Let’s Save credulousness and Innocence in our children

Pic Courtesy – https://www.voubs.bg/photo/innocence-childhood/fa3b484157b6100ac5f3052a2eea4d09

Today, while going through the headlines of the newspaper, I got stuck by a piece of news “An eleven-year-old boy who was traumatized-and beaten up brutally by three boys on 18th September in Northeast Delhi, died after developing complications due to injuries inflicted on him”. Another heart-breaking news was, “the 17-year-old boy, who was brutally stabbed by seven juveniles, including his classmate, in Northwest Delhi succumbed to the injuries”. While turning the pages, there was another painful news of a woman who was stabbed to death by her husband in front of a nine-year-old child. What kind of a society we are living in, where our children have got affected to this extent of brutality? This measurable and scalable development preached and promoted by all of us, has certainly equipped us with a lot of tools to save us from all the vicissitudes of life. But the question is, at what cost where even our children couldn’t be saved from the side effects of this development? Are we not transforming this world into a place, where credulous and innocence are evaporating at a pace, that in coming years, these words would vanish from the dictionary?

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It’s said that knowledge is a powerful tool in the hands of a human. Because of its power, in today’s competitive world, children are taught to seek knowledge at a rapid pace. If it is used positively, it could lead to a revolutionary constructive future. And it can be destructive if it is used in the wrong manner. Because the knowledge could potentially teach children inappropriate behaviour and actions, which are visible in today’s world. Exposing the children to a vast sea of knowledge can, not only ruin their innocence but their whole life. In recent years, we have seen a complete transformation of society’s most fundamental attitudes towards our children. In comparison to the world, where parents once felt obliged to shelter their children from life’s vicissitudes, in today’s world, most parents have come to operate according to a new belief and philosophy, “that children must be exposed early to survive in an increasingly uncontrollable and inhospitable world”. The age of their protection has ended. The age of their preparation has been set in. In this process, our children have been the worst sufferers and the consequences are visible in society.

Now the children are enlisted as an accomplice in their upbringing. Now instead of telling them what to do, the parents have started explicating for their children to agree, forgive, understand, and decide. The child has come to seem to be a psychological equal. This is our modern world with a new value system. The one main feature of our modern world is our inability to retain a hold on the most valued gift of nature “INNOCENCE” for the children. We have been quickly losing the warmth, the freshness, the inquisitiveness, the springiness, the zeal to grow naturally, and the innocence of the childhood years. We have started discounting the sanctity of family as unnecessary and dispensable. In the last twenty-plus years, life has gone a full circle. We have chosen blood and guts in TV shows, mobile games, and other playing apps for our children. Playing in the soil in the street, dancing in the rain, singing, live dramas, arts, and culture are the things of the past. “We have part-time homes and part-time families”.

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From parents to teachers, everybody wants the children to experience the fruits and by-products of a post-industrial rather than a new ultra-informed 5G world, which they call knowledge. They don’t understand that the children in this process are losing their innocence at a fast pace and consequently stymied into a growth freeze which in turn forbids an open mind and open heart. When the child first learns the concept of right from wrong, they learn the truth of what is morally acceptable to do or not to do. Usually, parents and teachers don’t go into details about what truly constitutes as right or wrong. Instead of going into the basics, they go into the explanation of the shallow black and white of it. The reason is, parents now are so focused on building their children up for “Success”, that they forget to realize that, they are opening up a dangerous Pandora’s box of superficial and pseudo values in life which only escalate the traumas and problems in life.

In today’s society, as soon as a child is born, most parents have a predetermined image of what they see the kid doing in the future. They want the child nothing but the best. They think that it’s either perfection or nothing at all. They began to see everything as competition, success, and status in life. The foundation of this vicious cycle of competition, perfection, and winning at any cost itself is based on negativity which is majorly responsible for the loss of childhood innocence. That’s why harmony, cooperation, and trust in society are gradually vanishing and a robotic society is coming up. We treat our child like a mutual fund, where long-term investment is the key to gaining and achieving.

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Children today are boxed. They don’t relish the real fun of life. They are stuck up in their gadgets and have forgotten the life pleasures of playing in open spaces with real people. Psychologists say that children need to be allowed whatever they wish to do without being made to feel guilty. Childhood is the most precious, enjoyable, and impressionable phase in everybody’s life. How we treat children during their childhood determines to a large extent, how they will treat people around them in the future. It shapes their thoughts and moulds their personalities. Let the children just enjoy this glorious phase of their lives to the fullest, so that they grow into good citizens of society. The society can remain into existence only, if we can save the most precious credulousness and innocence among the children.