Your children's education is a top priority for you. You realize that only a great education can arm them with the tools they'll inevitably need to live happily, securely, maturely, and meaningfully. You toil night and day to help them make it happen - for over half your life.
And yet, there are those days throughout their schooling when you are genuinely nervous. After the summer holidays are gone, the euphoria has long evaporated, and the sinking feeling you get when setting out on a new conquest has long set in, it's testing times for parents across the nation.
Children's performance at school, the complaints from teachers, your own doubts about the quality of education and treatment your child is getting at school, and the background of your own forgotten experiences that come flooding back … these are enough to unnerve any dutiful parent.
But, as I said before, these are testing times and you need to emerge with flying colors! As parents, you cannot openly display your own panic. The children need you to stay calm and handle their first day to school with equanimity.
It is at times like these that you think about how important it is to maintain the balance through your busy schedule and make time for what is probably one of the most critical days in your child's life. Of course, it is very easy for me to write about it and ask parents to hold on to their hats! I know from experience that it can be very tough going indeed.
A hundred doubts that assail the mind and the anxiety they cause are all only too well-known to me. My daughter and I have been separated from each other for the last eight years or so since I have had to leave the home town in search of jobs and work away from home.
Whether I spoke to the child myself or her mother managed the entire back-to-school saga, I haven't escaped the unnerving feeling. What's it going to be like for my daughter? Are the new teachers going to be kind to her? Is she going to perform to their - and our - satisfaction? Will it be smooth sailing for her?
Unfounded fears flood the mind on that first day no matter how composed you get during the rest of the year. My daughter’s managed to do a great job every first and every other day at school, for which I feel eternally grateful.
My daughter was always a very mature person. She always remembered the lessons from the previous year and exhibited amazing confidence and maturity - in increasing measure every year. Even if she wasn't, I know I would be a very patient parent.
I learned very early that I cannot help getting jittery that day of the year. I also learned that it is important for me to pull myself together and be a picture of confidence in the presence of my daughter.
I learned to set examples for my only child in fortitude that is essential in every parent. Once, I used to worry that I might not be able to provide the kind of education my daughter so richly deserves. I have also learned to take that in my stride. With such a supremely confident and cheerful daughter, I have no cause for any worries.
What I’d like to share with you, dear parents, is that your own child has his or her own special gifts. Always ensure that you encourage him or her to develop those. And also ensure that whatever corrective measures you adopt do not dampen the child's spirit.
Be to the child what you would want him or her to be to the world. Remember, you are the role model.
We only need to be accommodating, really. As parents, we tend to get hypersensitive on the child’s first day at school. We worry endlessly. But I assure you … the child knows better!
All that’s required of you and me as parents is that we take loving care of our children - and teach them, in small increments, to take good care of themselves. Your child will appreciate your attention, especially if you take care not to overdo it.
Teach them to strike a balance between work and life if you have learnt it yourself. Teach them to manage time. It will be a lesson they’ll forever treasure and thank you for with all their hearts when they are ready to send their children to school!
Finally, I wish to recommend reading to your children a poem titled ‘If’, by
Rudyard Kipling - all of it to be sure, but especially the last four lines:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! (Source: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if/)
Nikhil Khandekar is an award-winning translator, eagle-eyed editor, popular teacher, and an astute writer. He was awarded the Katha Prize, a national award, for the translation of a Gujarati short story. He has several translations of diverse kinds of writing to his credit. He has published with Katha, Macmillan India, Indian Literature (literary journal by Sahitya Akademi, India), Dhol (a journal for writing on and by the tribal milieu in India), and other prestigious publications.
He has a modest amount of his own writing waiting to be published, in English, Marathi, and Gujarati. Nikhil's love for translation has led him to create a blog dedicated to translation as a concept: WritersVoiceInTranslation on WordPress.
Nikhil has dedicated his life toward promoting the best causes known to him in the best way he can - primarily his writing, translation, and teaching.
Nikhil serves as a senior website content writer at an IT company.