Unhealthy criticism gets youngsters down
Preity Zinta’s “adoptive” father Shandar Amrohi, backtracking on his earlier remarks, where he had said he would be including some much guarded information about the bubbly actress in his upcoming biography, recently said that the book would have no mention of Preity. Compared to stars like Miley Cyrus and Lindsay Lohan, however, Preity can still be considered lucky. The parents of Miley and Lindsay have often spoken openly about the issues their famous offspring have.
Leaving aside celebrities, even for regular teens who don’t have to spend time in the limelight, having their parents discuss their shortcomings in front of friends and relatives can feel almost like a betrayal of sorts.
Eighteen-year-old Sheejal Shetty has strong sentiments on the issue. “When parents violate your personal space, there is a sense of betrayal. When you speak of your teen’s shortcomings with an outsider, all you are leaving him/her with, is a sense of humiliation and isolation. Let’s look at it this way: If you have a badly performing employee, you don’t go around telling other companies about it,” Sheejal says, also bringing forward another point — apt in the Indian context. “We give our parents more credibility than we give ourselves. So imagine the kind of blow a teenager’s self-esteem and self-image face in such situations.”
Sheejal’s peer Shreya Arora believes betrayal may be too strong a word, but the experience is uncomfortable nevertheless. “I think that teens often view being spoken of in front of relatives or friends, as their parents ridiculing them. It begins to give them an inferiority complex when parents highlight their child’s negative aspects, and end up praising the virtues of someone else’s child.”
But other teens are willing to look at this in a more benevolent light. They say that perhaps parents are motivated to discuss their behaviour with others to find possible solutions to what they perceive as problems. Varun Rajput, 17, says, “I think it’s okay for parents to disclose the problems of their children in front of others, partly because this may help them share their problems with others who might have solutions. Besides, this will reduce the pressure of parenting and they will not feel alone or hopeless. Teens too should be very open about discussing their issues with others and not feel betrayed if someone close to them takes the initiative.”
Perhaps Suma Naidu, the mother of a 16-year-old, says it best when she asserts, “I give my son all the encouragement he needs. We’ve reached a certain comfort level where he knows that even if I said something negative about him in public — it is not with the intention of putting him down.”
While such an enviable level of understanding may not be achievable by everybody, this is probably something all of us need to absorb as well: To know which criticism is constructive, and which is vindictive, and how to take both types of criticism in our stride.
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