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The content emphasises the importance of guidance, not mere suggestions, for adolescents undergoing significant physical and mental transitions. It clarifies that suggestions offer choices, while guidance directs one toward specific goals, which is especially critical during the vulnerable phase of adolescence. The narrative of Ajai illustrates a real-life scenario of a young boy confronting addiction, highlighting the necessity for parents to monitor and support their children actively. Proper care, love, and timely intervention can steer children away from harmful paths and cultivate constructive habits. Ultimately, nurturing the youth is presented as a collective responsibility of parents, educators, and society for fostering a strong future generation.

Essential or desirable

The prudence of human beings is the judicious use of reasoning and logic. It often happens that when finding oneself at a crossroads, one may become puzzled. Seasoned guidance can help a lot. It can be essential or desirable information. Essentiality conveys that possessing a thing, quality, or trait is compulsory, while desirability is an added thing which is preferable. It conveys that despite having essential things or qualifications, preference would be given to the one having desirable things. Desirable is an extra element, preferable over simple essentials.

Let us delve deeper and try to understand it with examples.

Ex. – I

An examinee is given a choice to solve any five questions out of nine, but taking up the last question is compulsory. The intent is clear. The examinee is not at will to take up the last question or not. Nonetheless, if they prefer not to take up the last question, they will lose marks. Had the last question been preferable, the situation would have been different.

Ex. – II

On the same token, a person who wants to buy a car goes to a showroom and spells out his requirements and preferences along with desirables. If he gets a vehicle with his desired features, he will choose it right away. Essentially, the customer’s need was to have a manual, petrol-driven vehicle, and desirables were a few luxury features, like a 360-degree camera. Evidently, his basic requirements would be fulfilled by having the desired essential features, but if he gets an extra feature at almost the same price, he will opt for it.

Ex. – III

Similarly, a company advertises recruitment in their organisation. Essentially, it needs a person with sound knowledge of computers, but it also wants the candidate to be proficient in handling software glitches. Choosing between the two candidates, one without desirable qualifications and the other with them, is not difficult. It is obvious.

Phases of life

The illustrations cited above describe various elements and their effective inferences. The illustrations talk about three different situations and the use of essential, desirable or both in different situations. It can be effectively used to understand the complexities of relationships and bonding in a family, especially when dealing with growing children. Growing children face new things in their lives which perplex them. It is important to give them emotional support and tell them the importance of compulsory and desirable things. It helps them cope with the challenges of changing situations.

Adolescent

Human life passes through various phases. Broadly speaking, the phases are childhood, youth and dotage. There are, nonetheless, intermediary stages too that fit in between the three stages. They are transitional phases. Among them is the one which comes after a child grows and reaches a stage when they are in a transition period. It is the time when they are neither a child nor an adult. Physical changes start taking place. The child is now an adolescent and stage is of adolescence.

Middle adulthood

The other phase is when a young one slips gradually towards old age, and they are neither young nor old. This is the stage of middle age or middle adulthood. It may cause some psychological problems, but it is the age when individuals can carry themselves properly.

Both stages are critical. Nonetheless, the adolescent undergoes significant physical and mental changes. This is a time when proper guidance is crucial. At this stage, the child is not capable of making independent decisions. What they need is not just suggestions, but rather a firm direction to lead them positively.

Adolescent: Critical age

An adolescent is prone to deviate and can flounder. It is a stage when the future of a child can be at stake. Proper guidance and counselling could bring them back to a normal life. (UCLA)

Adolescent Ajai and his story

Ajai was a lively and sharp boy. He was good at his studies and used to secure good marks in examinations. His growth and progression were more than satisfactory. The thirteen-year-old boy was curious about the happenings around him. He would talk to his mother about every topic that intrigued him.

With time, his mother observed a marked change in his behaviour. She noticed that he had started confining himself to his room, mostly lost in his thoughts and would ask fewer questions. His mother sensed the decline in his physical health. It was worrisome. She conversed with Ajay’s father, and together they tried to find out the cause and cure of it. Since Ajai was comfortable with her, she took up the task.

