Oh Parents! You want to raise a winner.
I understand. I wanted the same.
In the region of my awareness — the homes I grew up in, the homes I grew up around, the home I built — we do not produce grandiose children by accident. We produce them on purpose.
The comparison with the cousin. The “mera beta” at the wedding. The public scolding to keep them hungry. The praise that arrived only with the result. The relative who walks in and asks the marks before asking the name.
This is the training.
We think we are building: Confidence. Success. Ambition. Family pride. A winner.
We are actually building: A mask. Fragility underneath. Fear of being ordinary. Performance addiction. Hidden shame. Loneliness at the top.
A child who cannot rest. A child who cannot fail.
Grandiosity is not confidence. Confidence sits quietly. Confidence does not need an audience. Confidence can lose without collapsing.
Grandiosity is what we hand a child who was never allowed to be small.
The child grows up unable to be still — because stillness feels like failure, and failure was never safe. The child grows up unable to be ordinary — because ordinary was the one thing we punished. The child wins everything and feels nothing, and we call this success.
And then, one day, the trophy comes home and the child cannot feel it.
We mistake this for ingratitude.
It is not ingratitude. It is the wound finally speaking.
The trophy was never the child. The child was the price of the trophy.
If this lands somewhere in you, sit with it. Do not rush to fix anything. The first work is to see — clearly, without defence — what we have been doing. The fixing comes later, and it is gentler than you think.
You are here, and you are reading. That means you love your child.
That is the beginning.
— Ravinder Khurana Parents’ Coach
