Parents as Role Models

Learning by doing rather than saying

- KRITIKA CHOPRA

This is the story of a little girl. Ankita is twelve years old and has her final exams next month and also a family wedding next week. Her doting mother indulgently suggested to her, “Beta, please sit and study till late in the night this time and complete your revision because then you will not get any time to study.” So Ankita would sit up till 1:00/2:00 a.m. to study and also munch on all kinds of junk food in between. She sometimes panicked, wondering how she would complete the whole syllabus in such a short time and what if she could not score good marks?

Nonetheless, she gave the exams and they were over. One day, her mother had a kitty party at home and she and her friends started gossiping about their friend who could not come that day, and about what they heard about her family problems from somewhere. Ankita was sitting in her room, silently listening to everything. One of the ladies said, “Everyone is talking about her in the society, so everything is one hundred percent true. She is very clever, she never shared it with us...”