A society of brats?

I don’t wish for children to be patterns of propriety — sitting with folded hands and closed mouths in the presence of adults. I don’t believe, as did parents of an earlier generation, that ‘children should be seen, not heard’. And I certainly don’t think that to spare the rod is to spoil the child.

But yes, I do prefer youngsters — and not only them — to behave with a modicum of good manners and courtesy — not only with their elders, but with everyone. I expect them to ask questions, express their points of view; even contradict and refute when they don’t agree with,  or are not convinced about, something — but within the bounds of decent behaviour and good taste. I LIKE them to be spirited, even naughty, but NOT BRATS!

Just my own, personal opinion …

When my nine and ten year old students either do not understand, or do not feel the need to listen to, such simple instructions as ‘Please talk amongst yourselves quietly so that others in the room (and those in the neighbouring buildings!) are not disturbed’; ‘After drinking water, please throw the paper cups in the trash bag, and not on the floor’, ‘Please go out if you need to eat, and throw any wrappers in the bin’, ‘Please wait for your turn and do not break in while I am talking to another student’, I can’t help wondering — even at the risk of sounding judgemental — what on earth they are being taught at home!

When I find chewed gum on the ground — with the bin just a few paces away; when I see a twelve or thirteen year old in a boutique, trying out dresses and tossing them on the floor, ignoring the harassed shop assistant requesting her to hang them on the pegs — I wonder how such kids will assimilate into a civilized society, or shake down in workplaces and in families of their own as adults.

Then, on second thoughts, I realize that we are already getting a taste of what is in store for us — the exponentially growing lawlessness, unruly traffic, road rage, violence, the utter, unshakable conviction on the part of a growing multitude that they can virtually get away with murder!

We are fast becoming a society of brats, and the ‘brat quotient’, so to speak, is growing by leaps and bounds. That being the case, shouldn’t we sit back and try to see where we are going wrong? Isn’t it a logical contention, then, that parenting has a definite role to play in raising the citizens of the future, and in shaping the kind of society we are becoming, and are going to become?

What are the parenting factors that go into the making of such brats? I have been talking to a large cross-section of people, as well as to child psychologists, and the sum total of all experiences and opinions expressed seems to be that there is a wide variety of factors that contribute to a child becoming a brat — from insecurity due to marital discord between parents to mindless pampering by family; from neglect in a double-income nuclear household to overindulgent grandparents; from total absence of training and control to too much regimentation and performance pressure.

Each child is different, and so is the ideal method of dealing with it, but awareness of the need to guide our youngsters to be sensible, responsible people definitely needs to be the first step in positive parenting.

Hurry Up!

Someone posted this article from Huffington Post on facebook, and the title: “The Day I Stopped Saying ‘Hurry Up’“, seemed to call out to me. Because this is exactly what I seem to be saying to my child … from ‘Hurry Up and get ready for school’, the moment she wakes up, to ‘Hurry up: brush your teeth and get into bed” last thing at night.

Admittedly, the child in this article is much younger than my teenager, but this brings home the point even more forcibly to me — all these years of ‘hurry up’ have not succeeded in making her hurry up! The one saving grace is, that since I am as much of a dreamer at heart, my ‘hurry ups’ are more an expression of anxiety about how she’ll cope when she is on her own, besides being liberally interspersed with ‘I love yous’ and bonding stuff. Otherwise, I shudder to think of the damage I might have inflicted on her.

My moment of revelation came when I overheard her (at the age of eight) confiding to a cousin: “You see, I’m so slow! My mamma really loves me, but she gets irritated …” I was dumbfounded, and I think my ‘hurry ups’ have been much fewer since then, besides being much kinder and more understanding — and I’ve seen her blossom, even though she still hasn’t learned to hurry up 😉

And one can see the damage that highly driven, extremely busy parents can unwittingly inflict upon their children who are built for a more leisurely pace. Perhaps we all need to understand that the breakneck pace of life notwithstanding, there is room for all things under the Sun.

