Is my child fairing better than yours – Typical parental syndrome plaguing the education system

The most overwhelming key to a child’s success is the positive involvement of parents.

It is true that each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children. But comparisons seem to be part of human nature. We compare ourselves to others. We compare our children to other children. Comparison is a common approach to ascertain the performance of our children. We compare our child’s grades with others and then determine whether child’s academic achievement is normal, better or excellent. Then we resort to give an example of other children’s accomplishments as a way to motivate our own child. We certainly don’t aim to hurt our child but unknowingly these verbal statements do more harm than good, comparing our child with others is actually making us and our children stressed, but the urge is hard to resist. Sometimes the sole motivation of comparing children with each others is to instigate competition in the children, so that this feeling can push them to perform at par with their capabilities and excel.    No two children are the same, they have different talents, interests that develop at different rates and they have different levels of strengths, it is obvious that every flower blooms at a different pace. Practically speaking, parents can either build or break the confidence and self esteem of their child.

           Effects of comparisons are alarming, Let us have look over them:

The child feels burdened if he is constantly being compared. The child starts believing that others are better than him      and that he is incapable of performing well or living to the expectations of the parents. This feeling is very damaging for the personal and academic growth of the child. Despite his efforts, if he still gets to hear that he needs to follow the other child to perform well, this breaks his confidence. The good for nothing starts to settle in. This may deteriorate his performance further and lower his self esteem. If  the  talents or achievements of children  are constantly ignored, then they may  stop bothering and develop carefree attitude.

Hence comparisons are defeating the true aim of education. The function of education is to think creatively analyze critically and develop problem solving abilities along with character building. Education is the most important thing for the society to prosper and grow. The emphasis must be on ensuring that each individual student attains a full comprehension of material delivered but our benchmark is not that they attain 100% in test, rather it should be that they totally understand and can apply the knowledge imparted to them, whereas comparisons are plaguing the education system being the root cause of all feelings of inferiority .Personality begins when comparison leaves off. So by leaving comparisons let your child be unique, be confident, be proud.