Today, as our maid came in, she said, about a neighbour of hers, a 23-year-old boy committed suicide, the reason he was facing harassment by his boss, the other day I was reading a newspaper, to read a story about a boy who committed suicide as his girlfriend insulted him publicly. What is happening? Today’s youth chooses suicide as a path to escape problems, or unable to face an insult? Are the youth alone to blame for taking a decision, dishevelled their loved ones for life? Is their attitude built by the society or in the home? As parents, are we doing any mistake by pampering our children a lot? Are we protecting our children so much that we leave them vulnerable to the big bad world when they are grown up?
Are we growing up our children either to die or harass the other person in the name of love? Are our children unable to face harassment as we give lots of importance to their likes than ours? When they face a rejection, they are unable to face anything.
So, what do we do, there could be various factors stimulating a suicide, but I feel the basic problem is the attitude, we carry for all the pressures and problems? Here are few of my suggestions
1. First, let us teach our children that it is perfectly normal to have problems. Who doesn’t have a problem, everyone does. How do our children know about it? Just let us discuss our problems at home. When the child is around 7 or 8 they start understanding many things. We can discuss our problems in the office. The work pressures we face, how we handled it, all these things help the child to think that, it is okay to have a problem and overcome it.
2. Take autobiography and biography of famous people. Instead of discussing their success only, discuss how they overcame failures. Make the child understand that a successful person’s journey is not the absence of hurdles, but real success comes in spite of failures.
Give them real life situations and how people handle it.my favorite had been Abraham Lincoln’s Journey- the President of US, Our National leader Mahatma Gandhi, US no.1 motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
3. From the childhood it is important to impart in schools and home that, any problem in the world is not huge than time. Given time and little efforts, many problems could be solved.
4. Give hypothetical questions to your child and ask him to solve it. Help him to give different creative ideas. As he grows up, make the situations difficult and different, many problems if lived, prior in imaginations, help to face the reality with courage and positive attitude, as the mind had already lived in that situation.
5. Show examples of real people around you, your relatives, friends, neighbors, their stories. Every human around us has a story, find it out relate it to your child. Real heroes are around us. For example, I tell our maids story to my son, she was widowed at the age of 25 with a son, who was just 8 years old at that time. Her happy family was disturbed when people wounded her husband in communal riots. Her own neighbors beat her husband badly. Luckily she and her son were away from home, when the incident occurred. She did household work and took care of her wounded husband for 2 years. He died after 2 years. She managed to bring up her only son alone. Educated him with great difficulty doing household chores for many families. Now he is earning and with all their savings, they managed to build a small but fantastic house of their own, in a good locality. She still does house hold chores in others home as she doesn’t want to be a burden to her son. What a noble thought. Real life heroes are around us. We just need an eye to look for them. Our Maid’s name is Narsamma and I am attaching Photo of hers.
This is the link about India’s youth suicide rates.
Even though the article is a few years back, what was frustrating for me is it held more relevance today.
Kavitha Sriram Blog 
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