After the recent incident at an upmarket Bangalore school where a 6 year old kid was
physically assaulted, it has in some way or other impacted every household esp
with a kid. Both the parents and the kids have been once again become oversensitive
about the bone chilling and in human incident.
What do you first do when you read something like this in
the newspapers? what is your first reaction when you have a kid at home the
same age? How do you protect your kid at a place where they think there are no
strangers, everyone is either a friend or a teacher? When we tell our kids its
your school are we wrong, is it only the management’s school and not the
parents or the kids school? What kind of person would do such a heinous thing
to an innocent child, what kind of upbringing these monsters have, do they have
a family or a mother? What happens to the girl during the criminal procedure
and how to parents of the victim cope up? Do the parents of other kids at the
same school ever be able to trust the management again or should the school be
just plain and simple shut down? There are so many questions, that haunt you
over the days and months to come.
Whenever something like this happens you tend to become over
protective about your child and try to strictly reinforce all the rules and
reiterate the ways for you child to tell right from wrong. I made sure that I
find the latest videos for teaching “Good Touch Bad Touch” and make my kid see
it every once in a while. I try to find out what are the classes that my kid
can go and attend to safeguard herself. I try to keep my eyes open wherever my
kid is going and practically stalk her everywhere. Everyday the first question
I ask her when she is back from school is “What did you do in school today”.
This question initially was meant to know what she learnt in school but now my
prime concern is was she safe? I hope she didn’t have any bad experience in
school. My God, I am so scared.
If our adult mind can be so scared what does a child go
through if we keep iterating that there are bad people out there and you have
to be careful. You should not talk to any strangers, they may harm you. If you
are not feeling safe or someone tries to touch you in a wrong way you have to
Run and Shout. What would be the impact of this is on a tender mind? Now my kid
is so scared she would not go alone to the park or would not go to a next door
friend’s house alone. Is this the society we want, the society of Scared ot the
society of Bold and Confident.
I know I have to tell her Safety Measures once in a while,
but I am so scared that I tell her everyday. No matter how I tell her or how
strong I make her. She is only a small child. While we should be making effort
to make our society safe and the school laws and background checking more
strict, we are making our kids more Scared. Is this what we want from our
Schools?
