Tution My Confusion

When my daughter took science in 11th class, there was a lot of pressure, not on her, but on me.  How will she learn all these difficult subjects? I must find her the best tuition for physics, chemistry and Maths. 

Most of my daughter’s classmates kept expensive coaching for each subject separately. I enquire about different options, and the best among them. When I approached them, the fee was more than 2 lakhs. Plus 50 students in a class. I thought I was asking for coaching classes, not gold and diamond. 

People say that a child’s education is worth more than buying gold. They were right, if I had money. So, I end up putting her on a reasonable tuition. 

After one month, I noticed my daughter was not attending her tuition classes. Tution teachers complained to me, and I thought, how to push a teenager every single time. 

I kept reminding her and she kept ignoring it. When nothing worked, then it was the time for emotional drama. I said to my daughter, “You know how hard it was for me to arrange tuition money for you and then bargain, literally begging teachers for a discount. And now you are not only wasting money, but my efforts too.”

She said, “They are not good enough, I can learn better myself. It is quite easy.”

I was pissed off, but I saw her studying by herself. When she needed some help, she looked at some youtube free couching channels. In the finals, she surprised me by scoring more than my expectations.

I asked her, “How did that happen?”

She said, “You taught me till 7th class and now I  do the difficult things myself”. 

After a year, Vrinda got into 12th standard. She came to me and said, “I need tuition for all the subjects this year.”

I said, “Like last year, you can do it all by yourself.”

She said, “Last year was easy. Now everything is different and tougher. I need coaching.”

But this time I was sure that she could do it herself. Her  academic base is good enough. I made an excuse and said, “I don’t have money and will not borrow it from anyone.”

After a month, when she got stuck into the first few chemistry chapters, she started crying and said, “I could not understand anything. It is too hard for me”. 

After hauling and criticising me for two hours, she realized that she had no other choice.

I felt weak for a moment and thought about managing tuition for her. Then I thought about waiting for a few days. Luckily, she did not bring up the same topic again and got busy trying herself.

Six months later, she scored highest in chemistry. 

She said, “It was very difficult in the beginning and I thought coaching could give me immediate relief, a kind of spoon feeding, but when I tried hard myself, I got it. Now I feel confident and proud of myself.”

I felt happy, despite me having a poor academic background, I tried to teach my daughter till middle class. During the process, I learnt the subjects myself. Especially math, which helped her to activate her brain. 

Many times I had a hard time teaching her. After spending one hour on a single math concept, she used to say, “I could not understand, I could not understand anything at all.”

But I took it as a challenge. If I cannot make her understand, then maybe the chapter is not clear enough for me. I worked for two hours on it alone and when I understood it, I always found a better and fun way to explain it to her.  

Who can teach our children better than parents with love and patience. The poor academic background of parents is not a problem at all. Great opportunity to learn ourselves.