Long time ago when I was a kid at school, Saturday was the best day of the week. I could get up late and my mother would make Aloo (potato) paranthas for me. After having a sumptuous breakfast, I would sometimes go back to sleep again. It’s the weekend, time to rest and relax!

Times have changed. Living in the West, these days my first task on a Saturday morning is to build the next week’s grocery list and buy it from the nearest grocery store. Takes me roughly couple of hours. I am not the only one, I see scores of people doing the same on Saturday mornings. During this critical weekly task, I meet many other Indians and we give each other a smile, feeling a sense of camaraderie towards each other. All of us thinking, if only we could Swiggy it! On a different note, only yesterday I was exchanging notes with my brother in the US on how both of us can be more efficient with cleaning the dishes and house cleaning in our respective households. We learnt a lot from each other. Sometimes, when hanging out with friends we laugh at each other on how we have got ourselves into these circumstances. But jokes part, living in Europe has been a practical learning on the importance of household tasks and why it is important to teach them to our kids early on so that they can be independent in all aspects of their lives.     

As an Indian middle class boy living in Delhi in the 1990s and early 2000s, studies was the most critical aspect of my life. The main question from any elder in the family or family friend was “How are your studies going?” or “How much did you score in Math?”. There was an encouragement to go out and play regularly but once I reached 10th standard that too took a back seat. And I know this to be the same for a lot of my friends. Growing in that environment, it seemed survival of the smartest or the most hardworking. Getting into a coveted engineering or medical school was the single minded focus of parents and kids. Kids getting into IITs, IIMs were the crème de la crème, making them the benchmarks for aspects beyond studies for example how to even behave and conduct yourself. My mother might go “Look at Ram (fictional character), he gets up at 5 am and studies for an hour before school starts. That’s how he tops the class. And you, once your exams are close you start taking an afternoon nap along with the 8 hour sleep you already had in the night”.  This is just an example but it demonstrates the pressure even our parents felt that if the kid doesn’t study and get into a good university there is no future. A very few really cared for extra-curricular activities, great if you can do them but first please do well in your studies. And doing house-hold work was not even on the radar. This was especially true in case of Indian boys. The kid should just focus on their studies and the rest will be taken care. And this I think is a mistake.

Once such kids (like myself) leave the Indian shores for a life in the West, they need to go through a steep learning curve in how to live if the only thing they have done in their life is studies and get grades. Life skills are as important (if not more important) than studies. Living in India we don’t really care about these life skills since there are maids to clean the dishes and the house, cooks for food, e-commerce websites for food/grocery delivery and parents for everything else. I have gone through this learning over the last many years and realize the importance. I have also come to appreciate the independence one feels in being able to manage everything in the house and being an equal partner with my spouse in every errand. As young parents, I am not saying we should reduce the importance of studies for our kids. The single minded focus our parents were able to help us build towards our studies and careers is one of the key reasons why Indians are making their mark on the world stage. However, I do feel it is important to help kids to grow in multiple dimensions of their lives and learning household work as a key life skill is one such dimension.

In my opinion the shift in thinking needs to happen at home. Parents should encourage their kids (both boys and girls) to help them in regular household work and make it a part of the child’s daily schedule. Small things like making your own bed, helping parents with the cleaning dishes or even learning to cook can go a long way in making our kids independent, responsible and disciplined. We are raising our kids to be global citizens, be able to live and work in any part of the world. And this means inculcating in our children all the values which can help them adapt and thrive in any environment. Values which not only help them achieve success in their careers but also happiness in their lives. Important to remember that both are not the same!