A significant part of a person’s life is spent in maintaining friendships and romantic relationships. Despite this fact, little to none is contributed in this direction by the schooling system. This is another one of those really important aspects of life, which is expected to be taught and taken care of by elders and parents.
Although it is a parent’s job to teach their kids about friendships and relationships and how to handle them. A lot of these relationships are formed at schools. Kids meet people their own age, learn with them, play with them, and even fight with them.
They spend a lot of time together with strangers their own age, which in turn turns that time spending into something more substantial, and they became friends from classmates. You can easily tell which kid has been taught to respect others and take other people’s feelings into consideration.
Teachers can easily see the pattern, and if a kid seems to lack social skills, we tend to isolate them. They are punished for being a nuisance, for troubling other kids, and for being difficult to be around in general. A lot of our teaching strategies revolve around punishing for the wrong but we tend to forget to correct the wrong.
The constant breaking of relationships nowadays is proof that people need to be taught how to respect others’ space, learn to trust, overcome bad times, share feelings, and communicate. With social media making connecting with people easier, it has made making real connections difficult.
Dating, romance, and sexual urges are frowned upon and ignored in certain countries, which ironically ends up worsening the situation as children grow up learning from wrong sources. Be open with your kids, be open to answering questions. Coming to you with anything shouldn’t be scary for your kids, even if it is a question in regards to sex.
It is high time this is acknowledged as a fact of life, and schools try to lay down a foundation from the beginning of a person’s life. Some schools have taken that up by introducing sex education into their curriculum.
But, that being said, there is only so much the education system can do. They can tell them what to do, but with a population of kids with different learning abilities and different backgrounds, they can’t make sure that every kid understands.
As parents and elders, it then becomes our responsibility to be there for the kids while they explore things, while they learn the meaning of friendships, companionships, and relationships.
In times, when it is so easy to connect but so difficult to understand the difference between what’s real and what’s not, there is more need than ever to be there to guide the kids.
Let them make their own mistakes, but be with them at every turn, teaching them and guiding them.
