Now a days in India, parents are on a cat race to get their teen ager children admission to IIT, NIT, Medical Colleges and so on and literally forcing them to spend all their time in front of books. They are under tremendous stress to meet the expectations of School Management and teachers as well as of parents.
Are our teenagers equipped to face the word and be successful?
Seldom, parents and teachers understand and appreciate the importance of developing the personality aspects or their wards. They fail to understand that, it is the life skills and soft skills that help them to be successful in career and life at large than the subject knowledge, marks or ranks. Ideal time to develop social skills, emotional maturity and leadership skills is the early part of their adolescents. This is the time, shyness, insecurity and other socio emotional behaviour patterns settle in as their personality traits. It is extremely important to invest time, energy and all other resources to equipment them to live, survive and succeed in life. Only a minority of parents really understand or at least try to know their children’s intelligence, interests, passions and abilities and help them choose right career for themselves. In most situations, parents persuade their wards to take up the higher education and career that was their dream career when they were young. Their unfulfilled dreams are being forced onto their children without realizing that they might be getting into a career where they have no interest or skills to perform and be successful. This will only ruin their career life and personal life. The stress and frustration of having to do a job that, they neither enjoy nor perform well, can lead them to sever health, psychological and family issues.
What skills are important to develop young minds into a fully matured adult poised for a successful career and life?
At a minimum, you could focus on developing 3 main skill sets –
1. Public Speaking – get rid of their stage fright
2. Emotional intelligence – Learning about transactional analysis will make them to be very impactful in social and personal relationships
3. Ethics and Values – Trust, Integrity, Empathy, Punctuality, Social Responsibility and social etiquettes Besides these, it would be good to have their multiple intelligence level tested through either a simple test available online or some psychometric competency assessments. This would help parents understand their abilities and training needs better and guide them appropriately.
How to develop these skills?
Ideally, these skills need to be taught in schools. However, in India, students are over loaded with too much of syllabus, more than they can handle at their age. Therefore, expecting schools to handle these skills would be too much to ask for. As a parent, you could encourage your children to participate or attend the following programs
- Personality development camps during their vacation time
- Encourage them to participate in all extra and co-curricular activities and events
- Make sure they are involved in some sport activities preferably in team games
- Visit some orphanages or old age home with them on a regular basis and help them understand how blessed are they and the importance to have empathy towards less fortunate ones
- Get them involved in art, culture and nature events and activities to instil in them the social and environmental responsibilities
- Visit along with your wards – Palliative care centers, Juvenile homes and do some activities to make the inmates happy. This will sow the seed of compassion in your child’s mind at a very young age and will help develop a sharing attitude in them
The benefits of involving in these activities in your child will be priceless. Rest assured, your child will grow into a well-developed and well-grounded human being who will make a difference in this society. So parents, give your teen ager the right skills to succeed in life and make a mark in where ever they are.
Regards,
Sony George
MD – SkillUp Global, Kochi
Mob : 9741007766
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