Parents, Do You Really Understand Us?

What about the hard work of the losers? Who are the losers? Losers are those who score less than the top stander(s). At least, parents and our educational rituals believe in the practice that their kids should top the class, school and the faculty to prevent themselves from not being the losers. So you don’t count the hard work of your losers who do not go shoulder to shoulder with the topper even if they tried their best and stood below the topper but not the least?

The host announces the winners. There is applause all in the hall. 

One by one, they run with happiness and smiling to bag their awards. The cameras go flashing, and the environment behaves like there are only the winners in this world!

Now the guest comes forward and congratulates the winners and also unwittingly address some words for losers. They say the ones who have not won are the real winners, but they have no sense of the natural feeling of losing in front of the so-called celebrating winners. 

It is so easy for them to flatten the degraded performers that they are also the winners. But, once only once please, I beg! Put your foot in the loser’s shoe too. 

“Losers are not losers but the winners.” This statement I always say with pride. 

Even a god cannot have all skills and qualities. Then? After all, we are just humans. 

Parents, I am telling the parents, please lend me your ears just for some second, please! It is an old cliche to say that parents have invested their time and money in their children. They want to make their children the best ones in the world. 

I bet all parents think the same! But at the end of the day, the truth comes to be very contrasting: only one person can be that child among all who the above host calls the ‘Hero’to, to the public attention. And the rest? Do these people have the right to degrade and disgrace every child’s effort to be the best? Why do you people make us compete in the meaningless ‘race of mouse’ and tag us winners and losers? Do you people focus on making us successful in life rather than pushing and pressuring us to stand at the top with distinction and beating our colleagues? 

Please, I beg! Do not kill the spirit inside the child.

“A child is just a child” this is what you guys think. Then how can that child win the entire contests, all the races, and bring the awards home?

A child cannot do everything you impose upon them to do for your happiness. You cannot be a winner in all things. A child cannot be perfect in every subject. 

Don’t scream and yell at your child just because s/he does not win. Do not give stupid examples of the winners that they worked even harder than you. Rubish the foolish thought that losers are losers because they did not study well, they don’t want to keep up and stuffs. Please, do not kill a child’s jell and spirit with these things. Do not nag that your child speaks to you louder. 

Every child has a talent. None of the children is born talentless. Just the parents cannot discover them, and the talent sinks and die. Every child is not perfect, nor are they all equally intelligent, but they can do something you have never thought and imagined. 

A child’s brain is like infinite space, but parents are stopping them from thinking widely. I beg! Please at least once only, just once, please, travel in the mind of a child. 

Parents compare you with different other children and say, “Look at that child, what s/he has done.” 

But parents can also compare themselves against the other parents and be like them if they think it is easy to be compared and stand the so-called winning position. 

I do not understand why parents tend to fail to realize the handwork their children are doing. I bet! They can never realize! Why should they know and understand us while they are already elders, seniors, and are our PARENTS? Isn’t this dumb thinking?

I do not say that our parents do not love us and care for us, but children want them to be understood along with love and care. 

Stop having unwanted control in your child’s life; let them be the ones they should be. Stop compressing a child’s spirit and let them fly in the open sky. Let them feel, realize and learn what the world is at their own disposal. Do not educate your child to achieve success by only passing all exams but educate them to identify the inherent talents that make them capable and thriving in the things and areas your child should be. Do not be foolish to compete your child with others. If you are doing so, you are killing the spirit of your child. Never scold you as a child just because they have lost any competition but realize their hard work. 

Everybody cannot be the stereotyped winner, but everyone is not a loser. Losers are the ones who do not care about anything and do not work hard. Those are not the losers but have been wrongly tagged as losers by comparison despite their hard work. 

The losers receive some words just from your mouth, but they also deserved to accept some terms of motivation from your heart. Try it, and you’ll find them the winners soon. Scolding your child because they failed in a subject does not help them to thrive. Have you ever bothered to look at how well they performed in other subjects? Their weakness can be their strength if you let them do it by themselves. Every child is a winner. The world is failing to realize the truth that a child can never understand the reality of life if you keep them in the cage. If you release them from the box, they will realize the truth of life and the world. 

I strongly do believe that in many cases, the unsuccessful ones are unsuccessful because their parents have already killed their spirit and will. Even if a child is barking like a dog at parents and seniors, I know none of the parents will take it from the heart. I know parents do not have that sort of mind which can understand these things. 

Writer’s note: A student of grade 9 writes this essay to bring change and open the eyes of all parents, but it can also just be a piece of paper that might remain in a corner side and might value nothing more than dusty rubbish. 

Prithvi Raj Chauhan

The writer is a 9th grader in  Aksharaa School, Kathmandu, Nepal.