Children and Suicide

Every suicide is an admission of a failure (except the euthanasia one chooses as the ultimate, inevitable option).  It becomes the failure of many persons when the death is chosen by young people.  Recently a national English newspaper reported that “Every hour, one student commits suicide in India.”  8934 students opted for suicide in the country in 2015.  The reports says that “These deaths result from poor relationships with parents, excessive expectations, the feeling of being unwanted, poor understanding of their peer/romantic relationships. These result in an impulsive decision or a long thought-out deliberate suicide.”

Life is never easy.  It has never been.  Even those who were born with a golden spoon thrust between their jaws have had to struggle much to keep the spoon from being snatched away.  “Life is one contingency after another, with no guarantees beyond the certainty of death,” as Gerald Corey puts it in a book for students of psychological counselling.  Life is a protracted pain with a fair deal of comic relief in between.

Unfortunately, the present generation of youngsters are not taught that.  On the contrary, they are brought up to imagine that the world is a hunky-dory place as long as they maintain what is being sold very conveniently as ‘positive thinking’.  Parents go out of their way to bring up children without ever experiencing the inevitable hardships of life.  The children are given the best of what parents can afford.  The best of everything, even if that means tremendous hardship to the parents themselves. 

That is a big mistake made by the parents.  A terrible mistake.  Children should be made to realise that life is tough.  That success has to be earned through the necessary struggles.  Students should realise that there is no magical formula for success.  No coaching centre, not even the most expensive ones in Rajasthan’s Kota, can guarantee success to anyone.  Success depends on how hard you are ready to push yourself through the quaggy mire, across the turbulent waters, up the foggy creeks. 

Source: lovethispic

Children should experience the dreads and horrors of life as they inevitably make their apparitions at the relevant times in relevant forms.  Don’t hoodwink children with the comforting illusions of positive thinking.  Show them the reality.  Teach them to face the reality.  Teach them that becoming human, let alone becoming a roaring success, is a project which demands that they create themselves, not just discover themselves.  Teach them the value of the occasional tear drop.