We all want A SMART Kid. Which kind though?

When you type in Google Search “Indian Parents” the result you get will leave all parents, including me, in a state of shock and an instant spiral of reflection. Are we as Indian parent doing such a bad job of parenting by pushing our child to be SMART. Well let’s take a look at some aspects based on a variety of data.

Firstly, Children are not a source of our unfulfilled aspirations and social bragging.

SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely in management galleries. Therefore, a SMART goal helps focus one's efforts and increase the chances of achieving them. Are we in some ways applying this pressure to our children every now and then? Are we as parents leveraging our children as a symbol of social prominence? We all can reflect and find honest answers to the above. It is quite paradoxical that with a relatively high order of connected families as we would like to comfortably call ourselves, India leads the world in teenage depression, One in 4 teenagers in India suffers from depression and yet, we keep pretending this is not happening in our own homes and schools. Isn’t this disturbing and what we as parents can do about it?

                                                                            

Wait a second, What is wrong with We the Indian parents?     

Are we being micro-managers when it comes to our children? We want them to get exposed and excel     in a diverse set of activities. And, above all COMPARE: the classic Indian parent syndrome depicted in a popular Film Sharma ji ka Beta  (With due respect to Sharma community).  This approach only leads to     pressure and destruction of confidence. Imagine our child telling us that Dad, Mom, my friend just bought a penthouse and he comes to school in a 5 series or a S class. How would any parent feel? Let’s just turn    the tables and picture we as parents doing this between siblings, neighbours and relatives mistaking this as motivating our children to perform. Will we not learn, not to repeat what may have happened with us while we were growing up?

 

Secondly and furthermore, Pandemic’s impact on our children is far deeper than what we can see.

We must take this matter with a lot of deep thought instead of being in denial mode and leaving our children emotionally vulnerable. With their schedules, socialisation, playing and every other significant dimension being dislodged and reduced to home schooling, calls and among us, things aren’t easy when it comes to their growing up years. Besides enabling their education are we addressing there holistic and multi-dimensional development?

It’s high time for parents to make changes in our thought process and lifestyle. 

We should create a Bond with our children as friends and not as a vehicle of making us look good. Lets not direct them and rather redirect them,  have open and unplanned conversations, give them their space, do not impose our likes, judgements and perception. Rather, share anecdotes from our life without making it a sermon and DO NOT COMPARE. PLAY with them and encourage them to indulge in physical activity. The World Health Organisation recommends 60 minutes of physical activity for children aged 5 – 17years. Help them organise their screen time between their school, hobbies and physical activity.

Childhood obesity is now an EPIDEMIC in India! With present day lifestyles, every child needs to undertake physical activity . It’s no longer a discretionary activity. If Zoom and Teams is the new classroom to education, then Physical activity is no exception. Our child should not be missing out on fitness during the pandemic. Companies across the world are recognising this problem and are working towards it, says Netflix of fitness when adding classes for kids. 

It may sound as if physical activity is a solution to all the vows listed above . Well, basis enough research provided and as a founder of a Fitness and Sports Tech company, YES!. A popular NHS foundation hospital, UK says that Leading Active lifestyle for children results into 

• improving fitness, 

• providing an opportunity to socialise, 

• increasing concentration, 

• improving academic scores, 

• building a stronger heart, 

• improving self-esteem, 

• improving posture and balance, 

• lowering stress, 

• encouraging a better night's sleep 

AND THUS making your child REALLY SMART (Strong, Making an Effort, Agile, Reaching Out and Training to take on the world stage), the type of SMART anyone of us would chose. 

So, lets as parents aspire for a REALLY SMART kid and get our Fundamentals Right, thus enabling our child to be ACTIVE for Life.

 

Amit Gupta, Founder, upUgo.in, 

A Sports tech Platform with a dream of Democratising Fitness & Sports for every Child 

 

#unlock

The World is locked

#Lock , #unlock

So much has been said on COVID-19{C-19}. That I could not help but starting my first line with it.

We can unlock from where it begins and ends

Talk about the new reality of life unfurling from 19^th mar and then 21^st march.

