Stress. What does it mean by stress? Is stress the same as depression? According to stress management expert, stress is known as:- ‘An emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition of mind which occurs in response to adverse external influences.’
According to expert, a little bit of stress in our daily life is good to push us to strive further whereas if there too much stress it’ll harm us. I read an article yesterday in The Star Newspaper about a girl who committed suicide because she didn’t do well in he UPSR. It really break my heart to read such news. Here I am thinking that life is so short and we need to treasure every hour of our life to impact other people’s life, and there a soul just give up her life for a simple failure. I really wonder, where do they get all this idea of committing suicide at such a tender age? Don’t they know that life is precious?
Upon finishing the article, I notice that this kind of problem is not new to the society. Everywhere in the world, children are taking their exam result way too seriously. If they don’t do well, it means end of the world to them. Why are they having so much stress about exam result? For what I’ve understand and experience, parents are the main culprit for such incident follow by the media and the school. I have students telling me how stress they are because they have to go from one tuition to another tuition everyday without rest and play. Reason being, their mom wants them to excel way beyond their peers. For goodness sake, do you know how old is the girl? She’s only 5 years old. She have to go to 2 kindies everyday, on Saturday, she have to attend English class follow by mental arithmetic and so on and so forth. Have the parents ever think that they are actually robbing the kids childhood?
For my opinion, I feel that the only way to stop the children from committing suicide will need to come from their family. Parents stop giving your children unnecessary pressure. If you want your children to excel and to be a better man in the future here’s what you can do to encourage:
- Praise them even if they fail. Compare their previous result with the current result. If it improve, praise them but if it deteriorates, tell them its ok, try harder the next time.
- Reward them. Instead of punishing them for not doing well, why not reward them for doing well. It will work as a force to make them do well.
- Listen to them. When children tell you that they are having pressure in their studies, spend time to listen to them and see what is their problem instead of brushing them off and tell them to talk to their teachers.
- Don’t push all academic responsibilities to the tuition teachers. Knowing that these days, both parents are working but try to spend the weekend to teach your children instead of pushing them to the tuition teacher.
- Scheduling. Instead of packing up their daily schedule with studies, spare a few hours for them to play or watch television or even anything that they like.
- Above all, spend time bringing your children for holiday, movie, ice-skating or any activity that can help them to de-stress.
Thats just my 2 cents worth. I really hope and pray that there’ll be no more children committing suicide but a healthy and bright generation will rise. Children are precious, so treasure them.
