Dragon Fruit
For the past week, I attended a
number of spring dinners organized by various educational bodies. These are
always great occasions for meeting old friends and making new ones.
At one of the dinners, I was seated next to a kindergarten principal. We chatted happily over fun matters as well as serious issues. Soon, we started to comment on children these days. I remarked that for lack of siblings, children only start to learn co-operation and resolving conflicts when they begin schooling. Then the principal told me a few incidents that were truly thought-provoking.
The kindergarten gave their pupils halved but not yet peeled bananas as snacks. Looking at the halved banana, one child was quite puzzled and asked how he was to eat it. He had never seen bananas with the peel. To him, bananas were diced to be picked up with a fork! There was another child who asked the teacher to remove the black sesame seeds from the dragon fruit slices. In another activity, children were taught to use chopsticks. A boy cried out that chopsticks were too dangerous and that he was only allowed the use of the spoon!
Children these days are simply being cocooned in the warmth and safety of their parents’ protection. They are never given any chances of “trial and error”. But no matter how hard parents try, there will come a day when their children are faced with challenges they have to deal with by themselves. If they don’t experience failure and disappointment or suffer a few bruises at an early stage, they might find even the smallest setbacks or injuries traumatic. Then who is to be blamed for their fragility and vulnerability?
