Adolescence The new challenge.

When the phone rang, I snatched it from the side table, desperate to hear my son’s voice. The wait was agonizing.

Once home I hugged him overwhelmed with gratitude.

I cleared my throat and asked him about his welfare.

“What is it with you mom?

You look different today?’

‘I am fine’, I muttered from under my breath.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

What is it ma pl share it with me?

No just was anxious about your welfare.

 My voice sounded like a poor feeble recording of a normal mother's voice.

I wasn’t fine. I had watched the movie adolescence and with every scene as a parent, I felt I was being punched down with a new challenge. Adolescence a British crime drama that shows a thirteen-year-old schoolboy who gets arrested for the murder of a girl in his school.

The colossal weight of my anxiety after watching this series took a toll on me and I broke down watching a young thirteen-year-old Jamie young vulnerable, sweet, intelligent above all a kid.

My friend however brushed it aside and said that such things could be termed as generation gap thing for generations each generation has had a different problem.

And even adults get bullied, have peer pressure, and go through trauma.

Yes indeed, but who does the channelizing of such cases.

Do we all land up finally in the counsellor’s room?

What happened to the family fabric.

Where is the concept of unconditional love and togetherness that we promise our children.

Why do they feel unwanted and unaccepted and turn towards platforms that they think can validate them?

There are influencers today who are hired to give these teenagers an apt socially acceptable profile with so called cool pictures; travel pictures that you need to blink over many times for they are made to look so real.

Why a sudden spurt in the need to be relevant, wanted and accepted.

Why love yourself if the world loves you?

Let people dislike you does it require an effort and strength.

Experts say acceptance of one’s own self is being observed by children as they are growing up

Our first school is home. Anxieties do get transferred translated into different forms that eventually manifest and also get absorbed.

 I was worried about the influences that our young adolescents are subject to.

Even though my son had a soothing smile and however much I was overwhelmed with gratitude to see him at ease and with an ardent smile, but the gnawing fact that has occupied my mind now is whether or not he is safe with friends who could be social bullies? Jamie was being chronically bullied and he internalized these emotions. That means no trust in his family; didn’t want to speak about it to anyone. What takes this trust away?

With the social networking words like masculine, incel, emojis with nasty interpretations how much can young boys and girls protect themselves?

Parents feel guilty for this kind of online radicalization as they call it.

The thought was haunting me. The movie opened my eyes as it would any parents to protection beyond the four walls of home. We think our children are safe, but are they, with evil prowling in the shape of compact digital shapes?

Tears welled in my eyes and goosepimples took over my skin.

I wish I could anaesthetize myself of this parental anxiety and consequent pain.  

What are the children up to today?

Do we know them really?

What is their world like?

Do we demonstrate sensitivity towards their problems or is it just the academic curriculum that takes precedence over other issues?

In hazar chaurasiye ki ma, a Bollywood flick, made almost two decades ago, has an unfortunate mother who loses her son to a complex situation. She is overpowered with guilt and self-doubt. A similar bell rang, but not very aloud. The movie emphasized the fact that it is very important to know not only your children but also their friends for, they get in a web of their dark multi-pronged psychology, which is ego, masculinity, sexual orientation, self-pride, bullying. This is where and the friends help a parent to have a peep into their problems. Bullying today has taken a new dimension—soft bullying -- a new form and social platforms of different kinds are feeding this monstrosity. They today live in a different world dealing with many different demons. A need for relevance and validation, especially from the opposite sex; about being wanted and appreciated, is prime in their minds.

Can we talk sex and sexual appeal?

Can we bridge this gap by making the moralistic fiber more breathable; allow them to be their selves dump the report cards and academic assessments admit vulnerabilities and mediocrity.

And yet be alright?

.

We take our kids on a holiday, work hard for them, whilst they silently cringe and succumb to social pressures and experience a lowliness either because of how they look what they possess and also their attraction for the other sex.

ultimate numbness expectations and but that makes no difference. We do take our kids, look after their need, like the father says we make them with our sweat and blood.

 One felt sorry for parenting of today for we don’t know what our children do within the four walls of their homes. Succumbed to numbness go crazy with fear and misery.

We teach them emotions like anger control, happiness, morality but not masculinity and self-image says, Namita Bhandare, an independent journalist.

 In Priya Sehgals show on news X, Kaveri Bamzai, again an Indian journalist, author, and critic, said the mindset of boys and girls is very different today and needs to be handled accordingly.

Watching Adolescence is a challenge for parents of today for it makes us aware of the fact that we don’t know our children at all.

The writing today is different, and one needs to understand the script.

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