A Page From A Diary Of A 10 Year Old.

Aesha

5 years ago

A page from the diary of Mishty Sharma ( one of Aesha’s Musings young contributor). She is my daughter’s friend and insisted that I share her thoughts with my readers. Though I have been a bit late in doing so and she has been desperately waiting for comments from us.

Read it out and share your views on steps that we can take as parents and educationists to address a 10-year-old’s concerns.

Hi, friends,

I am Mishty Sharma and I am 10 years old. Today I wanted to share with you all about the studies stress we 10 years old are going through. First I will tell you about my daily routine. My day starts at 5.30 am in the morning. I reach the bus stop at 6.40 a.m. We reach school and our class starts from 7.20 am till 2.20 pm. We do lots of studies and writing work during these hours we also have a spa class (sports & performing arts) on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We leave our school at 2.20 am and reach home at 3.15, after I reach home I get a break of 30 minutes in which I eat food watch T. V, till 4.00pm.

From 4.00pm I do my studies; the first one and a half-hour go in finishing my homework and after that, I and my mother read a chapter which has been taught at school. We have a surprise test for which we need to prepare ourselves well and for that, we need to go through all the chapters we have learned in the school daily. I finish my studies only by 7.00 pm and as I need to awake early so I also need to sleep early. So after 7.00pm, my mom serves me food which takes me half an hour to complete after that I make my bag for next day and then I do my favourite things which I like to do for the next half an hour. By 8.30pm I go to my bedroom and sleep by 9.00 pm. This is the end of the day for me.

I don’t get time to play with my friends in my building. I cry many times because of this. I feel we are very pressurised to excel in studies. We are just in grade 5 and I feel our school should be a bit lenient. We want to enjoy our childhood in a carefree manner. But then today’s world is full of competition and challenges so if we don’t keep us updated, we will be left behind. I just want the school to be a little fair on us and give us time to play and have fun. I wish our education minister could understand our problems and help to reduce this extra burden on us. I really miss my grade 4 when I use to enjoy my fullest but now, it’s only during Friday, Saturday and Sunday I get time to go play with my friends in my society garden. So I request our parents to please talk to our teachers to give us less pressure and let us enjoy our childhood which we will never get back. Here I close my topic hoping that the school will be a little fair with us and will help us to enjoy our childhood.

Mishty Sharma

For Mishty:

Dear Mishty,

Hope your weekend went well and that you had time to spend with your friends. I went through your schedule and indeed it’s very hectic. I have a suggestion for you.

While I completely agree with you that you are very young to be pressurized by studies and that certainly shouldn’t be the case, you should also develop a habit to study regularly. I personally also feel that unstructured physical activity ( playtime with friends in your building compound or garden) is equally important for your growth. So you should include it daily.

I suggest you finish your studies by 6 p.m. daily and go to play with your friends. 2 hours of daily studies are good enough for a 10-year-old. However, you need to study a bit on Friday and Saturday too. If you do that you will not need to keep studying till 7 p.m. daily. You will surely finish your daily homework and extra studies within two hours.

Another suggestion I would like to give you is to talk to your teachers and take their help during school hours to understand the topics taught in class if you face any difficulty. If you do that I think you will not need to spend too much time at home on the same and you can do a quick revision of the topics taught on a daily basis.

Let’s try this for a month and tell us if that worked. Also, keep writing daily in your diary every night before you sleep and that will help you release all the bad thoughts you have. I would not like a 10-year-old to use words like ‘stress’ that’s not for kids. So enjoy your childhood, enjoy your studies. Take it as an opportunity to learn something new. Consider it as an opportunity to gain knowledge and you will enjoy the world of numbers, science, environment and languages.

I would also like to tell you that going to school is not to get good grades in exams or secure medals in sports. It is to enjoy learning, build friendships and make beautiful life long memories.

So enjoy your childhood.

With lots of good luck and best wishes,

Aesha.

Also by Mishty:

My One Hour Experience Of Waiting For My School Bus – A Guest Post.