Question: How were your adolescent years? Were they emotionally challenging? What kind of parent support would have helped make them less challenging?
Joel Godi: My adolescent years were the most stressful and confusing time. Emotional regulation was definitely very imbalanced. On hindsight I think that if only my parents were better informed (they actually had no clue whatsoever), they could at least tried to understand. So it was mostly about forcing me into a box, which included both physical and emotional abuse. What’s worse is that even now, when I am 50+ and a successful entrepreneur, they still are in total denial about my condition and don’t want to even entertain any conversations about it. So whatever it is, I have to deal with it myself. They want no part in it.
Navin Israni: Emotional validation and support would have definitely helped. I was a high energy kid. I didn’t know what I was doing or why. My mom put in engineering diploma course and I followed suit trying to be the good kid. Now I am doing nothing of that sort I learned in college. But the transition was brutal on my mental health and the finances required to support my mental health. So let your kids pursue their dreams and hobbies. Give them creative freedom while they are growing up. I asked my Mom to put me in a Tennis facility when I was 15. She said you find it yourself and I had no idea how to do that. I would have loved some support there. I could have become a national player for India.
Preeti Dixit: My parents were very understanding, accepting, supportive and encouraging so I didn’t have any issues at home. However, I had a really difficult time in school because I was teased relentlessly by my so-called friends about something or the other and I didn’t know how to defend myself. It was very traumatic. I developed severe anxiety because of the constant bullying and wished I could drop out from school/college. My home was my oasis and I managed to survive my teenage years only because of my parents steadfast support. There were times I considered suicide but was able to hold on only because of my parents. This goes to show how much difference parent support and understanding can make in a child’s life. It can be the difference between a child giving up and holding on when everything seems unbearable.
Navi A: It would’ve been great to get a guide to relationships and not have to figure out everything the hard way. A book on body language etc. not something to grill and test me on, just mention it might help understand the other gender a bit. Would be nice to understand consent etc. I’ve not seen any one good guide to this though. Maybe a good time to introduce a grounding in intersectional feminism for both men and women. Especially men.
Aalap Deboor: The relentless pressure to excel at school made me drop more than a few interests I actively wanted to pursue including dance and music. It was quite an awkward time as well. This is around the time attraction starts to happen, and I would’ve really liked to have an environment at home that facilitated a safe space for these kinds of talks (although my mom and I would sometimes talk about my crushes when dad wasn’t around, which really helped). Curiously, my friendships lasted only as long as we were in the same class, which wasn’t the case for a lot of others. For me, it was always new class, new friends, because old friendships just withered away with time. This was also the time when I discovered that I would never be able to “pick up where we left off” with friends like a lot of NTs do, because a lot of my friendships came with a ‘best before’ tag.
