children are smart, intelligent today but only in bits and pieces. They can speak but no holistic approach to life. Most of the children today have social media as their parents. And with all their borrowed wisdom from Social media only in words, we feel they are better than us.

We feared what our parents would say. They fear what will the virtual world and their friends say.
Our generation also was conscious of their image among their peers but was strong enough to overcome it.
We were better. Generally, we never dared to create a situation for parents anytime to regret despite being right at times.
We were confused, but we knew our parents could decide the best for us. We were impulsive, but we respected our parents to the extent of subduing our impulsiveness.
We got so many blastings, whether right or wrong and still, we felt there is a long way to go…to learn to improve throughout our lives. Turning out to be right was a never-ending process, but today’s children think they are correct, and parents are wrong from the beginning – from childhood and not even adolescence.

They are so keen on justifying with a dominance that parents are wrong and they are right. They see a glimpse of others’ families -a perfect picture visible superficially or partially and feel everything is wrong at their own home or with them..comparisons are partial pictures with complete pictures. This picture will be shown to anyone by all with some hidden realities. How can they match?

Formal education on Social media for a defined tenure is a must for children today. The more we delay or ignore, the more disasters. We need to teach children life skills and how to apply their minds spontaneously than referring google for anything simple thing or complicated thing too. For instance, if a kite is stuck in a tree, to remove it, they will want to google it out. Online games are the only games they know. Insta is the only time pass they have. More the followers, the more the pressure to keep up your public image. Texting on Insta is the single communication mode they know. We have to teach them not to be carried with the opinions on social media.

Time to build a child’s mental and emotional health. We have to pull our kids out of this sooner. It’s every parent and society’s responsibility.

-Sucheta Gour