Children and Our Cultural Legacy: Dolly Singh
Council member Dolly Singh is a poet, author, editor, and founder of the Delhi Poetry Festival. In her latest column for this blog, she makes a passionate plea to parents to rethink their definition of raising ‘successful children’. She urges parents to take the time to guide and support their children in the chaotic landscape of social media and show them the way to preserve their culture and legacy.
We often talk about children being the potential custodians of our values and cultural legacies. As parents and guardians, we always have a desire to see our wards growing up as balanced and kind human beings. But what are we doing to ensure that? Only wishing does not help.
We have to inculcate in them an awareness of their responsibility towards society and their ecosystem. It’s sad how parents only focus on the marksheets of their children. They will fight for every mark that the teacher might have missed crediting to the report card, but they exercise total neglect when it comes to the holistic growth of the child.
How many parents sit down with their kids to explain the importance of being an Indian? The importance of the Constitution and their constitutional rights and duties? How many of them teach their children about secularism and oneness?
We live in a world totally dominated by social media. Children have access to the internet because of their studies. That means they are exposed to all the toxicity and negativity so rampant across social media platforms.
Sooner or later, your child is drawn towards it and on a ‘not-so-good’ day, she is totally sucked into it. As young adults, when they start having their own beliefs and opinions, or well … ideologies and affiliations, they can’t help but get involved in virtual clashes with people with opposite ideologies. Then begins the social media rut that leaves the child with anxiety and mental disturbance.
Your child, for whom you had dreamed big, gets into all these wasteful and unproductive activities and becomes susceptible to mental illness, anxieties and fears. Her focus wavers and her performance drops.
Besides their results in school or college, the other things that your child is affected with is language degradation, total disregard for social norms, and declining respect and tolerance for people from other communities and regions.
The enlightened ones among us must first take the situation into control by joining hands to save and sustain our cultural legacy and secular values.
What is our culture? It is the amalgamation of all communities, languages and religions that make us true Indians. It is living in peaceful co-existence.
Yes, let’s focus on making our children true Indians and good human beings. Keep them away from hatred. Encourage them to read books, draw, paint, sing, make music, write poems, play sports and so on. Let them plant trees, teach underprivileged children, visit senior care homes, hang out with good friends, and much more. Schools keep your child for eight hours but you are with them for many more.
Your responsibility does not mitigate by just enrolling them in ‘good’ schools. Please teach your children love and brotherhood. Teach them creativity and gently push them towards good literature and arts.
That’s all from me this time.
Love and light,
Dolly Singh
dolly@delhipoetryfest.org