Parents should not live their dreams through their children, several senior school teachers said.
It creates "unnecessary pressure" on young minds and is one of the main triggers for anxiety among the young these days, they said.
The children are told that when they fail in something, it is not just their failure but also of their parents, a teacher said. "This feeling of letting down parents adds to the stress."
Setting a target for the child has now become part of "familial duty", said a school principal. Everyone in the family has a word of advice and a parallel to draw an intangible target for the young student.
"If a parent could not achieve what they had aspired for, they want their child to do it. It is more with dominating parents. But as parents, they should understand what their children are capable of and what their weaknesses are, instead of pushing them into something that they have no aptitude for or interest in," said Terence Ireland, principal, St James' School.
A section of parents sees the child's education as an investment, said a principal. Parents want a "return on their investment", said Rodney Borneo, principal of St Augustine's Day School, Shyamnagar.
"Parents want their child's life to be as they want it to be. But they fail to understand that unlike a commodity, the child is a person with his or her own individual level of maturity. One cannot predict growth in a graph," said Borneo.
Doing something for your child is a duty and it should not be target-specific, several teachers and school heads said.
"A child's failure is not his or her alone. The children feel that if they fail to achieve the target that has been set by their parents, they are failing their parents," said Borneo.
Even in 2024, a common problem across many schools is that parents insist that their children pursue science even though they are not interested in science subjects.
They take up science and end up performing miserably, said teachers.
"Parents want their children to take up science because they are not aware of the other avenues that have opened up. They are stuck in a time warp. While parental guidance is lacking, the expectations keep soaring," said Anjana Saha, principal, Mahadevi Birla World Academy.
The ambitions of parents create additional stress for the child.
"If left to themselves, they would naturally blossom. There are parents who feel children are in a race and they keep pushing their child much beyond their capacity," said Gargi Banerjee, principal, Sri Sri Academy.
Psychotherapist Farishta Dastur Mukerji said that while parents try to live through their children, they are often unaware of the fallout.
"Many of the parents are not conscious of it and, as educators, it is part of our job to make parents aware," said Mukerji.
When parents fail to understand their flaws and keep pushing their children, it can have adverse effects on a child, warned several veteran school teachers.
"There are many students who lose their way. They are more susceptible to wrong habits and can even resort to self-harm if not cared for and protected," said Ireland.
