| ஒத்திசைவு | प्रत्याह्वय | resonance |

I am not a great/grand advisor to parents/kids nor claim to be a repository of virtues – nor pretend to have achieved anything fantastically significant/useful in my life so far – though I have some plans for the future, oh the hope lies eternal in the human breast; however, I do have some ideas & suggestions that I give based on my (of course limited, but continuously updated) understanding of the Universe, that too, only when approached by forever worried & hassled parents – sometimes directly by the Child even… (initially I was very tentative & reluctant about this coaching/guiding/advising/whatever – but not anymore so, as apparently my attempts seem to be helpful to some of the folks at least!)

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Since I prefer to do my homework & prior preparation – I usually make some notes before chatting with kids & parents based on what I ‘know’ about them – and over a period of time (some 20+ years? with some 160+ engagements??), my template (or a checklist, if you will) for guiding/steering the discussions & for eliciting opinions has grown/shrunk/etc that – lately, I have started versioning it.

Anyway…

1) Since these ‘advice seeking’ numbers are growing (not exponentially or anything – but definitely ~5 cases per quarter at least, on an average, lately) 2) I believe in recording things that are useful perhaps, and sharing them openly for whatever they are worth 3) I have learnt so much from the Internet (as also from that small part of it, called Social Media) and therefore some contribution, FWIW, is in order 4) I believe in DIY (& Opensource) and I feel that any ‘advice’ should also be enabled for others (who are interested) to repackage & fold-in their own ‘advice’ to their wards etc 5) I really wish someone had driven some sense in to me when I was a teen needing it AND because 6) my dear young (& bright) friend Chandra,an Auteur of a technical book, goaded me share it wildly… (actually he advised to host it on github, FWIW; earlier I had a version up on the blog – but I think it got deleted advertently a while ago)

…here it is…

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Before I talk to the child in detail, I would like to chat with him/her as somewhat of a freewheeling discussion for some half-an-hour – um, it is more like me listening to the child, actually doing a lot of it – and perhaps giving a puzzle or two for the kid to solve (in the realm of the specific kid’s experience & interest) – usually the solution for which is NOT easily, available on the Web. After the kid gets back to me with the solution or a possible approach, I spend one more hour on the Child, and sometimes along with the parents.

The template I use for a longer discussion, is a mindmap. Depending on the interest (and the basic capability) of the parents/kids, I would share a subset of ideas based on some of the nodes. For each pointer, I will not spend more than 2-3 mins, unless the child and/or parents is/are interested in dealing with it a bit more. During the sessions, normally, I encourage the asking of questions, and attempt to answer them, as long as the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) is high.

The map is meant for working with adolescent kids – say of 12-18 years age-band. They are all my points of view – PoV, of course limited by my own exposure to the world. You can disagree with me. Of course, your mileage may vary – YMMV.

The top node is ‘the lay of the land’ for a smart adolescent kid: notes for parents

The sub-nodes are:

What matters in the long-run – a bunch of pointers about looking at life from the PoV of an earnest, normal Homo sapiens sapiens

Motivating factors (combos); no value judgements – a bunch of pointers about the basic motivating factors that we tend to have in general

Emergent world – a bunch of pointers dealing with the ‘Brave New World’ that is unfolding – for which the child needs to attune itself. And, be prepared

Academic Vs/& Professional practice – a bunch of pointers about various ‘career’ options and my rabid comments thereof; this sub-node is further split into four subsub-nodes: The Sciences, Performing Arts, Social ‘Studies’ & Etc, also-rans – and then each of them with specific pointers

Questions – a bunch of pointers about the kind of questions to ask oneself, while trying to figure out what to pursue/study

Thoughts & Tools – a long listing of pointers about various tools/questions that would help one to deal with the rest five sub-nodes

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Segments of mindmap / branches below – in the order in which I deal with, typically – sometimes the order may vary, depending on the path taken during the discussion… (click on images to see them ‘larger’ in a separate tab/window)

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Whole mindmap printable on A4 – this is slightly difficult to read, but compact; however, if you want some eye-exercises, be my guest: (A4)TheLayOfTheLand-ForParents-of-AdolescentsVer8.2Of4thMay2022 – https://othisaivu.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/a4thelayoftheland-forparents-of-adolescentsver8.2of4thmay2022-1.pdf

Whole mindmap printable/viewable in A3, bigger size: (A3)TheLayOfTheLand-ForParents-of-AdolescentsVer8.2Of4thMay2022 – https://othisaivu.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/a3thelayoftheland-forparents-of-adolescentsver8.2of4thmay2022-1.pdf

Clickable XHTML – a text file that contains all the pointers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VMt50gKHiKKhXKU0HPi4pT352K60JoUH/view?usp=sharing (or it that does not work, you can download a zip file containing this file & its resources from here, unzip it and view etc)

Source/Raw mindmap that you can download and edit/share to your heart’s content: TheLayOfTheLand-ForParents-of-AdolescentsVer8.2Of4thMay2022.mm – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gnTz84LbUhLcGIUMjClu5t7cgt3uY3A6/view?usp=sharing (I use a tool called FreeMind, but googledrive itself has associated tools with which you can edit the file)

(FWIW let me mention that, there is no copyright claim whatsoever on anything from this Othisaivu blog; feel free.)

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Ok.