I am sure like me many or most of us made several post-its and notes to make the MOST of the days given in hand and come up with a 2.0, 3.0, X.0 version of ourselves. But wait a minute in a few days this life also became hectic, between household chores, managing grocery, managing content, calls, video calls, post COIVD scenario building + revised strategy + how am I going to be relevant + many more. However, amidst all of this we all are finding something new and unique to get us to Unlock “ME”, for the sake of simplicity. I am by way of this blog sharing my Unlock “Me” experience.

I believe sometimes when you understand your situation at a subconscious level, you attract things which are related & lending to your state. This is what happened when C-19 was making me think about my state and I bumped into this book. It was like reading the right thing at the right moment giving the right perspective. While reading a not so popular book on Kindle, “Obstacle is the way” by Ryan Holiday I bumped into a simple yet very powerful line which touched me deeply “We don’t control what happens but we can control how we respond”. And reading amongst tons of other content I managed to listen into a Podcast By Ravi Venkatesan, and learn about the “Stockdale Paradox” popularized by Jim Collins in the famous book “Good To Great”, which explains “Realism Vs Optimism”. In the pages of this Book I have read so far and understood about the paradox, I realize that quite honestly adversity in modern times is overrated and lets say if it was our best bet is to toggle between real risks and not perceived risks and be optimistic. People who believe there are better options like being pessimistic and build 6 V.0 of scenarios, I am sorry, I haven’t read enough.

Let me try and talk about the above using some anecdotes from the world of sports circumventing corporates & historical wars, not that there is any dearth of examples but it’s just that I find sports to be the most non-threatening, single largest unifier & isn’t marred by religious, political or any other racial filter . Hence the subject is Agnostic. 2 minutes of your precious time please, kindly watch this 👉Lets learn from Paralympians how to deal with adversity, video clip. One of the many tera bytes of content posted on YouTube, but again I was clear in my sub-conscious mind to look for something and I got this in my first search. Of course I am not taking the credit I know its Google AI/ML.

Suyash Jadhav

I believe all these 4400 athletes had a choice to respond in a very defeated / different manner when they would have faced this adversity but look at them, they are playing at the mecca of sporting competition, Olympics and proving that the only limitation to a Human is the Human itself. In the words of one of the India’s most celebrated Paralympic Swimmer - Suyash Jadhav, You can accomplish anything with sheer hard work. Think of what you have and not what you don’t have, and “world’s most decorated Paralympic, Trischa Zorn popularly said, Despite her long dominance of swimming, Zorn says she never felt invincible. In a way both these messages are very true and relatable to the C19 situation and how many of us have a choice to respond to this. Although frankly speaking most or rather all of C19 is not even close to losing both your upper limbs at age 6 owing to getting electrocuted with live wires and still going to win a medal in swimming at the specially abled Olympic event And that when a blind by birth Paralympic swimmer with 55 Olympic medals reminds every mortal being a sense check that with all the Might they had they weren’t and shouldn’t mistake them as invincible.

With all of the above Me as an individual had only 3 choices 

1. To choose the way I will respond 
2. use this time to upgrade my iOs (internal operating system) & 
3. How do I make myself and my newly founded venture which was still like a nascent baby live through this storm. So at upugo.in my newly founded venture we had a situation where-in all our physical format classes came to a grinding halt which meant that we could have

Core Team upUgo 

lost our identity and whatever little existence we had created. However, considering/leveraging all the options I listed above we did what was the need of the hour and all of us (our team) buckled our shoes to get our digital plans advanced by 6 months.

What's the big rush, Lets not sprint the marathon

To summarize in the end, we all are in some way running the frenzy and the hedonic treadmill which never allows one to do any of this or that. Not realizing that sometimes our laces are untied, and we are on the edge of the mill. Now when that Mill is shut & we can Stop, Breathe, Notice, React and then Respond [I learnt his SBNRR technique from a mindfulness coach and expert) to so many things. Tie our laces and get ready for a better run out in the open. A human mind works best in adversity and can indeed unlock her/his potential best when in danger, drawing a ref the teachings of Epictetus, The Greek Beggar Turned Philosopher, “We have no power over external things, and the good that ought to be the object of our earnest pursuit, is to be found only within ourselves”