Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Bringing up children is both an art and a science. The parents must have certain skills as well as qualities and value systems if the children are to grow up into good human beings. How do the Bollywood stars bring up their children? That is an interesting subject which probably no one studied seriously until Rashmi Uchil did. The result of her study is the book titled Raising Stars: The challenges and joys of being a Bollywood parent . The book brings us the examples of no less than 26 Bollywood personalities on how they brought up their children in spite of their hectic schedules and other demands of the profession. In each chapter, the author highlights one particular virtue or skill or quality from each of these stars to teach us about the importance of that aspect in bringing up children. Managing anger, for example, is the topic of the first chapter where Mahima Chowdhary is our example. We move on to gender equality, confidence, discipline, etc, and end with spirituality whi...

Had it not been for a couple of messages I received, I would not have known that today was Friendship Day.  One of the messages said, “Happy friendship day to the most fantastic friend.  Thanx for being my frd sir...”  It came from a past student.  I found it both amusing and encouraging.  Amusing, because the sender of that message is 36 years younger than me.  Encouraging, because I believe the best teacher is a friend to his/her students especially if the students are adolescents.  Teaching adolescents is fun.  Because they teach me more than I teach them.  Also because I think I’m an adolescent at heart.  In fact, a few months back one of my present students remarked that in the class.  And I laughed nodding in agreement. Adolescents are excellent friends.  In fact, their loyalty in friendship has no parallel in any other period of human growth and development.  Every parent who is struggling to deal with...

I loved the passage given for the reading comprehension this time by CBSE for class 12.  It’s about youth and values.  It begins thus: “Too many parents these days can’t say no.”  It goes on to argue why saying ‘no’ to children is important.  Giving in to all the demands of children is paving the way of their ruin.  It creates a generation of people who are never satisfied with anything they get, because they’ve been getting it all too easily. Easy availability is a dangerous thing.  It makes you feel that you deserve the best.  If you don’t get it, you will grab it by hook or by crook.  That’s the kind of generation we have created, says the passage. “Today’s parents aren’t equipped to deal with the problem,” goes on the passage.  “Many of them, raised in the 1960s and 70s” went through hard days.  They were whipped at school and at home.  They are the people, like me, whose parents went to the school and told the tea...