I sincerely attempt to learnt from my interactions with anyone (occasionally, including with my dear Dravidians and Tamil Supremacists) but there are some puzzling observations about these ‘sessions’ that I want to share:

1. I enjoy being with youth and adolescent kids in general – but folks are almost never punctual; they always have some excuses, nor do they inform me promptly about the sometimes understandable hiccups & slippages; the recent one is about the moan on ‘connectivity.’
2. Many do NOT come prepared with a bunch of questions and/or pointers – but expect some grand revelations to happen etc. Also, many have NO idea of practice – practicing anything formally towards habit-forming. (sometimes I get the feeling that, ‘their body has done time, while their brains were out taking a leisurely walk.’
3. Many adults, do not even know as to how to ask a well formatted question! (many would be in the realm of ‘tell me something about yourself’ kinda routine interview question shit)
4. I do these sessions for free, to whoever that requests for it – even to those strangers and their kids – who come referred to me via this blog or via friends/acquaintances. But, for a 30 min chat, I prepare for an hour thinking about what would be useful to the interaction, given what I would know about the targets. (our lifetimes are limited)
5. But for a handful of ‘mentees’ so-called, not many try to keep me posted about the progress or how efficacious, the discussions/suggestions had been. (but a few do, my gratitude to them – because they help me improve on my efforts)
6. Folks eagerly ask for the mindmap, with the passionate fervor of a new-convert and I send it off; in quite a few cases – I had even printed it out in A3 size and couriered it out to them, but I do not know whether they even used them – some do not even acknowledge the receipt of it! (leave alone giving any useful feedback)
7. Some parents would want me to coach for ‘academics’ or IIT-JEE prep or for KVPY! (this, in spite of my clearly telling them initially itself that, I work for different long-term outcomes, though I am all for Competitions and Excellence!)
8. Sometimes, some parents (well endowed ones, with both spouse-gumasthas earning good salaries, mostly in feckless IT industries, I may add) would want some extra sessions and/or something specific (like some stuff in Electronics or Riddling times+) for their kids, that would demand more time & commitment from me. At that point (only if the Parents could afford it), I would clearly say that, though the first couple of sessions will be ‘free,’ I would charge an hourly rate subsequently, because there are opportunity costs for me. In those cases wherein am not clear about the financial capacities of the parents, I would also clearly suggest that, ‘if you can’t afford it for some reason – then tell me and let us look at it…’ …And then, barring a few cases, one of the following will result:
   • Thundering silence. (I could never understand these guys! Tamassic detritus… what else)
   • “You are not charging your village kids, and anyway, you can batch our child with the those other free-groups that you may have.” (sirs and madams – nice try; hope you enjoyed your latest pleasure trip to Thailand)
   • “This is too high. I cannot afford it.” (Actually, my professional (if I choose to earn) hourly rates would be in the range of a few thousands per hour – but for ‘special mentoring/tuition’ it would only be a small fraction of it – and in any case, I would not use the funds that I generate via these kinds of ‘education’ for my personal/familial use, but only to assist some Schools that I am associated with; OTOH, am not into any bleddy social service but merely do things that I meaningfully can, sometimes only as a basic duty)
   • The following kind of responses were not aired to me directly – but to common friends/referrers: (and their sense of entitlement of these jokers is galling, bleddy, to say the least!)
     1. “Your Ram is greedy, why is he pretending that he is doing a social service, when he wants to charge for it?” (well sirs and madams, I never actually call it a service, leave alone a ‘social service!’ I like doing certain things for pleasure and/or because I consider them my duty and therefore I go ahead & do them – end of story)
     2. “What else is he doing anyway? Why can’t he do this free?” (sirs and madams, thanks for the free advice, much appreciated!)
     3. “Brahmins are suppose to be teaching for free, vidhyadhaanam and all that, why cheapen oneself by asking for it?” (sirs and madams – while thanking you for reminding me about my varna related duties, I would like to remind you that, you approached me first, I did NOT. BTW, when did you EVER work for free at anything? Have you ever NOT taken a salary for even one year from your employers, while continuing to work conscientiously? (So far I have not said it, but am saying it: For 15+ years I have been more than a full-time teacher in various schools, completely voluntarily, without getting compensated monetarily at all – however, I would not say stupid things like ‘money is not everything,’ though!)
     4. “My son loved his introductory sessions and wants to learn Electronics. But from ‘Brahmin to Brahmin’ can’t he lower his fee?” (sirs and madams, a resounding NO… You are no Archakas and/or poor Brahmins eking out a living. OTOH, I would give a one hour test each for both of you, on A) RgVeda, AbhinavaGupta, Mahabharata (BORI edition), PV Kane’s ‘History of Dharmashastra’ B) Tiruvalluvar, Tolkappiyam, Saiva/Vaishnava literatures (thirumurais/prabadhams); of course you can choose to answer them in Tamil / Hindi / English- and if both of you score > 90% in both tests, then let us see…)
     5. “He is doing it free for his friends, but is asking for money from us.” (sirs and madams, quick answer: you folks are NOT my friends. You do NOT deserve me. Go get a life. Of course, you are free to go to some other bloke, by encashing your frequent flier miles and credit card loyalty points, whatever. Thanks!)

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Hope some of you readers find the pointers useful. Happy parenting, happy sending out your progeny to the future. Happy confusions. Happy future. Fortune favours the Prepared.

If anyone is interested (at all!) in exploring ‘what the heck it is’ of for the annotation of one of the pointers – contact me via email. (but do your homework before rushing off to me, use the Internet to understand the backgrounders – it is a lovely, dear, giving friend, really!)

’nuff said.