Parent’s, don’t push kids over the edge.

Stress is something that we have to deal with everyday, whether it is studying or having fun, the element of stress would always linger around wherever we go. This stress is necessary for our everyday lives but excessive stress could lead certain dire consequences with the worse scenario being suicide. Taking into context of the topic for this discussion, we are focusing on kids whose main source of stress derives from obsessed parents more worried about their kids’ academic growth than their social growth. Parents’ tend to turn their kids from a fun loving child into an anti-social, ‘monster mugger’, social outcast whose main purpose is to study hard and get good grades and then move on to perhaps the Ivy League and then find a high ranked job with a well paid salary. These factors are very tempting and with a comfortable life at stake, parents’ a re willing to sacrifice everything they have and even their kids’ social life just so that they can get a fraction closer to fulfilling this ‘fairytale’. Alas, while this dream is possible, not very parent is capable of transforming their kid into the next Einstein and sometimes they get desperate and use extreme measures to try and salvage the situation but in turn end up destroying everything they ever had. I feel the three main reasons why parents want to turn their kids’ into these freaks are: their own pride, comfort and luxury.

Firstly, many parents’ nowadays care more about their own pride than their kid. I feel that the main reason for this is that when they were younger, they were the more popular ones and would often be in the spotlight and they also enjoy being in the spotlight. However, with the ever increasing responsibilities of a parent, they are able to enjoy limited amount of this spotlight which causes them to get frustrated and grieve. As such, they try to regain what’s left of it through their kids’. However, by doing so, they put aside their children’s’ feelings and focus on theirs solely causing them to turn their kids’ into freaks that become the laughing stocks of the society. If their efforts work out, their kids’ might become the next Bill Gates and help them earn tons of money and earn the respect of the masses by being the parent of the richest guy in the world or he could be someone extremely smart and would help you earn the respect of the nation by being the mum of an ivy league student. But if things don’t work out, they might become a low paid technician or civil servant of even worse, a blue collar worker. This way, they would be dependent on their parents and would lose whatever self-respect he had garnered in his entire lifetime. His parents’ would also be extremely embarrassed as she could have become the mother of somebody important but became the mother of the laughing stock of the society.

Secondly, what parents’ are doing are also for the sake that later on in life when their kids’ move on to their high ranked jobs that they would be rewarded richly with comfort and luxury. But the oly way for them to able to make that breakthrough would be that they attend a top university and the only way for them to attend the top university would be either through sports or studies and since cultivating sports within their kids’ is rather expensive and also less rewarding with regards to them, studies would their only option. As such, these parents start at a very young age and train them how to be exam savvy and also all the many tricks that would help them get a scholarship into a well respected university. Their parents would turn them into studying freaks which could pave the way for them to lead a comfortable life or else be stuck forever with just a ‘could-have-been’ if not for the added pressure placed on them. One example would be a Singapore mother who walked into her daughter's room one day, just before the girl's final examinations, witnessed a disturbing spectacle that left her badly shaken. Her teenage daughter had emptied a bottle of glue over her own head. She was furiously rubbing one of her textbooks over her head and repeating to herself, "Get in, get in, get in." This shows the severe effects of what pushing your kids’ over the limit could do.

In conclusion, I would like to say that parents’ should try to find a fine line between studies and exercise and that their kids’ are humans and not objects that can be manipulated just for the sake of their own selfish gain.

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