Decades ago, schooling for children started well after the age of six or seven. Children spent their pre-school years in the warm and comforting atmosphere around their mothers. A secure home atmosphere was made possible by the joint family system, with all those uncles, aunts and cousins around. Things are different today; but even now there are different viewpoints. Mothers who have to work and who do not have their family members to be with their children during their working hours, have faced a host of problems in child-rearing.
Times have seen a sea-change. The present-day job compulsions for couples force them to fend for themselves virtually in every way. When a child is born, it brings with it a host of responsibilities. They are forced to engage a baby-minder for the first few years and later put them in play-school. Of course this is possible only for parents who are in the high-income group.
We need to delve deep to find out the psychological impact on children of such bringing up. One should not ignore the fact that sending the child to school too early robs its innate freedom. It is not advisable to time-table the children and schedule them according to what adults think is best for them.
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“What is so wrong in packing children to school early?” ask some modern mothers. “Is it not a lot better for a child to be in a place surrounded by a number of other children?”
“They get into a social atmosphere early in life. What with teachers guiding them and they being amidst lots of toys, singing nursery rhymes and playing new games rather than being alone at home with the mother who may be tied up with a lot of work and is likely to snap at the kids when she is tired out.” This is the opinion of some.
Quite a few completely disagree that present-day mothers are subjecting their children to premature pre-schooling. In today’s competitive environment, the earlier the children are exposed to the world, the better. This may be a harsh reality, but true in some sense. What better place than a play-school for small children to come out of their shells and have the advantage of caring and sharing, and be taught good manners in their formative years? The first few days may be a bit traumatic for some children and their mothers, but in most of the cases they get used to it in time and start looking forward to the fun and excitement that nursery schools offer. Children need the company of other children; more so if a he or she is an only child.
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I don’t subscribe to the view that early schooling by itself makes a child smarter or cleverer. In fact, research by psychologists at the universities of Minnesota and Virginia, among others, has indicated that a child who is classified as securely attached to the family during the first few years will relate to others the right way all through life. A parent-child bond is something that develops out of the long associated relationship during infancy and the early years of a child’s life. The emotional attachment that begins with infancy gets reinforced only if it lasts at least for five continuous years. Children need to identify themselves with the parents and other important family members. It is this identification that sustains their emotional balance when they become adults.
When I see small kids playing around a building construction site where both their parents, often from faraway locations, are engaged as labourers, I feel a pang in my heart but I also feel they may be having a good time. The mother cooks for the husband and kids within the site on a make-shift-chulha, and the family sits and eat together. This scene gladdens my heart.
If the very protectors and providers decide to push them into an alien atmosphere before they are ready for changes, it may cause a great deal of emotional trauma. Forcing children into adapting too soon to an environment that may be totally different from the one in which they have been living, could make them aggressive and cranky.
One more disadvantage of early schooling is the physical vulnerability of contracting infections. Children may fall ill more often than before, and even develop chronic ailments; added to this, sudden changes in their eating timings and patterns may affect their health adversely. Having been associated with toddlers to teenagers all my working life, I can vouchsafe for the fact that children who have started school early may not have more benefits than children who have started school late. But modern-day parents seem to consider it a ‘status symbol’ to start their children’s schooling even before their babyhood is over. Why not let them be babies a little longer?
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