Achievements: The Child’s Wishes or The Parent’s Ambitions?

Araceli Munoz

Years ago, Iskander and Noraisha Yusof were the youngest siblings ever to be accepted at university, and their sister Sufiah began university when she was 13 years old. They were taught by their father, who was a mathematician, and they never went to school. But, these siblings haven’t shared the same luck. Iskander and Noraisha continued with their studies successfully, while Sufiah’s life has gone from bad to worse since she began university. She felt that her life was controlled by her father and his academic interests.

The case of Sufiah is the same as some other prodigy children, who cannot bear their parents’ pressure or the expectations that people put on them, or also, their lack of adaptation to an uncommon social environment.

Gifted children have to improve their skills but without being isolated from the rest of society with whom they have to live together, sooner or later. Maybe they should develop their learning without the necessity of stopping being children. They should go to school and not lose contact with other children of the same age.

In these times, stress also affects most children, who have to do numerous extra-school activities (music, languages, sports and so on). Often parents force children to do what they had liked doing and they haven’t been able to do. So, do our children have to be a reflection of our own defeats? And in the end, are the obtained achievements the achievements that they wanted to obtain or, maybe, the ones their parents wanted them to obtain? Is it the parents or children who decide where and how to triumph?

On the other hand, what should they sacrifice of their life to obtain this achievement? What price do they have to pay? And, to what extent can academic achievements be important if they don’t go accompanied by success in one’s personal life?

And finally, why do we need them to stop being children so soon? Perhaps this is only a parents’ choice. Some parents want their children to grow so fast, and others, like me, like enjoying the childhood of their children, although they know that this time will not last forever. Just as a Catalan song says: “Nothing or nobody can avoid them suffering, hands drawing on the clock, that they decide by themselves and that they make mistakes, that they grow and one day they say to us goodbye”.