Please, Mom ! Its's My Life

For some inexplicable reason, puberty and adolescence produces a streak in children which automatically closes their eyes and ears to what their parents want them to see and hear. However, these two organs open wide when their friends say something. It is really funny.

Hence; these adolescents carry on doing what they want to do and not what their parents would want them to do. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. It is wrong for the children to be blamed all the time. Sometimes, parents are just not there for them.

Since I am totally against the 'blame game', I had to find out ways and means to help children and people till the age of 35, for I feel that after that, no matter what you tell them, it rarely helps. I realised that by lecturing on the subject of stress busting and how to live life, the message will be reaching only a few.

Hence the book, Please, Mom! It's My Life is authored by me, exclusively for the adolescents and their way of life.

Dr. Jaideep Singh Chadha was born on 11th of October 1949 in Mumbai, Having graduated from the Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla in 1972, he did his Post Graduation in Internal Medicine from-the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Chandigarh in 1978. He has authored two other books Vinculum and The Funny side of Golf.

He lives in Chandigarh with his wife, Gurminder. He was recently awarded the 'Vijay Rattan' award.

In golf, they say any fool can putt it in the second time. And so it happened, that hindsight became notorious for the number of gurus it created. Gurus who have committed so many blunders that it is no longer funny. I have committed so many blunders in my life that they are ready to sprout, out of my ears! I sometimes dub myself a 'blunder pro', you know-as in golf pro. My mother should have warned me about things, since they say 'Mother knows best'. But Mother knows best about only a few things in the world of today. Even if she did know everything about everything, it would still have been futile; for kids don't want advice from mom. They think they know everything. That is where the blunders begin. At least mine did.

The other side of the coin is that if we don't learn from the blunders of others, then learning from your own would take a life time. Such learning proves to be no fun at all. And I don't want you to spend a lifetime learning from the blunders you committed and the fact that you could easily have gone through the slips or ducked. So I decided to write this book for you. It is basically for the younger lot, so that life can be a bit easier for them.

(I am sure it still will not be blunder-free passage because you will have your unique situations and sometimes you will have to look for answers yourselves. But then that is what life is all about. Learning!)

In my lectures at various forums and to different age groups, I stress my points with the help of anecdotes and short stories which aptly illustrate what I have to say. I would like to inform you here, that these stories are not mine. The authors might be dead and gone, but these wonderful stories need not be buried in the sands of time and disappear into oblivion. And if these stories help even a few of my readers, then the purpose is achieved.

There are many books written for children, which is a good thing. But books for adolescents and young adults are far and between. This is the category of our society which needs help, for this age group is neither here nor there. Parents, schools and society may have succeeded in confusing your young minds. Often you may end up taking the wrong step or taking help of the wrong stuff like drugs.

The present trend in the mind set of youth is that parents are not their well wishers. Parents are fine till they 'give in, all the time', but the moment they don't, they become public enemy numero uno. I would like to tell my young friends, that parents and not Anne or Rahul are your best friends.

What one sees today is that children are stressed to levels which are beyond the comprehension of the adult mind, especially parents, who want their children to be the best in every field and are shattered if they don't perform accordingly. They can't seem to comprehend the reasons for their child not topping, all the time. This stresses the children to no end, because they have to come up to their own expectations as well as their parents' and the school's. Somewhere along the line, society has also begun to demand its pound of flesh.

It is a matter of prestige for the school to have the best results in the region. It enhances the school's reputation as a centre-which imparts the best education. Since that has already been accepted as the yard stick, nothing can be done there. Another yardstick which measures the level of happiness and contentment in students should be incorporated.

In your quest for success, you have forgotten the basic principle of life. Come on, people! Get real. We are not here just to study, get a good job and earn lots of money. Life is much more than that. Life has to be lived. We have forgotten to do that. God did not create schools, curriculums, jobs and all that..... Man did. God did not make us divine just to work on a job. He wanted us to perform greater deeds.

And how is life to be lived? That is the million dollar question. I have attempted to help you get an answer to that one. Obviously, you have to search for answers which are suitable for you. What I have given you here is the first step to the ladder of life. To try and live a life that has the least stress. Ways to hit the ball through the slips or duck when life throws a bouncer at you. You will have to find and climb the rest of the steps or rungs yourself.