Stressfree Childhood – Is it possible?

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I wrote this article during my writing stint for an online magazine last year. I wrote a total of 7 articles on parenting and contributed some craft ideas and then I had to stop due to time constraint. I shared all my published articles in another blog of mine but I’m shutting down that blog soon. Before I shut down that blog, I’ll share those articles here instead starting with the last post I wrote for them…

Don’t we all just love to be able to be a kid again? After all, being a kid simply means having a carefree life – happy with nothing to worry about. No bills, no mortgages only happiness.

Now, if only the above statement holds true in this current world we live in. Those days, as a child, the only stress I encountered was learning to tie my shoe laces. Try as I might, I always get them wrong. Stress!

These days, children are stressed out even before they can learn to walk! Talk to any urban mothers out there. They’ll proudly tell you how they already have everything nicely planned out for their kid even before the child is born!

Often, pressure to excel and wanting to prove that they are mighty good parents push them to do the impossible. Gone were the days when parents shed tears of happiness listening to their child calling them “Mummy” or “Daddy” for the first time. These days, in order to please the parents, the child needs to be able to call “Mummy” in at least 3 different languages, be able to spell them out loud and if possible write them out!

Parents get so engrossed in ensuring that their child will be able to cope with peer pressure that they stressed the whole family out. Their judgement has been clouded with fear that should the child show any sign of weakness it will spell “LOSER”. The urge to win is everything and along the way without realizing it, they have actually lost!

What is a child without a nice childhood? What can you recall about your childhood? I remembered vividly the day my sisters and I trailed after several ducklings. Being our first encounter with real life ducks, we found them too cute to resist. We followed them until they swam away in a stream. We saw a small log floating in the stream and decided to jump on it to get a closer look at those ducks. Alas, we ended up not only on the log, but into the water as well as though the log can float on its own, it couldn’t take all our our weight on it! Thank goodness the stream was shallow and we managed to get ourselves out safely.

The point here is, though what my sisters and I did was dangerous, it taught us a vital lesson that a log floats but not necessarily will stay afloat when too much weight is put on it. Come to think of it, the same goes to a child. Though the brains of most children have the absorbent capacity of a sponge, soak it with too much information and the sponge will get all too soggy and eventually breaks down into pieces.

Stop for a minute and take a step back. Look at your child. Is he or she happy? When was the last time your child ran happily under the sun in the open air chasing after butterflies? Do you remember ever seeing your child looking up in the sky smiling at the birds flying by?

Most of us might not realised it but to many parents these days, the sky is no longer the limit. The irony to all these is, the children hardly ever get to see the sky. All they see are the four walls in those endless classes that they are put to attend.

It is time to break down the walls and let them run free for all you know, the sky might not be there for them anymore tomorrow…