On Sat, 2013-08-24 at 12:38 +0530, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: > I agree parenting support and the money cushions rich kids from > life's > problems. I used those three as examples of grown up problems that hit > successful people in their thirties these days. > > The college admission, the career, the marriage all happen more or > less on > auto pilot if you merely turn up for life and don't mess up bad. A > good > school gets a good college which gets a good career etc. > > In the traditional affluent Indian family of fifty-hundred years ago > the > support system would have extended all the way through life. Through > raising the kids, through getting them married, through retirement and > death.
You are sparking off some interesting (to me) thoughts in my head (or whatever part of my body I use for thinking). Let me try and explain.. Failure and disappointment come in many guises. The possible reactions to failure and disappointment are limited to the same emotions, depression, anger, denial etc. Helping a person cope with that almost never involves reversing the original issue that triggered off the sense of failure. A child who loses a competition he has been practising for and expecting to win because he has won all practice sessions cannot be given a prize because he is disappointed or depressed, but he can be taught how to cope with failure. So the question is, if people are taught how to cope with failure early, would they not be able to better cope with failure later? In other words, those "privileged kids" who become adults and later break down after failure are perhaps people who have not earlier faced failure or the possibility of failure? This can happen even without mollycoddling/spoiling (the "autopilot"). A child can simply do well in school and college because his interests and ability happen to coincide with the direction his parents want him, and encourage him, to take - so he cruises through early life until he hits the first roadblock. shiv
