Love, Infatuation and the rest…

After successfully completing another awareness session on Menstrual Hygiene, as requested by the teachers, we gathered only students of Std. 10 for a “Special Session”. The teachers of this school had specifically requested us to speak to their young students about Love & Infatuation.  

While preparing the content and format, we realized that it is quite difficult for all of us to actually go back and think about our time as an adolescent. But that’s exactly what we all did – go back in time and asked ourselves what we needed to know as adolescents, and how we would have reacted to  the manner of presenting such a topic. That’s how we came up with the format - with all of us recalling our own youth and moments of confusion, exuberance, passion and again confusion! J

Hardly any adolescent (or even adults for that matter!) can really differentiate or put in words the difference between Infatuation and love. But does that mean we let youngsters experiment and find it out themselves? Some lucky ones escape wiser from such an experience, some learn it the hard way with scars that may never heal, and others may never recover from such experimenting. And when it comes to girls, we need to be a lot more cautious than usual. Keeping all this in mind, here’s how we delivered the talk. It did go almost exactly as planned, and in fact we added the portion about Good Touch & Bad Touch spontaneously since it seemed important.

How we began

Instead of asking them if they ever had a crush (they simply wouldn’t have answered), we asked the girls if they liked any movie star. Their answer was a scream – DARSHAN! We couldn’t believe it. The chap who recently went to jail for beating his wife is the hero of these young girls! Anyway, we then asked them to list out what they liked about Darshan (answers ranged from his height and weight to his dialogues and his nature as a person!). Then we asked them to describe “Love” as they saw it in movies. We got the usual answers which were about Physical Attraction, Possessiveness, Insecurity, Jealously, lack of trust, “I’ll-die-for-you and kill-for-you” and the rest. We wrote them down in one column on the board.

Our next question was – describe the love that comes to your mind when you think of a mother-child relationship. Here, the answers were about trust, selfless giving, security, unconditional love, understanding, forgiveness, not based on physical attraction and other positive feelings. These too were listed out next to the previous list.

The next question to the girls was – Is it possible that all these feelings in a mother-child relationship can actually be in a man-woman (husband-wife) relationship? We further told them that this in fact is what love & healthy relationships should be all about. And what they had initially listed is what is often called Infatuation, but confused as love. They had never thought of it that way.

About Running Away – The girls were so silent that I wondered if they were too innocent for all this. Instead of trying to guess what’s on their mind, I asked them if they knew any cases of girls from their school running away with older men. Half the class nodded. I got my green signal.

Next, I asked them what they would do if any of their friends confided in them about her plan of running away (I framed it this way so that they don’t feel judged). The girls could only think of “I’ll tell her it is wrong”. Then I made them realize that it might be better to get the friend to think about the consequences – What about her studies? Where will she stay? What if the man dumps her? What about leaving her family? What if she becomes pregnant and so on. Most adolescents do not think beyond that moment of running away, and having to think about the consequences might just make them pause. Or at least that’s what I hope.

Good Touch and Bad Touch – I’ve always noticed how young girls really value the truth and the fact that I tell them things as it is, without beating around the bush or feeling shy. It is so important for someone to tell them the truth and equip them with names and words to express themselves if ever needed. 

Besides making them give a few examples of good touch (mother’s kiss, brother’s hug, etc) and bad touch (stranger in the bus pinching you!), we wanted to tell them exactly what is NOT ALLOWED. We told them that nobody (except her husband) has the right to touch 3 specific parts of their body – breast, buttocks and area between the legs. And repeated this several times till it registered loud and clear. And if someone did violate these rules, they have to immediately scream and protest and run out of the room(as obvious as this may seem, most abused people just freeze due to the shock of what’s happening). Next, they must inform a responsible adult (family member or a teacher) about the incident.

While we were wondering if we crossed any lines, the teacher came forward and specifically told the girls that this was very important information, and added more about pregnancy and abuse. About abuse, the teacher said – it is wrong, and you must report the incident, be it your uncle, a close relative or even your grandfather!

The 2nd Awareness talk - Nutrition

How do you explain to children from government schools the type of food they need to take and what constitutes healthy food, when they hardly even have 3 meals a day....

The entire talk on Nutrition should revolve around what they can afford despite not having a lot of money. We need to also make it interesting enough and not get too deep into explaining carbo, protein, fats, vitamins, etc.

Unfortunately, the starting itself went wrong. To get the children to maintain silence, the teacher starting hitting little ones with a wooden cane, and when all were silent and a few were crying, they told me I could start. I blame myself for not coming up with some creative way to handle children so that they remain silent. I should have gathered a few of them and started to sing a song aloud or show some magic tricks or have some interesting pictures (the flow chart arrived late!) to get their attention and prevent the caning. I hope to be better prepared for this next time.

Intro - I started the session by asking children what they usually eat and if they knew what it contained. A lot of children were aware that Idlis are made of rice and chapathis of wheat but they did not know what rice and wheat contain. So, I told them that this session is meant to help them understand the food they eat, and how to make sure its healthy and what constitutes a balanced meal.

Using pictures - I then explained in brief what Carbohydrates, Protein, Fats, Vitamins, Minerals and Fibre constitutes and gave them a lot of examples of food that come in these categories. Including food like ragi, jowar, bajra makes it easier for them to relate and these are also easily affordable. Use a lot of pictures. Readily available charts on food can be obtained from any local stationary.

Planning your meal - We then played a game. I wrote three categories on the board - Common Food, Healthy Food and Tasty Food. I asked children to name food(by food, I mean, a meal like dosa, idli, anna-saar, and not milk or vegetables) that comes in each category and listed the same on the board. Then, check to see if any food appears in all three categories, since this will be the best type of food.

For those food items which appear in only one category, ask the children what can be added to it to make it a balanced meal. For Ex: a lot of children name Anna-Saar (rice and rasam) as a healthy food item. But, rice only constitutes carbo and the saar is usually so watery that it has very little nutrients. But if we added a dal (pulses) and some vegetables to it, it would be a healthier meal. Similarly, if we add peanuts (protein) to lemon rice (carbo) and a few vegetables (vitamins), it will be a healthier meal. Also, idli (carbo & protein) along with sambar (vitamins if there are vegetables in the sambar) and chutney (fibre) is a great example of a complete, balanced meal which is commonly available, healthy and tasty.

By the end, children had a clearer idea of how to convert a regular meal to a healthier one by adding a few basic ingredients to it.

Some observations - 70% children said they skip breakfast. The primary reason they gave was that their mother had to rush to work and had no time to cook for them. I suggested that they at least eat a banana before coming to school.

Also, a lot of food gets wasted from the mid-day meal every single day. I have seen them empty almost half the food container into a nearby gutter! Someone told me that the reason is that the school gives Iskon the total expected strength of students at the beginning of every year, and often only around 60% children are present on any given day. Since they cannot change the food order on a day to day basis, this huge wastage occurs. I told the children to carry a tiffin box to school, and take some food home for dinner as well. I'll check next week to see how that goes.