After all, we don’t really want our children to break their necks on the fast-track of life do we?

And as William Henry Davies said in my all-time favourite poem:

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

To Mom, with love …

I don’t think we ever saw eye to eye
About anything under the great blue sky;
In fact, as Dad often says:
We were a pair of book-ends, looking opposite ways.

But now, as I see my own child grow
In a mould that I, oh! so intimately know,
I’ve come to realize so many things
About the joys and the angst that motherhood brings.

And yearn for the days when I’d dump every care
In your lap, and relax, ‘coz ‘Mamma is there’!
You were my harbour when I floundered amidst woes;
My bulwark against life’s cruellest blows.

The one who rejoiced more than me in my joy:
Whose unconditional love nothing could alloy;
Whose eyes showered love and benedictions in my life;
Whose strength gives me courage in my hours of strife.

If I can do a tithe of all this for my child,
My life as a mother would have been worthwhile.

This was written for my Mom in 2003, when I was in USA with my husband and she was undergoing chemotherapy in India. Published on ‘Unboxed Writers’ on 8th May 2011.

The babbling brook

Today Sonal Gupta posted on this blog’s Facebook group. The post was a poem about her kids’ chattering: My kids talk and they talk a lot. And it brought back a flood of memories of my teenager’s childhood …  my own little babbling brook. So, here’s to sweet nostalgia …

Have you ever been driven up the wall by your child’s chatter that just wouldn’t end?

I certainly have — times out of mind, when my teenager was a toddler. So much so, that whenever I would talk to my mom on phone and she didn’t hear a constant stream of babble (excuse the mixed metaphor) in the background, she would automatically assume that the little one was sleeping, and adjure me to put the phone down and go, get some rest while I could!

And later, when her teachers would say of the same kid: “Your child is really quiet. Do encourage her to speak up a little more”, I would feel like tearing my hair out at the roots!

One incident stands out particularly in my memory as I look back at her childhood years. I had been feeling a little under the weather for the past few days and by the evening of the day in question, I had a raging headache. Hubby was touring and dinner was cooked, with a few hours to go till it needed to be served. Popping an analgesic and hoping to catch a quick nap, I settled myself in bed, when my two year old climbed in beside me with some of her stuffed toys and blocks and proceeded to babble her way right into my shattered nerves!

In too much pain to really register what she was saying, I could vaguely make out “Ki-ku” (a variant of King Kong, her huge ape), “Booty” (her favourite teddy), “Rosy” (doll) … “house” …

I finally requested her, with all the patience at my command: “Baby, could you PLEASE be quiet for some time? Mamma has a BAD headache and needs to sleep”.

Immediately a look of concern spread over her little face, and abandoning her toys, she dragged my head onto her chubby little lap. Two soft, dimpled baby hands proceeded to pet me and soothe my brow … and the chatter started once more:

“You have a headache? … I should keep quiet? … I should not say even one word? … It will make your headache bad? … I should be completely quiet? … You have a BAD headache? … Should I make it better? … Should I be quiet? ………. Shouldn’t I say anything at all? …………”

To be or not to be

Sometime back a cousin visited Singapore on a work related tour. Having managed to throw in a weekend, he took along his wife and two children. This was just before the era of the ‘foreign travel boom’ in India. The couple came home highly amused because the husband’s Singaporean colleagues had assumed that the couple must be millionaires several times over since they could actually ‘afford’ two kids! It was, of course, unthinkable for them that anyone would ‘opt’ for parenthood unless thay had the wherewithal to provide their children with everything their society had to offer by way of living standards and everything they had to offer by way of personal inputs.

This was back then. Now contrast this with the plight of my dhobi (washerman) who has taken to drink after the birth of his fourth daughter, who can barely make ends meet even after working himself to the bone, and who is prepared to have yet another child for the sake of the elusive, ‘compulsory’ son! He touches the feet of all the old ladies in the colony, knowing that they are the ones who will ‘wish’ a son for him … and one  of the wishes just might come true!

