STOP CLINGING TO ME

 



“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them,

what they could and should do for themselves.”

Abraham Lincoln

 

There is a thin line between helping someone and spoon-feeding him.

When you help someone, you empower him – by providing the know-how and tool-kit to carry out a task… You enable him to stand on his own feet… walk on his own… find his own path. You make him independent… a Man.

On the other hand, when you spoon-feed a person, you smother him… all in the name of love, concern and care. You take away his strength and self-confidence… You make him psychologically cling to you, use you as a crutch. Yes, you make him dependent on you by being always around him at his beck and call and doing the task he could be and should be doing…

I am in the field of coaching college students and help them succeed in their exams. For more than for decades, I have been doing this work. There is a great satisfaction for ‘helping’ most of my students – by igniting fire in their bellies and enabling them stand on their own feet. These young boys and girls have refused to use me as a crutch… They have sought from me only reasonable size of know-how and  tool-kit. The rest they would do… That’s their idea of success. Marks in the exams, therefore, never mattered for this lot… Life and its success have, always, been  a continuous process. A teacher/trainer like me has never been a Messiah for them; but, only one of the guides along their journey.

On the other side of the fence, a large section of young boys and girls, to whom the destination has been their exams and marks. They cling so much on a person like me, that we end up providing them not knowledge and tool-kit, but baby-feed, literally. “I am going to change the name of my institute to Gerry’s Babysitting”… quite regularly I would burst out in frustration. But, my outbursts are my problem. Deep dependency needs a deep overhaul – both students’ and their parents’. If they score 100 or 99 out of 100, the teacher/trainer like me is their Messiah. Else, a pariah!



A while ago, I was teaching a group of twelfth-standard students. They belong to CBSE and ISC Boards. We have finished the portion months ago and revised the entire portion over and over again. ISC exams are early compared to CBSE. But, I have been telling them to stop clinging to me till the exam date… “You have done enough, and I have done enough. Now is the time to be ‘Atmanirbhar’,” I quoted our Prime Minister. You see, our P.M. had not invented this term; he had only cleared off the dust from it…

Self-confidence gets reinforced through right kind of help. The best help a teacher/trainer can provide to a young one is to help him stand on his feet and walk on his own, find his own path,

Smothering him, by making him cling to you, is robbing him off his self-confidence. It is the worst a teacher/trainer can do…





Yes, there is a thin line between helping someone and spoon-feeding him.

 

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic's: pixabay

Video: YRF Publishing

 

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