What has been disturbing me lately is the number of suicides that are taking place: Suicides by children!! Children committing suicide due to stress, inability to cope with the examination or fear of failure. A terrible thing! We don’t want this to happen to our children, so, we as parents have to do something about this. Of course, we cannot safeguard our child from ever failing. Failing doesn’t mean failing a class, it could mean failing to make a friend, failing a race, failing in a competition, it could be any kind of failure and since we cannot protect them from failure at all times, what we could do, perhaps, is to view failure positively! When a child fails in something, he hasn’t failed! He’s only failed in that particular field. He’s failed a subject, or he’s failed a class. He isn’t a failure. It isn’t as if he hasn’t accomplished anything. He’s learnt something. It isn’t the end of the world. He can begin again.
Failure doesn’t mean giving up, it means starting a fresh; that’s the kind of attitude we can inculculate in our children. They’ll be more positive human beings and positivity is so important.
A positive attitude is a sure way to succeed! It works miracles, as it did in the case of Wilma Rudolph. She was born in a very poor family and at the age of four she got scarlet fever and polio at the same time. So she was put into braces. She coundn’t walk normally, leave alone run! and the doctors told her parents that Wilma will always walk with braces on her legs. At the age of nine, this little girl kicked off her braces and she said that she was going to walk and run. No one believed her, but walk she did and she did run!! and that was her positive attitude. At the age of thirteen she wanted to take part in her school sports and all the other children in the class laughed. She took part and she came last in the race. She didn’t give up. She was sure she could do it! She took part in the next race. She came last again and last in the third race as well, but in the fourth race, she came second last and that encouraged her so much that she looked for a trainer and she found a trainer –Ed Temple, a very wellknow trainer. She told Ed that she wanted to be the fastest woman in the world and he looked at her and said that with her kind of spirit and positive attitude, she would do it! The day came when she took part in the Olympics and she was competing against a girl called Jutta, the fastest woman in the world who had never, ever lost a race, So she ran the 100 m race and defeated Jutta. Her first Olympic Gold. She ran in the 200 m race and she defeated Jutta. Her second Olympic Gold! She ran the relay. Her team was second, Jutta was leading. But Jutta and she were the anchor and she defeated Jutta. So, she got three Gold Medals! A child who had polio, who had been in braces……how did she do it? It was only her positive attitude.
Positive attitude doesn’t always mean success, it means that the child has faith in himself to TRY!
-Kiran Bajaj