“If you win, you need not to explain, but when you lose you should not be there to explain”. This is probably the most important quote from one of Adolf Hitler’s book. That should be the spirit of participation in every battle of life.

But of late, winning and losing might not be the two sides of the same coin for the new generation. They all think of attaining quick success in all quarters of life, earn fast bucks. For them, losing is like something pushing them to the inferiority complex abyss. I am afraid how many of us are truly following those golden words. Failure does not mean that god has abandoned you. In fact, it means that he has a better idea. Very few of us really view life from that point of view and especially the young generation. It gets entangled in this labyrinth and to an extent, the parents are responsible for this frame of mind.

When I am talking all this, how can I forget to mention today’s dominant and ruling attitude of children. Courtesy - reality shows on TV. Almost every TV channel, be it regional, national or international, is floating a so-called reality show every other day.

High nodes, low nodes, flat nodes, synchronisation, choreography, chemistry, costumes, etc, these are probably the lingo of today’s reality shows that are aired on every channel that we tune to. In their parlance, these words are no less than a diktat and the participants/aspirants leave no stone unturned to cajole their mentors, (if they win). The real twist comes when they are eliminated. At this stage, the feeling of inferiority complex, the castigation, the slap on the wrist deeply scourges their aspirations.

The root cause of the problem is parents’ high expectation from their children.

Recently a 15-year-old girl from Kolkata went into a state of despair after being eliminated and reprimanded by one the judges in a popular Bengali TV reality show. She suffered shock and was speechless and paralysed after her ouster. She is currently undergoing treatment at NIMHANS, Bangalore.

“Children should play and increase their GK. These shows are a disaster,” viewed the famed quizmaster Derek O’Brien. He will be sending letters to 5000 principals in 70 cities asking them to discourage students from reality shows as this affects child’s psyche. Principals of various schools have supported this move by Derek.

Siddharth Basu, the man behind Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), opined “Talent shows offer a good platform for gifted children, but the industry must guard against abuse, and humiliation.”

“It is not right to organise shows for kids of this age group. They are immature to decide what is right and what is wrong,” says principal of an international school in Mumbai.

We as parents should discourage such shows. Recently in one of the reality shows, a boy and a girl of the same age were seen dancing to a romantic number from a Hindi movie and to my surprise the judge of the show commented, “In your act, the softness and the passion is missing.”

I wonder what the 10-year-old boy, who enacted the role of a lover boy, made out of the comment.

Today’s kid is no more a kid, he has become a pint-sized adult. The more the adult behavior in his acts the more the applause. This puts a very unethical and immoral impression on the kids at this tender age.

Parents should not expect dollops of coincidences that would leave them flabbergasted with their children’s puerility in the reality shows. They should expect only if it is something pristine, clean, and a result of their children’s sheer hard work in research, science, general knowledge, and sports.