By Ali Shahid

Parents deciding the career path of their children has for long been a trend in Gilgit-Baltistan. Generally the two ‘options’ facing the parents are to make their children a ‘doctor’ or an ‘engineer’. There is a term called the ‘helicopter parents’. It refers to those parents who love to hover over their children’s lives and control it on their own terms. These are the parents that consider medicine and engineering as the only two reputable fields in the world, which their children should follow, by hook or crook. These type of parents don’t let their youngsters choose for themselves which drives them to be unfit for settling on their own decisions. This leads them to absence of practical insight.

What they don’t know is that when they attempt to control their youngsters’ lives and confine them to particular professions, they are staggering their child’s learning and picking procedure.

Who chooses that these are the right ways for their kids? Who knows what’s to come? Will they fit into, or adopt these strictly chosen carriers, splendidly, or would these be absolutely inverse to their capacities? Which career is most good with their identities and hobbies?

The responses to these inquiries are not extremely basic or straight. As a matter of first importance, as a major aspect of an advancing society, we all, particularly our guardians, ought to evade these ordinary taboos and broaden our points of view. The world has pushed ahead and it is as yet progressing at a quick pace, as we probably know it. There are much various new fields and professions growing up. The world is not just confined to engineers and doctors anymore. Furthermore, if our guardians continue keeping our alternatives to these two fields than are not simply preventing us from strolling as one with the world, additionally hindering our own success.

Every child had his own skill and commands. Not everybody is fit to become a doctor or an engineer. If the parents think that they can impose these careers on their children, they are stripping them of their free will. If a child is blood phobic and at the same time, not good at mathematics, then according to these typical thinking parents, these kind of children aren’t good enough for any career at all? Isn’t it a bit ironic and unfair?

Even if we look at it through a need based angle, there is still a need of many doctors and engineers in the world. But now there are so many new emerging technologies that need new fields which lead to vast career paths. Nowadays people can have their options open. No matter if a person is not good in math or biology, it doesn’t mean that his career is over. The parents should try to help the children figure out which skill in him is the best to pursue as a full career, and let him choose it for himself.

Race…

To occupy an allocated seat is deemed as a matter of life or death. For God sake stop pressurizing your child. They are not pressure cooker; let them decide with comfort. It’s not likely possible for every student to avail a seat in Government University or Medical College. No of seats for Gilgit Baltistan is little and by grace of God the number of applicants are aggrandizing every year in geometrical order.

We are acknowledged to number of students every year who waste their valuable year in order to get allocated quota. What happens next?

They fail to occupy it yet again and this way they lost their whole one academic year, on contrary if they would have utilized taking admission elsewhere they would have saved a useful one year. Such failure makes them lose their confidence and they fails to perform ever best through their next study level.

What my suggestion is parents should allow their children at very start to go where they get admission; this will let them decide stuffs on time. Sooner or later they will come up with an enormous success. Success is not secreted in government universities or colleges only; success is associated with the individual. If they work hard no matter where ever they come up with their degree but they will get through surely.

“No field is worthless; an individual decides the worth of his/her field.”

The contributor is a student at COMSATS and COO of Glow Together Baltistan.