“You Need an adult’s confirmation to know about my health?” My son shrugged and said. This is his observation of a recurring pattern in our home. My husband often re-checks about my son’s health with me. It’s not lack of trust but a mental habit to confirm with an adult. The smell of that one line from my son lingered in the passage for long even after both of them left the place. He showed me that a child’s experience is valid only when it is filtered through an adult’s nod. He exposed an internal default exists silently in our households.
The Parenting Round-about
The other day he said – “Why parents usually say we bring up children. If it is true then we all bring up each other. Growing up is a natural process and in that we all are support system of each other”. Another default – We think of parenting as a one way street but my son sees it as a round-about. We are so used to the “Default” of being the teacher that we forget we all are teachers and we all are also the students.
Why We Stick to Defaults
I started observing these defaults more around me. Another default is in the form of a mundane question – “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I could never understand the relevance of this question. We try to peek in a non-existent future ignoring the present standing in front of us. We ask many such questions when we don’t know what to talk.
These default are nothing but a mirror of inconsistencies of our lives. We desire something new and attractive by applying outdated methods.
- School at 6
- job at 22
- marriage and kids
Who writes these scripts? We do. Who follow these scripts? We do.
The Red Circle and the Safety Trap
Why we stick to defaults while life is full Inconsistencies.
We get stuck on the “Red circle” on a paper more than all the words written. They are safety traps.
- A circle to keep us in comfort zone
- A circle to avoid uncertainty of the “Road less travelled”
- A circle to signal inequality – to hide true potential in the see saw of life
A child’s life of adventure is wasted in bridging the gap from 33% to 60% and from 60% to 95%. We curate our journeys around these rungs of cold data.
We put 30 odd kids of same age to learn same thing at same pace. While life is a mixed-age classroom where we all learn from each other. We relish individual style in “performing arts” yet we stick “Conforming methods” in education.
Why this conflict? Because life is not static, it flows like a river, where no water is same ever. By clinging to our defaults, we try to convert river to a statue. We are so busy making river standstill that we don’t learn how to swim and flow with the river.
The overlooked opportunity
The shades of a curated life often hide the vibrant opportunities in plain sight. Looking beyond the default has taught me that it’s not about who the child will become in the future, but who the child is right now.
When we broke away from the default of conventional education, we didn’t fall into a void; we fell in love with a world of opportunities. Instead of chasing the child of our dreams—or the child of our unfulfilled hopes—we started nurturing the child of the moment.
The Aarohi Defaults
At Aarohi, we replace the safety traps of defaults with
- Everyone is a learner, through shared curiosity
- The journey of a learner – Every learner has the power to “Decide, Design, Do and Reflect” on their own path.
Imagine a world where we stop trying to carve statues and instead let our relationships flow like a river. A world where we don’t manage, we don’t curate, and we don’t “bring up.”
We simply learn to swim along.