Hello everyone, you may find the title offensive but by observing what has been going around for the last 2 weeks I would say this is apt. The topic emerged when the ‘Boys locker room’ came into light. Let’s have a quick refresh for those who are not aware of this group. There was an Instagram group where a bunch of teenagers put up stuff like pictures of girls (underage, mostly), screenshots of private chats the boys had with girls, then passed nasty comments on girls, objectifying them far and wide. Fortunately, a girl on Instagram came to know about this and got people’s attention. 

Not even a week later, another group popped up. This time it was the ‘girls locker room’. The messages, chats were the same, only this time the ‘victims’ were boys and not girls. There was another story of a ‘girl’ pretending to be a boy named Siddharth and chatting with a boy from her class to know his character. In those chats ‘Siddharth’ was convincing the boy to rape the girl (the one who was pretending to be siddharth). Siddharth quoted, “we can rape her easily, I will call two more guys and we will together gang rape her”. So this was the overall scenario. Let’s not go deep into the connection between the Snapchat girl and the locker room groups. The main question is why and how? Who should be held responsible?

Well if we look closely, we’ll understand that the teenagers are not solely responsible for this. This story insinuates that the parents are equally guilty perhaps more than their children. You may say that this is a serious accusation but it is what it is. 

Building this facade of having a luxurious life, earn more and more money till they pave the path to enter the richer sections of the society, there is no doubt that the parents aren’t giving their 100 percent to raise their own children. They have been ignoring their children’s behaviour for a very long time, that too, intentionally. Yes intentionally! The word needs to be emphasized more and more till it penetrates through the thick walls of these parents’ brains. I don’t understand what is more important to them than what their children are doing. I used the word ‘intentionally’ because the children do not make big mistakes out of the blue. You think this is their first time? No, it is a series of incidents where they show symptoms of immoral activities very early on. Leave it unchecked and it turns into something big. Obviously the parents are not blind, they must have seen it and decided to ignore it just because they are ‘kids’. The same happened with the teenagers involved in the locker room chats.

It was shocking when one of the parents defended her son saying, “It’s not his fault that he was added to the group, his friend must have added him” This is what gives the kids more encouragement implying “no matter what we do, our parents are going to be there for us” and a day will come when they won’t think twice before murdering someone.It is not wise to assume that rapes are purely impulsive. It's a feeling that starts off with passing comments and harassing girls, mentally and physically. But when these feelings are left unbridled, they evolve into something more devious like rape. In most cases, these feelings can be observed socially, but almost every often they are ignored.

  Parents need to stop this. If parents continue to support their kids in their ill doings, children will continue to make these mistakes and juvenility will continue to become their way to salvation. Another shocking thing is that the girl in the Snapchat case was released by police without any action against her because they thought it was a ‘childish act’. Again juvenility saved the day, her day to be exact. Now in this case parents need to teach that girl that raping someone or even thinking to rape someone is NOT a childish act. Objectifying someone is NOT a childish act.

 If your child does something which causes tangible or intangible harm to even a single element of society, you need to correct them. Don’t ignore them. Mistake is a mistake. Learn to correct them with the same severity as the mistakes. I have seen some parents saying, “We cannot keep an eye on children for every second of every hour, the schools should take the initiative.” This stance is unacceptable.

 You send your children to schools to get educated, they stay at the schools and tuition for 8-9 but they are with you for the 15-16 hours yet you say you can’t keep an eye on them? Why don’t you send your kids to the schools as soon as they are born? Why bore children when you don't think it is important to guide them when they make mistakes? Don’t think it is important to guide them in their crucial ages? The schools may start sex education classes but would the children take that seriously? We have seen in movies and web serieses, when children are being taught of sex education, some laugh, some get shy and some smirk. I don’t think anyone other than parents can give sex education to the children. 

Giving them freedom in terms of phones, laptops, internet is fine but who is supposed to check whether the given freedom is utilized properly? It is solely the parents’ responsibilities, neither the society nor the schools. What is happening in this society is having money and status is more important than having values or perhaps I should say even if the kid doesn’t have any sanskar, the parents are fine with it.

The lack of communication is the reason behind this. Whenever we get leisure time, everyone in the family sticks their noses into laptops and mobile phones. Try to  listen to what your child wants to say, be open to them, make them feel that you are here to listen and its significance is crucial during their childhood and teenage years . Listen to their trivial stuff so that they are comfortable enough to share their big problems and events in their life. 

Engrave it on your heart that your children are your responsibility. Whatever you teach them they are going to carry forward the same for the rest of their lives and when they go into the outside world they are going to be your identity so it’s on you how you want to be identified. Learn human psychology, observe each and every movement of your child or join classes where they teach you how to raise children, do whatever you want but know every ounce of your child’s soul because who knows there could be something much more dangerous than these locker rooms. Otherwise a day will come when you realize the real intentions of your children, but your realization came a tad too late and the situation has slipped out of your hands. 

Thank you for reading.

Tejaswini Yadav – gryffinpuf11@gmail.com

Editing:

Preeynuj Boruah – axelblz1@gmail.com