I was waiting for my cab. I was standing under a tree shade next to a small shop which was at the entry of a lane that led to my residential complex. It was a scorching afternoon with passing by vehicles puffing out black smoke. I dwell in a area that still has a tinge of rural setting. Old men manoeuvring their cattle across the road is a usual sight. Schools children were flocking across the roads, some with their mothers, some with their maids, and few with their school gangs. I was rejoicing this landscape.
A collision between a truck and a four wheeler interrupted my wallow. The drivers got into a brawl. Soon, people from neighbourhood joined the chaos. Later the truck driver fled and things were coming to a stand still when a gang of school children surrounded the truck, started the typical “maa-bhen” abuse and pelted stones at the truck, few of them even tried to run in search of the truck driver with stones in their hand. I was left awestruck.
Moments later my cab arrived and I was on my way to a venue where I had to deliver a speech on “Stress Management & Relaxation Techniques”.
All through the way, the act of those school children reflected upon me, the collision episode was slowly diminishing from my memory. I was still surprised at the way those children, still in their nascent age, reacted to the incident. They probably had no clue about what went wrong, whose mistake it was, or what the entire situation was about.
From where did this temperament of violence and abuse creep in? Weren’t they at an age to run bare feet into the sprawling fields or play cricket or do things that children of that age did?
My further pondering made a swarm of thoughts swirl in my mind. Foremost, the patience level has gone down generically across the entire generation, including the parents. With the kind of separations taking place increasingly it is inevitable that tolerance level of young couples has gone down. With the parents not able to manage their time and stress effectively, the frustration is passed on to the children. And in few cases children witness their parent’s agitation which gets engraved on their innocent minds, which is later practiced in the world outside, seldom noticed by their parents.
Other factor could possibly be technology; with arcade games gaining so much popularity, children today have forgotten playing strategy board games or outdoor games. These games actually help in channelizing mental thoughts and building up endurance which effectively aid individual’s physiological, physical, and psychological well-being/development. The computer games nowadays where killings, robberies, bomb blasts are primary themes teach children similar motives and have an adverse effect on children’s minds, and this is practised in the outer world again. Their minds become to prone to violent behaviour and their mindset takes a shape of thought – “eradication is the only solution”. In some parts of the country, access to weapons is easy, thus facilitating irrational killings or bloodshed where satisfaction of the ego is the only objective and impatience (inability to rationalise) the root cause.
Children are so much soaked in violence that it won’t be surprising to hear them talk about it or go ahead and do it.
It is the time to ask “WHY” such kind of behaviour has become so ubiquitous in our society and there is a strong need to devise techniques to alienate violence among children. While stringent rules and law regulations will not be the only solution to this problem, I am sure you will second me about the requisite veracity that mental well-being is a crucial facet of children’s young years.
Psychologists all over who have been practicing in schools and counselling about children’s mental health have stressed that it is just not necessary to impart academic and learning skills but it is also important to teach them thinking ability, coping up and communicating skills, and also few methods on behavioural aspects.
Every school, ideally, should have psychologists or behavioural therapists on their panels so counsel the children on timely basis and interface with the parents regularly to teach and seek feedback about mental wellness techniques.
Mental health services and counselling practices must be implemented in schools and our children rightly deserve it. Resources are available in plenty, they need to be tapped and there needs to be a change in our mentality too – “every individual referred to a psychologist does not necessarily equate to one being mad”. There needs to be strong measures for involvement and prevention at the earliest.
P.S. - Unfortunately, psychologists are projected as helpers, who are brought in only after the crisis has taken place, which regrettably is demeaning and certainly fruitless.
- Pragyan Jha
(Pragyan Jha is a qualified psychologist & practicing counsellor in Pune)
