its exam time and offlate my website has started getting an increasing number of mails from students a lot of them write about their parents and how they put a lot of pressure and obsess about exams to make life living hell but the purpose of this article is not to guide and motivate the students no this one is for the parents for every now and then they deserve to be scolded as well if nothing else they will know what it feels like to be at the receiving end to every parent that torments his or her child to read or mug or study or prepare some more i want to say five things get a life every time you tell your kid how he is not doing enough ask yourself did i do enough with my life and unless you are ambani reading this chances are you did not you are not the highest paid guy in your office you are not doing your dream job and frankly life has not been all that fair so why are you dumping your insecurities on your child your children are separate individual human beings and not your personality extensions or your second chance in life if your life has reached a deadend try to find a hobby or something that positively engages the mind cut the cliches we know those parental cliches extremely well and find them extremely boring just to let you know these ones are totally overdone when i was your age we didnt have mobiles tv cable tv sliced bread or whatever money does not grow on trees because i said so do not make me tell you again because its my house or my car so if you have to scold at least come up with something original at least then it will be interesting enough to listen and you will not be able to say you do not even listen to me there is a sequence the fact is our entrance exams are tough the selection ratios for good colleges are bleak almost 10 times lower than top ivy league us universities therefore only a few people can get in and of the hundreds of thousands taking the exam there has to be a sequence just because your child does not get in it does not mean he is stupid goodfornothing loser dumb or lazy it just means we dont have enough good universities or maybe your childs talents lie in some other subjects after all you cant have a world full of doctors and engineers kids are not trophies there is a tendency to keep up with the joneses comparing your life with the neighbours friends and those pesky relatives well comparing cars clothes and jewellery is ok comparing kids is not simply because kids are people not material goods just because the mean aunts kid scored well does not