And it’s not just the dhobi who keeps having kids in dogged pursuit of the son who will ensure the salvation of his soul in the next world. In our society, married people are ‘required’ to have kids, just like owning a television set–something you do in order not to be regarded as a freak by your family and friends–whether or not you have the time, space or inclination for it.

Result?

First: innumerable kids whose parents have no time for them and no inclination to spend any thought on raising them well or providing for any except their physical and material needs–witness the increasing numbers of messed up youngsters in the world.

Second: innumerable couples forced into parenthood that doesn’t come naturally to them–forced to make sacrifices they have no inclination to make, just for the sake of ‘duty towards their kids’, in turn resulting in an army of frustrated, escapist adults.

Third: needless population explosion on the planet–an ominous proportion of frustrated individuals in the world–witness the rapid pace of degradation of the human race, and indeed, the planet.

Fourth: the most tragic–the demeaning of parenthood, one of the purest, most exalted expressions of love in the world. This last, more than anything else, in my view, virtually amounts to sacrilege–a desecration of all that is best in the human race.

Speaking for myself, every time I hear someone dismissing the needs (other than physical) of their kids with a casual “oh! the kid will adjust: kids are very resilient”, or, “what’s the big deal about raising the kid? It has all the facilities it needs. Get on with ‘more important stuff'”, I see red!

When I see no one questioning male employees who wear out office furniture in gossip sessions over coffee and snacks while the work suffers, but everyone passing caustic comments about ‘equal pay, fewer hours’ and hounding working mothers who get through more than their fair share of work quickly because they need to leave on time to get back home to their waiting kids, I can’t help feeling that viciousness has finally scraped the bottom of the barrel.

When I see parents (not just moms) who are torn between their ambition to scale the heights in their profession through single-minded dedication and the emotional and psychological needs of their kids–or worse, those who have no doubt that their professional ambitions come first and that the rest should take care of itself–I feel pity for the emotional stunting of our future generations.

So, maybe I am a fanatic on parenthood and its responsibilities. I certainly don’t mean to imply that all moms should give up their careers and stay home to raise their kids. In fact, there do exist parents who manage to strike an excellent balance between their commitment to their careers and their commitment to their kids–probably because they are not ambivalent about their role as parents.

But when I read of day-and-night creches where children of working parents are fostered out at as young as four months, for months and years on end, usually to let their parents ‘get on with their lives’, I feel impotent rage at the pathetic state of our society.

And I wonder: is this the kind of thing that brought on the obsession with child welfare in the Western world–State control and stringent rules where children are encouraged to report parental infringements to the authorities? And given the present career-and-hip lifestyle-compulsive parent scenario, should Eastern societies follow suit?

That would be a matter for another debate, but I would say that, as a start, let us at least take parenthood out of the realm of social compulsion and leave it as a choice to those who really wish to do it and are willing to commit fully to it. Let everyone have the ‘social right’ to decide whether to be or not to be a parent!

Being a Parent

Of labour pangs and pain-filled haze;

Of sleepless nights and endless days;

Being more of a zombie, less of a mother;

Of just plodding on: one foot in front of the other.

Of an era of feeding, and changing, and screams;

A time when a nap is the stuff of dreams;

Of welters of soiled, stinky nappy and bib;

Of soft, fluffy pillows to line the crib.

Of trusting smiles and melting eyes;

Of a rush of love that all reason defies.

A kaleidoscope of emotions that shifts every instant;

The dawn of a new life: Being a Parent of an Infant!

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Of potty training and three baths a day;

Of insanity just a nanosecond away;

Of playschool vans, of picture books of flowers;

Of colours and shapes, of blocks and towers;

Of animals and birds, of evenings in the park;

Of balloons and toys, young minds to spark;

Of candy and ice-cream, of the alphabet and numbers;

Of aching bones and much-needed slumbers;

Of catching butterflies, of making mud pies;

Rediscovering the world through a fresh pair of eyes.

