Children’s Day in India: why November 14, and the day the grown-ups performAnd the role swap to try at home

November 14 is Children’s Day in India, also called Bal Diwas. Schools swap their routine for skits, sweets and contests, and for one day the adults are the ones on stage.

It’s the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, born on November 14, 1889. Children called him “Chacha Nehru,” Uncle Nehru.

The date wasn’t always November 14. India first marked Children’s Day on November 20, the Universal Children’s Day recommended by the United Nations. After Nehru died in 1964, Parliament passed a resolution to hold it on his birthday instead. The UN’s day stays November 20, and many other countries use June 1.

The day also matters because of scale. At the 2011 census, children under 18 made up about 39 percent of India’s population, roughly 472 million people.

Children’s Day is mostly kept at school, and its best-known custom is a role swap. Teachers put on the show: skits, songs and dances performed for their students. Schools hand out sweets, hold drawing and storytelling contests, and in some, students take the teacher’s place for the day.

At home it’s quieter. Families keep it in small ways:

• A favorite meal, chosen by the child. The child decides what’s cooked, and the adults make it.

• A rose on the table. Nehru often wore a rose in his jacket, and the red rose became the day’s symbol.

• Stories from the grown-ups. Parents and grandparents share what Children’s Day was like at their school.

• A day without corrections. No lectures, no “sit up straight.” Just one day.

Do the school swap at home tonight.

1. Let the child run dinner. They choose the menu, the seating and the music.

2. The adults perform. One song, one short skit or one bad dance, done for the kids. It doesn’t have to be good. That’s the point.

3. Ask one question and just listen. “What’s one thing you wish grown-ups understood about being your age?” Don’t correct the answer.

It takes an evening, and it reverses the usual order of the house for a few hours. That’s what the school tradition does too: it shows children that the adults around them are paying attention.

Inside Kithmark

Games for the whole family

Kithmark has games for families and groups, like Family quiz and Pass the story, that you play together when everyone’s on the app. Each person gets their own page, like “Mum.”

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Practices you can do together

Ritual OS matches you with short practices from the world’s traditions, each named with its tradition and where it’s from. You can do them alone or with other people, and they adapt week by week.

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How our apps help

Kithmark has family games like Family quiz and Pass the story, and a private record of how things stand with each person, in plain words, never scores. Ritual OS matches you with short practices from the world’s traditions that you can do together, each with a beginning and an end.