When parents start treating their children as trophies and when children start blowing up the real picture, problems start surfacing in many areas, both inside and outside home. Read on to know why bragging needs to be done away with…
The Parental Perspective
All parents want to take delight in what their children do. And it is natural to take that happiness outside and share it with others – known and unknown. The time when you pass with flying colours or come first in the inter-school debate competition, the scene of your mother or father taking sweets to the neighbour’s house will not be uncommon. It is instinctive for parents wanting to see their children rise and achieve. But why? For the children only, or for showing off to the society?
In the last edition of this magazine, the moot point was ‘Comparison’. An important offshoot of the same subject is ‘Bragging’. Children often become objects to show off in social situations. While appreciation is good, but beyond a certain limit things can go sour.
The tendency is a synonym for craving a deeper acceptance, for a feeling of knowing that one’s parenting is great and one’s children are the best.
Reason –
Craving for a Deeper Acceptance
Many psychological studies suggest that people develop an innate longing for attention early on in life. As parents and having passed the stages of education, job and marriage, the next level of accomplishment they aim at is of children. So when the children do extremely well parents get an opportunity to seek attention from their peers and receive compliments. This tendency is a synonym for craving a deeper acceptance, for a feeling of knowing
that one’s parenting is great and one’s children are the best.
What Goes
Beyond the Limit?
Hourly update on social media, having no other topic to discuss and exaggerating, in fact going to the extent of even lying to make a good impression–all this goes beyond the limit. But the worst consequence is when parents start building pressure on the children. As a result, children often find themselves inadequate of fulfilling their expectations and end up in despair and self-loathing.
The Young
Perspective
Every child wants to build a superior identity that emerges from his/her parents. Entities, such as occupation, salary, material possessions and professional achievements become new subjects for them to discuss with friends. Owning a BMW or a foreign trip becomes a big deal for some. They seek pleasure in believing that their parents are doing better than their peers’.
Reason –
Any Method of Getting Ahead
Studying in the same class with people of same age, children catch hold of any factor which will make them seem ahead of others. The mentality is all about a race where admiration comes either at the cost of academic and co-curricular achievements or familial possessions. In the process, humility gets lost.
What Goes
Beyond the Limit?
The resulting peer pressure could force some to start exaggerating things, looking down upon people and even lie to build an impression. And naturally all this does not last for long. Imagine the shame they will have to experience once the truth comes out.
What to Do?
Besides projecting false images, bragging portrays one as arrogant, pompous and supercilious. There are just a handful of things one needs to bear in mind to avoid being so:-
1. Be realistic and accept one’s family as it is.
2. Motivate each other.
3. Seek happiness in what is and stop pressurising.
4. Engage with humble people.
5. Abandon superficiality and any kind of complexes.
We all are much more than comparisons and show-offs. Bragging
is for the insecure and the incompetent. Choose to be real and humble!
