Honey, we shrunk the kids' vacation

KOCHI: Nineteen-year-old Sushma Raj (Name changed) is a complete wreck. Today, her schedule oscillates between visits to a psychiatrist and staying at home behind closed doors. Sushma, an active and bright 16-year-old, developed an inferiority complex because she was unable to get a good score in medical entrance examination last year . She tells her family of doctors that she doesn't want to study.When they try to convince her saying that she can either do her degree or join a private college by paying donation, the argument she puts out is, “I am dumb and hence unable to get good marks.“ Doctors say that she is speaking the language that had been drilled into her by her family while putting pressure on her to get a seat in medical entrance.To top it, she has also been told that she will not get a good proposal if she doesn't get into the same profession as her family members.
This is not just the story of Sushma, say counsellors.
At a time when school children are supposed to enjoy their vacations, many middle and high school students go through tougher academic schedule than they have had all through the year. And they are starting very young as early as Class VI.
Psychiatrists and counsellors say that it is parents who are driving this `vacation-less' madness on a generation that seems to be running the rat-race at a very young age. “The children are being forced into different classes. The concept of a summer vacation is to give the children rest from all academic activity. This is a generation that seems to have lost their childhood.Just because parents don't know how to keep their children safe and secure at home, they bundle them to such coaching classes which start early in the day and end in the night,“ said senior psychiatrist Dr Shailaja Ramkumar.
She said that spending time together for a family means going for a holiday to Singapore or Dubai or watching a movie. Vacations are about doing nothing much but learning a lot. “All they are doing is running from one class to another and spending the remaining time travelling to these places from home and back,“ Dr Shailaja said.
School psychologist Seema Lal says that students are not given an option of Plan B. “What happens if I fail or don't clear? What next?
They just collapse at the thought of parental anger, disappointments and cynical darts.“
Parents just want to pack their lives with activity that the children don't know how to relax without doing anything. “Families do not seem to understand how to spend quality time. This is reason that kids don't know how to talk about their pressures, happiness and share. It ends making them turn to alternate means which end up as addictions of some form or other,“ she added.