From over-enthusiasm to online trolling, raising self-assured kids in a critical world can be a minefield. We examine how modern parenting is also about teaching children to speak up, handle mistakes, and navigate social expectations with resilience
Representational pic/iStock
Twelve-year-old Ishit Bhatt recently stole the spotlight on Kaun Banega Crorepati, not just for his knowledge but also for his tone, which many found brash and disrespectful. His assertive responses sparked a nationwide conversation about the fine line between confidence and arrogance in today’s children, often raising questions about modern parenting, online influence, and how society can help kids balance self-assurance with humility.
Preeti Vyas, president, Content Strategy, Partnerships and Consumer Products at Mythik, reflects on the viral controversy as a lens on modern parenting. “In our childhoods, respect meant silence — speak only when spoken to, don’t interrupt, show deference,” she says. “Today, we want our children to be confident, fearless, and to speak up. This backlash is the result of that shift.”
This is the two-sided coin of modern parenting, in raising kids who are self-expressive and can hold their own on a world stage. “When you encourage that kind of confidence, without patient and consistent coaching this kind of fallout is natural,” says Vyas. “Our expectations as a society and as parents need to find a balance. We can’t, on one hand, expect a child to be a confident ‘mini-adult’ and then criticise them for not being deferential.”
On the incident itself, Vyas is measured. “The child wasn’t even aware he was being rude to Amitabh Bachchan — he was over-enthusiastic. There was an absence of coaching before the recording, not just from parents but from the production team too.” She also points to adult oversight. “It was a recorded show. The production team could have reinforced the rule of waiting to hear the question. Directors can guide the flow if the goal isn’t just good TV.”
Varun Dave, Preeti Vyas and Dr Harish Shetty
Psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty agrees: “The world has been harsh to this child, passing judgment quickly over a brief tête-à-tête. Healthy confidence is about neither tone nor decibels; it’s about the ability to communicate and be aware of one’s feelings. The boy spoke to Amitabh Bachchan as if he were an uncle in his drawing room, displaying friendliness that purists might call audacious. The trolling of the family may shame parents, and if parents feel abused, they may inadvertently be harsh on the child.”
Vyas adds, “The behaviour we see in children mirrors the world we’ve created for them. It’s not fair to label the child ‘badly parented’. A child’s behaviour is shaped by home environment, school culture, societal expectations, and media exposure. Shows with brash characters like Shin-chan teach children that speaking out is normal. We give them uncontrolled media access and expect them to be perfectly poised.”
Dr Shetty runs a workshop, Jealousy to Joyfulness, that helps transform emotions like envy into empathy and gratitude. He believes empowered parenting begins with emotional literacy — helping children recognise feelings, share responsibility, and engage meaningfully with family and community.
Harvard’s 75-year study on happiness echoes this: children who do household chores grow up more grounded and self-assured. Parents who apologise and show appreciation model humility and respect.
Developmental paediatrician Dr Samir Dalwai, New Horizons Child Development Centre, highlights how modern childhood is being reshaped by the collapse of dynamic social learning systems, and replaced by rigid, binary structures. “All academic teaching is inherently binary — right or wrong, pass or fail, good girl or bad girl,” he says. “This is the opposite of the dynamic, variable learning a child once got from an extended family,” he adds, arguing that in just the last 20 years — “not even a blink in evolutionary terms” — this six-million-year-old process has broken down.
Families and neighbourhoods once offered children real-world, nuanced feedback: “The same act could get a smile from one aunt and disapproval from another — that variability taught empathy, regulation, and context,” Dr Dalwai says. Now gadgets and schools have replaced this diversity of human interaction, leaving a generation unprepared for complex social cues. Calling it an “anti-evolutionary crisis,” Dr Dalwai points out that schools, by design, train children to operate in binaries while gadgets further isolate them from honest feedback. What we have lost, he rues, is the dynamic, trial-and-error social learning that once helped children develop emotional intelligence, adaptability, and respect for others.
He condemns the culture of “fake niceness” and Western-style parenting that avoids all criticism, arguing that kids need exposure to “small traumas” and varied experiential feedback to build resilience. Giving feedback does not mean shouting, or beating a child, he says, but being honest and not tolerating everything. He emphasises that children should have the freedom to do what they want within reasonable limits, supervised under a “nurturing care” plan that exposes them to multiple people and situations. The child will learn the rest on their own through trial and error, observation, and the natural push and pull of a social world that challenges, rewards, and shapes them into emotionally intelligent individuals, he says.
Modern parenting, says Dr Shetty, is often caught between love and guilt. “Entitlement in kids presents as blaming parents for everything, being highly demanding, and displaying rude, inappropriate behaviour most of the time. Being intolerant of a ‘no’ is the hallmark. Indulgent, insecure parents cause such behaviours,” he says.
For many children this sense of entitlement begins early — not from malice but from comparison and instant gratification. Marketing executive Varun Dave, 23, recalls being what he calls a “bratty” child, one who always wanted to match or outdo his cousins, “If my cousin had a metal toy car, I’d reject my plastic one,” he says. Every unmet demand led to sulking, skipped meals, and silent protest until he got his way. However, he outgrew it and it wasn’t a lecture from adults that changed him — it was life, when his mother was hospitalised after an accident. “Seeing her like that made me realise I couldn’t behave like a child any more,” he says, and he began valuing money, relationships, and responsibility.
Looking back, he says, his parents were quietly firm with him — never saying a flat no or yes, but tying every privilege to effort and accountability, “If I wanted an iPhone, it came with conditions — gym time, school performance, or chores; when I finally got it, I valued it.” He adds that if he were a parent today, he’d follow the same empathy-with-boundaries model. “If my 12-year-old wanted an iPhone, I’d give them a regular one first — meet the need halfway, but make them earn the upgrade.”
Children are sponges, absorbing what we model, says Vyas. “Trolling a child for mistakes teaches trauma, not lessons. We need to let them experiment, err, and grow, because that’s how confidence matures into true social intelligence.”
When parents replace indulgence with involvement and instant rewards with earned ones, children learn what truly matters: gratitude, patience, and perspective. For Thane resident Madhuri Patil, mother of Vasant (names changed on request), 14, the challenge was different — managing an only child in a joint family where everyone pampered him. In her absence he would test limits, disobey elders, and break gadgets. Instead of punishment, she channelled his competitiveness; she created a behaviour chart with daily goals that earned points for good behaviour. When he saw the maid outscoring him it triggered change. Missing out on screen time or favourite meals helped him understand consequences, and over months the chart turned into a game of growth. Patil says, “He became responsible, managed his time, and learned to delay gratification. He saved points for two and a half years to ‘buy’ his PS5 — and that made him proud and careful.”
She believes the method works best when the whole family supports it. “If everyone is consistent, the child feels secure — that’s when real change happens.”
Revolution required
Dr Samir Dalwai
Developmental paediatrician Dr Samir Dalwai calls for bold reform — starting with schools. He urges the government to impose a complete ban on digital gadgets until Grade I and insists that pre-primary schools must stop teaching alphabets, numbers, and colours, before the child has learnt social etiquette. Instead, early education should function like a village, where learning is nurturing, social, and paced by the child, not the curriculum.
For parents, he proposes a shared parenting model — six families forming a small “village.” One parent takes a half-day off weekly to host all the children, giving them exposure to different personalities — the cantankerous uncle, the gentle aunt. The outcome, he says, is remarkable: children become “far more patient, tolerant, cooperative, and less demanding or attention-seeking.”
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