Children are the bedrock of our vision. We do everything keeping them in mind!

We yearn for them when they are not around, live for them to be happy, work to provide them the best of what we can, take care of them at all times, and ensure that we bring them up to become someone who we would be proud of.

However, often, we try and impose ourselves on our children or worse still, try and force them down a path that we wish to choose for them due to whatever preconceived notions or beliefs…

Picture this –

You have a young kid who you figure out is a prodigy in the game of chess. You get him the best teacher you can, take him to multiple tournaments to hone his play and become the no. 1 kid on the chess circuit.

And then, when he comes up short against one tough opponent, you berate him. You realise that you are doing something wrong but you want the kid to win at all costs. To prove that your investment in his future is right.

But the kid doesn’t want to play now. Fearful of this one other prodigal talent, he almost decides to give up. The teacher you have hired tries to force him to learn better and prepare better. But he is not ready to engage.

When you look at this situation – what would most of us do? We would try and sit down the kid and get him back to playing again. In a lot of cases, without worrying about why he is behaving like this or what is the core issue.

Nothing wrong with this approach – that is how we adults are attuned to behave in our cut-throat competitive world…

Except for one – this will be the most insensitive thing to do and will most probably kill the kid’s appetite for learning further.

And will be the end of the dream that we fostered with his spectacular talent! More importantly, it will be a dreadful experience for the child!!!

This week, with so much floating around in the form of negative news, I decided to get some positivity and focused on reading up and watching a couple of good impressionable movies. One of them was ‘Innocent Moves’ on Netflix or titled as ‘Search for Bobby Fischer’ on IMDB (UK and US versions respectively).

It is one of those real-life child prodigy movies and for those of us who have seen ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, released on Netflix recently, it might seem familiar to some degree. Not going by the IMDB rating, I personally found the movie to be a brilliant showcase of various multitudes – parenting, child psychology, parent-children relationship, societal pressures and viewpoints, and so on.

The story I narrated above, is what happens in the movie. Till the intermission. Post that, it flips…

The father realises that he needs to let the kid be and stops talking about chess. Takes him fishing for 2 weeks. Lets him play baseball and other sports. Reasons with himself that it is more important to see his kid happy.

And then the kid picks back his interest in chess and goes back to playing with his buddies in the neighbourhood park. Enough to get the moves back and to go for competition once again, this time beating the other prodigy through the new skills he acquired.

Sorry, if I spilled the beans. But that’s how most movies related to sports play out. So it’s not much of a reveal I hope!

What I found interesting was the soft nudges in a few scenes which showed a different side of how a prodigal talent can be groomed. And all of those scenes inclined towards the humane touch and the unique innocence of children.

How a father chooses to let his kid be instead of forcing his dreams upon the child, how a friend helps him gain his confidence back, how a mother protects him from being thrown into the competitive ring, how a teacher lets go of his ego against a past opponent and understands that the child can go into a match not being his usual confident self, how the child realises that it is more important to make friends than opponents, and finally how he gives the kids he defeated some of the tips and asks them to just try and play without pressure.

There was a lot to learn for me! About what not to do…

How not to take away the innocence from our children. It is better to let them be and grow up naturally.

How not to push our children to do better always. It is ok to not be good in some cases or not up to our expectations.

How not to beat down a child in the case of a failure but to encourage him to learn and grow. Helping him understand that failure is but a stepping stone to success.

How not to force them on the path that we think is best for them early on. Doing multiple things is bound to help them realise their preference and interests and pick up what suits them more later on in life.

How not to push them to turn everything in life into a race and view others as a threat. It is sometimes better to let things float around and let them gain random experiences before they settle down in to a rhythm. And better to make friends than foes.

Lastly, how not to force them to be a competitive machine always but to remember being human in all situations!

Hope to carry these lessons forward as I continue on my journey of being a parent and let my daughter utilise her unique innocence to grow into whatever she desires to be…