The Middle School kid who is curious and free-spirited

School is definitely one of the most memorable phases of any person’s life. The phase where we make the majority of our true friends who have no basis of caste or creed or race or societal standing or the money we have or what we want to become. Most of the friends groups are formed on the basis of mutual trust, and support they offer to each other in trivial situations present in everyday lower school or middle school. Many of these groups are so diversified that no two friends from a group are in the same profession after 20 years (not that I deny that some groups have the entire group in the same profession and sometimes even the same organisation). According to me, Friendships formed in school are the purest relationships that get formed over anyone’s lifetimes. A kid currently in middle school who is interested in going to school everyday is perhaps more focussed on meeting their friends in an environment that allows them to discuss, play, learn playfully, understand gleefully, fail carelessly (without any pressure of consequences), and get closer to one another.

The middle school going kid has one of the least worries in the world apart from those in lower school & kindergarten. During this phase of a kid’s life, the time is more for identification rather than forming any molds or prepare a cast to pour them into. However, that said, there are definitely a few areas that can be identified in this phase:

• Areas of most curiosity
• Strong subjects – concept wise & not with marks
• Logical thinking ability
• Emotional connect
• Identify potential subjects where they struggle to comprehend (not everyone can understand everything and that is perfectly okay in any universe; Captain America cannot fly in Iron Man’s suit)

Some of the activities that must be done with a kid in this phase by parents & mentors/teachers are:

• Interesting People and their jobs (more the merrier)
• Discussions about what you (the parents & grandparents) do/did for a living
• What ideas do they have about school & life after school
• Give a list of professions and speak about as many of them as possible with fun activities (could be some games, or some books with pictorial representations or some educational documentaries about famous personalities in that profession)
• Spend time to inculcate life-skills & understand people (probably the most important skills are learnt here)
• Include sports and other activities in their weekends on a regular basis – make them spend more time in the playgrounds than in front of a TV watching a TV show or playing Playstation/Xbox

Actions that must not be done in this phase of a kid’s life:

• Insist on coaching classes for entering university (IITs are not the be all and end all of everything, Engineer or Doctor are definitely not the only professions)
• Put pressure on academical records (coming first in the school or state does no good)
• Compare achievements with your own or someone else’s kid (A>B in M/P/C/any exam does not matter)
• Underplay their achievements however insignificant they might be
• Dissuade any infinitesimal progress made
• Most important of them all, chalk out their careers for them

Perhaps, one are that the newer generation of parents needs to appreciate is the fact that technology has grown to be part of a kid’s everyday life. Technology when you were growing up as kids was not so common-place, especially in the developing countries. Moderation of time spent with technology is very important. Do not allow them to be oblivious to technology, and at the same time, build enough life-skills so that they can make a decision for themselves to steer towards or away from technology on a need basis.

Remember, inculcating a skill has more value than shoving tasty Mysorepa or a piece of Blackforest cake down someone’s throat.

SanKom will be back with more for the subsequent stages. Hope that you liked this column. If you liked it, leave a comment below. If you did not like it, also leave a comment below and let us know what we could do better; we are open to learning the same way you were when you started to read the column…..

And on that note,

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