Taare Zameen Par

It is not often that you come across a film that shakes you out of the complacency of your well established thought process and makes you do a whole rethink about the way you perceive your children and more importantly their perceptions about your perceptions.
Taare Zameen Par has done just that. Like all other parents ,little Ishan's parents too want their children to be right on top of the ladder literally. While elder brother Yohan obliges by scoring top marks in all his subjects with an add on bonus of being right on top with all other extra curricular activities, it is little Ishaan who is a cause for concern. He scores a constant 2 or 3 on 100 in all his subjects ,cannot tie his shoelaces, has no perception of time and just cannot be reached by either his parents or teachers.
Fully frustrated by the whole situation and without trying to take any time out to understand and solve the situation, Ishan's father decides to send him off to a boarding school in the belief that Ishan's naughtiness and stubborn behaviour will be sorted out by a good dose of Boarding school discipline.
Ishan is hearbroken and so also is his mother.
Boarding school turns out to be just an extension of his day school and Ishan makes no headway.......only now he withdraws into himself and even stops painting ,the only thing he used to excel in.
He misses his mother and in the special world that children live in he tries to understand why he is being punished. He stops relating to everything around him upto the point that one wonders whether this boy will ever come back to the land of the living.
Now enters Amir Khan who plays the role of an Art teacher who is very different. He does not believe that life is to be lived only within well defined straight lines. He is puzzled by Ishan's frightening silence and tries to draw him out. Slowly he realizes that Ishan suffers from Dyslexia and from that point on sets about trying to help him out. He goes out of his way to go and meet Ishan's parents . Ishan's father refuses to accept that his son needs help in any way. But Amir continues. In class he enumerates a number of Geniuses who had started out as dyslexic children but had subsequently given the World some of it's greatest inventions.Albert Einstein and Thomas Alva Edison to name just two.Ishan accepts that he too has a disorder but it does not in any way make him a lesser human being. He now sets about making an effort to read ,write and be normal in every way.....and he succeeds !!Academically too he shows marked improvement.
To top it all Ishan wins the Art competition and his painting adorns the front cover of the School magazine.
You are left with tears streaming down your eyes when you see Ishan as a normal loving child ,playing and running around. The shine in his eyes brighter than any jewel.

At that moment you realise that the smile on your child's face and the shine in his eyes are the only things that are important in life and they are the only things that make life worthwhile.   
Thank You Amir Khan !