Ahmedabad: Love, like internet, is catching them young

AHMEDABAD: A teacher at a city school was shocked when she got hold of a note bearing the message “I

love

you” addressed to a girl. The message was circulating in Class I, at which stage kids are about 6 years old . The girl disavowed the note. The boy, thought to be its author, told the teacher that he liked the girl and for him ‘like’ and ‘love’ were interchangeable terms.


A group of Class III girls (about 8 years old) of another school were busy discussing love affiliations and linking each other with the boys. When a teacher stepped in to shoot down the Cupid’s arrows flying around the class, the girls said they were only having fun. For their part, the boys seemed enamoured of only video games and gadgets.

In yet another school, a girl in Class VII (about 12 years old) stopped talking after developing a crush on a new boy. She had speech problems and did not want him to notice that.

Love, like the internet, is catching them young. Indeed, children are being exposed to the ideas of attraction and love through a host of mediums, primarily the mobile internet. But they seldom get the help of adults to tackle half-formed instincts.

Driven perhaps by early hormonal changes or the loneliness that is inevitable in a nuclear family or when being brought up by a single parent, children are seeking solace from peers. But the peers themselves are a confused lot.

“I am a homemaker and have all the time in the world to monitor my children,” said Kalpana Parikh, a mother of two teenage daughters. “But it is difficult to keep an eye on their WhatsApp chats. There, no topic is off-limit.” She went on to say: “Recently, I found my daughter, a Class VII student, resolving a tiff between her classmates, who were in a relationship according to her.”

Another parent, Tushar Singh, said: “My son is in Class VI, but his friendship with senior girls of Class IX-X often scares me.” Singh added: “Once I found love letters in his school diary; I was disturbed. It took me a lot of time to make him understand things and bring his focus back to studies.”

Smita Ghosh, a counsellor, said: “Children confess to being in love, but lack clarity about love.” Ghosh said it is crucial to make children understand that attraction is normal and at times hormone-spurred. “But they should not miss their goals,” she said.

Dr Prashant Bhimani, a psychologist, said: “If you make your children understand respectful relationship indirectly, they will apply the principle themselves.”