NEED FOR GOOD PARENTING

Two recent  news reports pertaining to happenings in Kerala are the basis for this post. I am referring to both as I feel that lack of good parenting can be seen in both.

The first relates to the decision of the Supreme Court to hand over the "Fadia Case" to NIA for detailed investigation as it involved "Forced" conversion of a girl to Islam and the court believed that there was an organised racket behind this. While I do not question the wisdom of the Supreme Court and also firmly believe that if such an organised effort is there behind the conversion it has to be probed and checked. But from another point, even if it is part of an organised racket, nowhere it is reported that the girls were forced to convert as there is no complaint form any girls in the matter. So it appears that the girl fell in love with the members of the organisation, married her lover and subsequently converted. Can anybody find any fault in this? The girl being an adult has every right to marry the person she liked and also convert to another religion on her own will. If she complains that she was forced to convert, there is definitely a case. But the crux of the issue is that the parents were completely in the dark about the affairs of the girl. Does it talk well of the responsibility of the parents concerned? Is it that the responsibility of the parents is taking a hit now a days? Or is it that the parents are afraid to put any reasonable restriction on their wards lest it may boomerang? In the present day situation of "double income single kid" the child does not have anybody to talk openly with in the family as both the parents are busy in their profession/job/business. They only provide whatever is asked for by the kids, be it smart phone, laptop etc., but never oversee how it is being used. If the mother spared some time to talk to the daughter on a regular basis, and encouraged her to share all the personal issues/problems with mother, this could have been found at the initial stages itself, I am sure. 

The second report is regarding the suicide of two youths, which are afraid to be a result of the "blue whale " game. Here also after the untoward has happened the relatives (mother, sister etc) talk about the weird behavior of the youths and the game played by them in phone/laptop. Shouldn't they have checked these earlier, which could have prevented this untoward happening? Here too, one of the youths was only a plus one student and I wonder why a smart phone should be provided to him, which was used to access the game! Parents may argue that they did not want their ward to be behind his friends and since they could afford they provided whatever was asked for by him, which is fine as far as they ensured it was put to correct use only!

In the light of the above two reports I would only like to appeal to the parents to be more serious about their roles in the grooming of their wards, which does not end by providing whatever is asked for by them. Basically it is their responsibility to see what the wards do, with whom they mingle, what type of activities are they engaged in etc. Also they should create a confidence in the minds of their wards so that they do not hide anything from them or they would openly discuss the issues with them. I am afraid the communication channel between the parents and wards are broken now, which leads to such unfortunate incidents.