Thursday, October 14, 2010

No work and all play

It's that time of the year when parents all around are going around with tense looks. More than household chore or office work as may be the case they look more stressed out. Reason it's exam time and it is just the mid term exam that I am talking about.

Parents have become like those old gramophones which sometimes get stuck at one place and repeat the same lines. I can hear myself repeating the moment I spot the shadow of my children and I go "What are you guys doing here, go up and study. Don't waste time" and when I turn, I find the children have long disappeared. It is more of a hide and seek game where most of the time they hide and I try to seek them.

The moment I open my mouth both the kids say "mamma, please don't give us lectures" and there I am left having to hold back all that I was trying to succinctly put in as few words as possible the importance of doing well in the exams without it seeming to be a lecture. Well all my skills of articulating my thoughts are left hanging high and dry.

However when it comes to computer time and T.V time they are as precise as a stopwatch and appear from nowhere. Suddenly I find them comfortably ensconced on the sofa or on the chair playing games or watching a football match. Such is their focus and concentration on the games or the match going on, it is hard to get any response from them even when they are spoken to.

That leaves me wishing if only that was their exam syllabus. My imagination runs wild for a moment where I feel if their History chapters deal with the origins, dates and matches played in the history of football, geography could deal with locations and teams from where the football players come from, science and technology could be easily dealt with the kind of equipments that the footballers use which are manufactured using the body type of Messi, Ronaldo, Torres and so on and so forth, Physics could deal with the dynamics of motion and energy study of each and every footballer's unique style, then I am sure they would get perfect scores. Imagine the bliss, parents would never then have to worry about exams any more. Life would have been totally tension free. I am then suddenly transported back to the land of reality.

I have found that playtime is also something which cannot be sacrificed at any cost. The moment it is 4.30 I can hear the door slamming and the next minute I can hear whoops of joy and the sound of football game being in progress. Their argument is they need break from studies. When I point out to them that they have hardly spent half an hour of their study time what with breaks for drinking water, juice or munching on savouries in between they close the argument by saying probably I do not know how to read the clock!!

Finally there I am making resolution that henceforth I will not give lengthy lectures or get stuck repeating the done to death lines over and over. Well somehow the moment exam times are round the corner it will be the same all over again.....

2 comments:

Namrata Singh said...

My Gosh!!!Shobhana...This sounds sooooo sooo familiar...But on hind sight i think we have all done this with our own parents at some point...:-)So i guess we need to exercise alot of patience all the time ...I wonder and marvel at my own Mom whos done this with her big family of 7 kids...It must have been tough...WOW!!!Its Final exam time again.... time flies...
Namrata..

shobhana shenoy said...

Hi Namrata,
Well atleast during our time I guess parents were really not that worried or the pressure was not so huge as it is now. Cos I don't remember my mom or dad asking us to study, and we used to do it at our own pace.
But sadly children these days don't have that kind of luxury as the content itself is so very vast and the assessment being comprehensive they really need to put in the best of their effort everytime. Yes, exams round the corner and temps shooting all around..(
Thanks keep reading and post your comments.