Ajai was sitting quietly in his room when his mother went to him. Caressing his head, she sat beside him, taking his head in her lap. Sitting silently, she kept caressing and running her fingers through his hair. Adolescent Ajai constricted in her lap like a bird wanting to seek solace in the cosy warmth of its mother.

The boy and his mother

A few moments later, she started conversing. She initially asked light questions and answered them herself in a monologue. After a while, she started telling him a short story. There was a slight movement in the boy’s body, and he started sobbing. The cautious mother hugged his son tightly and uttered a few soothing words. Ajai was becoming normal. He remained in that position for a little more and then raised his face to look at his mother.

Smeared with tears, his face looked sober and lovely. Once rounded, his face had become oblong with jaw bones like her mother’s. His large speaking eyes were brimmed and looked sombre and a little gloomy. She tenderly looked at him. The cupid’s bow of the boy was deepening in colour. Peach fuzz had started appearing on his face. The little toddler had become a boy. The mother kept caressing him. After a brief lull, she tenderly asked the boy if he was relaxed.

The boy opened up

Resuming the conversation, she asked her boy about his problem. A little hesitantly, he started telling her his harrowing experience. What he told her mother was a dangerous thing.

Ajai told her how he was entrapped by some mischievous people who lured him and gave him chocolate. After eating it, he felt giddiness. Gradually, it became his addiction. He was finding it difficult to concentrate on his studies. He felt the chocolate craving and tried to acquire it in any way. The mother was aghast but kept her cool.

Consultation and care

The parents took their son to a doctor dealing with drug addiction. The doctor was happy to see the alertness of the parents. It was the start of addiction. He thanked them for spotting the problem and taking the boy to him in time. The treatment and counselling started. The boy cooperated as well and he was saved in time. He was caught before falling into a dark trench of endless woes and despair.

After proper care, counselling and love, Ajai regained himself and was back on track. He became alert and conscious of students who were involved in fishy acts.

Parental care: Close observation

An adolescent is at the vulnerable transition from childhood to youth who needs close observation and proper, soft but firm guidance. Children need to be tackled gently and must not be ill-treated, abused, or thrashed. The parents who scold or thrash their children do great harm to them. As an elder adult, one must guide and suggest the best way for their growing children.

In the wake of so-called modernity, parents give their adolescent children a long rope. It can be dangerous for children’s growth and distract their focus from important to unimportant, sometimes vicious things. The curious mind of a child wants to know about everything new to them. An adolescent becomes rebellious at times. They don’t want any bondage. It is natural.

Parental care and Maturity

Look at the Ganga, a pious river and lifeline of northern India. It emerges as a nascent stream from the glacier. Moving ahead with a loud roar, it gushes through gorges and canyons, washing away everything that comes in its way. It mellows as it reaches the plains. By that time, it accumulates enough silt and sand that it spreads along the bank, making a fertile flat.

It is the basic instinct of humans as well. Meandering through life, humans accumulate experience that benefits the younger generation. It is important to note that a child is future youth, middle-aged, and an old man. Proper parental care transform them to a responsible citizen. William Wordsworth rightly said in his poem, Child is father of the man.

Building blocks

Needless to say, a child is the future of a nation. They are not only our children but are the building blocks of a strong and resourceful nation. Proper guidance and teaching about inculcation of constructive habits and good upbringing is important. It should be the priority of every parent, teacher, and all young and old people to guide them, mentor them, and suggest ways to fight the difficult times. People need to inculcate winning zeal in them. Acting as a watchdog, the older people should watch children grow.

Further reads:

• Ode to Mother: A Heartfelt Tribute
• The Joy of Aging: Living Life to the Fullest
• Embracing the Present: Insights from the Past
• The Importance of Self-Evaluation in Personal Growth
• Children’s Aspirations: Shaped by Environment

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