Welcome to The Hunger Games of Parenting, Millennial Edition: Part 1

An appeal to Millennials to not fall in the traps their parents did.

My daughter turned three recently . On the occasion of her birthday, we invited a couple in society whose daughter is 2. Her mother casually asked me if my daughter could read to which I replied in negative. She went on to add that hers can .?

Earlier , we had regular interactions with another couple who had a son in class 3 or 4 and at every turn the mother would casually mention that her son is a topper in the school and would then go on to mention how the 7 year old is a pro at one particular sport and sundry other extracurriculars too.

I always come out exhausted from these interactions because I consciously try to make an effort to not compare my daughter to others.

This makes me think why do young parents indulge in these games of one-upmanship unintentionally ??

Most of us millennials were raised by anxious parents . But I feel in the age where information was so scarce , our parents had reasons to be anxious and worry about our education and career. In my case, they overdid it and I pay the price for it to this day. Even today, I get needlessly anxious when a task if given to me at work and over time I have figured it is a result of the interactions I had with my father in my pre teens or earlier .

Over time, I have found that almost all middle class Millennials have had this issue in one way or the other . Somebody wasted his/her years preparing for JEE when they had no aptitude for it . Others wasted precious years in Engineering when they could have gotten admission in a Non STEM degree that would have suited them better .

I can forgive the parents of today’s Millennials for not knowing better, but I am never going to forgive the parents of my generation, the Millennials .?

We work for multinationals where we get to interact with brilliant people with so varied ages and backgrounds. Many of us have gone through the grind our parents put us through , acquired degrees they coveted so much for their children — and yet we find a void inside us that is unfulfilled and the growing realization that we are living someone else’s dream (your parent’s and society’s) and not our own .?

The more friends I have heart-to-heart conversations about this stuff the more I realise how common these feelings are .

And yet , the first thing we do when we have kids who can barely frame sentences is to start the same game all over again .?

Can we for once take a chill pill and focus on spending quality time with our children and just let them be rather than indulging in futile comparisons that reduces them to a vehicle of our subconscious insecurities ?

Note : This is the first part where I try to identify the problem . I will write on what research says about this in next installment .?