Summiya Yasmeen

Every new academic year — which coincides with the onset of the monsoon — is a season of hope and expectation in millions of homes as children look forward to real learning — academic, co-curricular and sports in India’s 1.47 million schools. With children’s reading, writing and math learning outcomes stagnant as repeatedly highlighted by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the independent Pratham Education Foundation and in other surveys, parents have a critical role to discharge in enabling children to realise their full potential. Increasingly, parents are becoming more involved in their children crossing new milestones in academic and extra-curricular education.

Educators, parenting experts and counselors are unanimous that the promise and potential of the world’s largest school-going child population — 247 million — can be realised if they are mentally and emotionally prepared at home. In our start of the academic year cover story, we present a detailed child motivation and success guide featuring valuable advice from experts to enable parents to prep children to shine brightly in the new academic year by developing a growth mindset, helping them set meaningful goals, enrolling in enrichment courses and sports programmes. Latter-day parents, bombarded with information and advice from sundry parenting websites, apps and ubiquitous social media, are likely to appreciate our guidelines based on interviews with well-qualified and experienced child development counselors.

There’s much else in this monsoon issue of PW. Against the backdrop of a looming childhood mental health crisis, we present a detailed Middle Years story providing carefully curated information and advice on understanding child anxiety symptoms, causes and solutions. Also check out the Special Essay in which Liane Beretta de Azevedo and Colette Marr of Sheffield Hallam University, UK, highlight the importance of parents modeling healthy digital usage habits.

Moreover, I highly recommend the Health & Nutrition story in which Delhi-based pediatric consultant Dr. Tarun Singh explains how rising digital media dependency is rewiring children’s developing brains and offers valuable guidelines to stem cognitive decline.

It’s an information and insights-packed issue. Your feedback on our stories, suggestions, criticisms, are most welcome. Look forward to hearing from you!