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Teenage Crushes

Discussion in 'Varalotti Rengasamy's Short & Serial Stories' started by varalotti, Nov 22, 2005.

  1. Prema

    Prema New IL'ite

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    Thanks...

    Thanks Mr.Sridhar....... How much I wish and am desperate to be a good parent. It has been 8 yrs of my marriage Iam not yet blessed. Anyway, thanks again.


    Prema
     
  2. varalotti

    varalotti IL Hall of Fame

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    Dont Worry Prema, There Will Be A Time!

    There are times where we have to serve God by just waiting for his next command. You are going through one of those waiting periods. The great poet Milton talks of thousands of angels at God's service who fly through the universe to execute His command. And he hastens to add, and to add the most potent line of his poem 'On His Blindness', a line which has helped me keep myself together during times of distress, "Those who also serve who only stand and wait." The angels who do nothing but just stand and wait are also serving God with equal fervour. Their devotion is no less than that of the angel who flies a milion miles to do His orders.

    And the waiting period will be over very soon. Don't lose heart. Always keep your mind overflowing with love and affection. You're going to be a mother and a good one that! May you be blessed!
    sridhar
     
  3. varalotti

    varalotti IL Hall of Fame

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    Words of Wisdom, Chitvish!

    You have distilled your motherhood experience in those words. I want to repeat what I have already said in this thread. Chitvish, your children and the children of women of your age(I presume that you will be my mother's age, give or take a few years) were able to do wonders in IT, ITES and got employed in Microsoft, Intel and Nasa and make the Americans look up to our ways of upbringing. But I very much doubt whether the children of these children will do the same thing. I know a young couple in their late twenties. The husband works for a call centre and the wife works for a software company. Both of them are in Delhi. (Gurgaon). The husband works from 8PM to 7AM whereas the wife works from 9AM to 7PM. If things go well they'd meet for 15 minutes in the evening when the wife would have come home and the husband would not have started yet. And in the weekends. I felt like puking on hearing about this. Has money become so important? Can we eat money? Or we interested in getting and begetting money rather than children?
    TV is not the only villain. The present attitude is the villain. We now have started valuing life in terms of CTC (a technical term in the HR industry which represents the total salary earned by a person in terms of Cost To Company (CTC)). The boy and girl in the above example used to boast "My CTC is 4 lakhs; but poor fellow, that Nikhil is making only Rs.3.5 lakhs". Wrong priorities. We should be focussing on a different CTC. - being Cheerful, having a good Time and building a good Character. This latter CTC was what you and the mothers of 60s' and 70s enjoyed! Words of Wisdom, Chitvish, thanks for the nice reply!
     
  4. Sharada

    Sharada Senior IL'ite

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    Woman's Era

    When I first read this article in Woman's Era I had thought that all the sensational newspaper incidents had been highlighted. But later I rationalised that what is written is a reflection of the times we live in. Teenage years are very impressionable and peer pressure is at its maximum. Parents should invite their children's friends and interact with their parents (if possible) to know the kind of company he/she keeps. Discussions about money, sex and family problems should not be taboo. The teenager should feel included. What Varalotti's father did (asking him to manage the family finances) was very wise and made Varalotti realise that his father's decision was prudent.
    Chithra, even I pooh-pooh the idea of spending "quality time" with children. Just like we need to know their likes/dislikes/moods/aspirations, they need to know ours too. By spending one hour of this so called quality time, we only show our best sides to them. And before you know it their childhood is over. My son is in college now, and I do some part time assignments -still I try to be home when he is back. We chat about the day - his classes, friends, the lecturers, the project he's working on; and I tell him about the neighbourhood, some funny incidents, calls that I got. Yesterday, a fiercely loyal stray dog on our road died; every night we fed it two slices of bread. So when my son came back from college I told him about how the dog suffered, sipped water in front of our gate and died. Even in her death she didn't trouble anyone. Small, seemingly irrelevant trivia - but these are the things that memories are made of.
    In this piece Varalotti has clearly delineated the guidelines to avoid the pitfalls during the teenage years. His next article should focus on how to be a good parent. The discusion this article has evoked is interesting - each one of us is getting inspired to respond with a mini article!
    Great going Varalotti!
    Sharada
     
  5. Varloo

    Varloo Gold IL'ite

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    Hai,
    this indeed is a timely discussion. All the views are really helpful. We the parents of teenagers are a really confused lot today.
    We Indians simply try to ape the West for wrong things.
    Like Varalotti said, their culture is different and they take dating and sex in teens as quite normal. They make their children independant even from a young age. The child knows fully what he is doing and is responsible for his or her actions.
    But here, the whole scenerio is different. We parents have to deal with our children in a very cautious manner. If the parent does not control a wrong step , the child questions the parent about that later.
    Be friendly and also let them have some freedom. Do not give in to all their whims and fancies. Make them understand that there are restrictions. Let them know that there is a line, where they should stop. This way we can avoid many unpleasant experiences.
    Thanks for this Forum, we are getting very good councelling from experts, the parents who have experienced so many things.
    Varloo
     
  6. varalotti

    varalotti IL Hall of Fame

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    Culture is the Keyword!

    There are many Indians living abroad who have a kind of "cultural confusion". And now thanks to the software boom and call centres, I see the same "cultural confusion" in places like Bangalore and Hyderabad. The other day my sister was discussing this article with me. Her niece (a flamboyant girl in her early twenties) had told that I had exaggerated the teenage reactions. She said these days girls have affairs, then shake hands and move on. I was startled. She even narrated the story of her friend who by 23 had already had and terminated two live-in relationships.
    Culture is something that's ingrained into our beings by thousands of years of nurture. We can't shake it off in just one generation and if we attempt that we would be meeting disasters like this.
    Whatever may the place we are destined to live we should keep our cultural values intact. An American, in whichever country he is in, prefers to drive around in a Ford car. The same kind of attachment we should have towards our culture.
    While we should encourage our teenagers to move freely with the friends of opposite sex, some where we should draw a thick, clear line, the unbreachable "Lakshman Rekha" and stick on to it.
    Sharada has had a matured approach towards her son. Like Chitra and Sharada I also do not believe in the "quality time" bull ****. A very rich industrialist (his wife is also an industrialist) meets his wife and children once in a month in the city's poshest five star hotel for about five hours. Then everyone go about their own way. This is not "good quality time" but "bad quality parenting". Those children would always think that their drivers and maids are far more desirable persons than their dads and moms.
    Varloo, thanks for joining in and thanks for capturing the cultural differences as the key point. An ignorance of this basic fact has led to the disasters I have mentioned in the main post.
    varalotti
     
  7. WesternDevi

    WesternDevi New IL'ite

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    The percentage of teenagers killing themselves or their boyfriends/girlfriends, or their family members is a thin minority, statistics-wise. Far more Indian brides are killed over dowry, far more.

    For one or two isolated incidences the whole nation or world need not get in an uproar.

    These cases have to be dealt with individually.

    However, dowry deaths and dowry abuse have reached epidemic proportions and therefore national laws have been put in place.

    When teenage boyfriend/girlfriend deaths reach epidemic proportions, then national laws will also be put in place for that. Till then, these cases remain very few and far between.
     

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