We cannot fulfil our ambitions through children: Counsellor Viral Doshi

A child flourishes best in an environment where he is on par with his peers, not vastly above or below them

Viral Doshi started counselling, doing psychometric testing, and working with young people in the mid-1980s informally rather than as a career. What started as a hobby soon became a full- blown career, as parents increasingly value a university education and reach out to him for advice. Every year, he counsels 200 children heading off to college. He also counsels children aged 14-16 years and helps them identify where their passions lie. Doshi lectures at forums across the country on where parents are going wrong and how affluence has its own challenges. Doshi shared his observations with Anjuli Bhargava at his Tardeo office in Mumbai: Edited excerpts:

What changes do you see in parents today as compared with earlier?

When we grew up, this dekha-dekhi or one upmanship was not there. In certain circuits today, I feel parents are more led by what others are doing for their children than what may be best for the child. Where your child goes to college is akin to which watch you wear, which car you drive, where you stay…People have become over-ambitious. A child’s ability is x and they want it to go to x square for college. They are looking more at their own happiness and their standing in society based on where he or she studies rather than the child’s own capabilities or desires. Remember, a child flourishes best in an environment where he is on par with his peers, not vastly above or below in terms of academic and intellectual prowess.

In today’s competitive environment, children cannot enjoy their childhood the way we did. I’m not blaming anyone here as it is an increasingly competitive world but the biggest change is far more aggressive and far more informed parents  — a bit too ambitious.

A lot of the parents are themselves from IITs and IIMs and expect their children to achieve at almost the same scale as them. Parents need to sit back and realise that we cannot push our children so much for our own satisfaction. We cannot fulfil our own ambitions through our children. Rising affluence makes them think they can buy anything they want, which is not necessarily true.

Almost everyone I meet tells me their child lacks ‘hunger’…where has this hunger or drive gone and what can bring it back?

Competition to get into the premier institutes has certainly intensified many-fold but the hunger too is gone. In the upper middle class in particular, things come to children too easily. In our time, for instance, going abroad was not something you could take for granted at all. There wasn’t even the foreign exchange available. A handful went overseas and mostly on fully paid scholarships. Now children take it for granted that parents will muster the funds. 

Another interesting factor I note is that often parents who themselves went through the grind — and made it to IIT and IIM  — are unwilling to put their kids through what they went through. There is a protectiveness that seems to have kicked in, for better or for worse. They don’t want their children to suffer what they may 

have suffered.

So in some cases, these parents send their kids abroad for an undergraduate and then bring them back to do an MBA from an IIM or an ISB. Parents, in fact, are no longer keen that kids settle abroad. Today, they are saying that India has opportunities and you must come back. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, if 10 students went, maybe one came back. Now from every 10, at least 5-6 come back. This is a very positive change for the country at a macro level. The earlier brain drain is reversing.

What’s even more worrying is that many parents cannot afford to send their children abroad but they buckle in to social pressure and somehow put together the funds. They do this even to send them to a B and C grade college, which may not be worth it. 

What I’m  seeing as more positive is the rise of the second and third tier cities — Karnal, Muzaffarnagar, Kanpur, Raipur. Here, the parents are less educated, less aware but equally ambitious and, unlike their parents, they see the value of a good education. They may run businesses running into a few hundred crore but are willing to expose their child even if they do eventually return to take on the family business.

But how does one revive or create that ‘hunger’?

It’s something we all need to think about. I think bringing back hunger in the elite and to privileged schools and their wards seems difficult in the immediate future. The helicopter parenting we are seeing today is doing more of a disservice. Hunger comes from limiting choice. Are we as parents willing to do that?

Are today’s parents more open to new professions? Have we finally put the doctor-engineer obsession behind us?

Again, this depends on the profile of the parents but in the bigger cities, parents are far more open to new careers but not so much in second and third tier cities as yet. Parents are also allowing their children to become entrepreneurs and get into start-ups. This too is a change from the past. But the herd mentality is still evident.