Of feeling at times that you’re just a muddler;

The morn of a fresh life: Being a Parent of a Toddler!

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Of homework and projects, of school drops and pick-ups;

Of the dawn of defiance, of twice-daily kick-ups;

Of cycling and football, of skating in the park;

Of laying down rules, of curfews after dark;

Of playdates and sleepovers, of bullies in the playground;

Of worrying that no one pushes your kid around;

Of TV and Internet, of smartphone and iPad;

Of PSP and Wii, of slowly going mad.

Of learning together: of tilling the soil;

Of discovering potential: like striking oil!

Of constant confusion, not knowing what you mean;

You’re more or less seasoned now: Being a Parent  of a Tween!

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And now for the most dreaded time for a mom:

The Bluebeard’s Chamber of all Parentdom.

An era of pitfalls that seem like landmines;

Of struggling desperately to draw some lines.

Of the feeling of being in a constant fight

With yourself, of not getting anything right;

Agonizing over raising your divas, jocks, or nerds:

Gearing up to tell them of the bees and the birds.

And dreading that they might, somehow, already know:

Trying to keep them safe, and yet, letting them go.

Of the reign of madness, not knowing how to engage:

That’s just Being a Parent of a kid in Teenage!

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In spite of

One of my most telling moments as a mother happened when my child was about three and a half.

Self-willed, bright and utterly charming (the universal verdict, mind you; not just a besotted mother’s view), she took to playschool like a duck to water. With her quick grasp of anything that was told to her and our daily bathtime exercises in colours, alphabet, numbers, body parts, etc. and her picture books, the first year at playschool was a snap. Charming her teachers and making friends all over the place, she was sailing on cloud nine.

It was in her second year in Montessori school that she started displaying a marked aversion to being pinned down to written work (she still has to be ‘persuaded’ to written revision). In fact, she just wouldn’t do it. And she refused to understand the concept of ‘please’ or ‘have to’. I was at the end of my tether. I still loved her beyond reason, but there was now a large fly in the ointment of my idyll as the mother of my near-perfect child!

Now, good grades and top performances were something that had been taken for granted in the family–one of the non-negotiable absolutes in life. And here was this maverick child who simply refused to perform. Yes, she was young yet, but her blatant antipathy to any kind of regularity had me hyperventilating: what would she do in life? Times were tough, and getting tougher by the day: where would she end up if she did not do well in studies? Her life would be ruined. Everyone would ridicule my darling!

Today, looking back I realize, to my shame, that at this point I had actually started withdrawing from her — not in terms of taking care of her or of loving her absolutely, but in terms of showing her unconditional love — as if trying to make her believe that my love was conditional upon her living up to my expectations; as if I wished to manoeuver her into trying to ‘deserve’ my love! Not surprisingly, we ended up with a new problem: behaviour issues!

It was at this time, when I was trying to grapple with these unwelcome twists of motherhood, that I ran across an old college friend who was finally pregnant after seven years of unsuccessful treatments for infertility. She was euphoric — and highly emotional. Deciding to lunch together and catch up with each other we repaired to our old college-time haunt of Nathu’s in Bengali Market, and being a little in advance of the lunch hour, were fortunate enough to get a table in a secluded corner.

And we started talking! We’d lost sight of each other after college, but I knew she had been through some tough times. A brilliant student in school, her performance in studies had taken a nosedive in college — and so had the love and support of her parents. She had graduated with low marks and had managed to get a mediocre job, but had risen swiftly in the organization on the basis of her performance. Now she had quit her job and was looking forward to bringing up her child.

I was just reflecting wryly on how I too had had the same kind of sentiments when I was in her position, when her next words fell upon me like a thunderbolt:

“And you know, whatever I am able, or not able, to give this child, the ONE thing that I will definitely give it is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and support. I will guide it to the best of my ability, but when it faces any kind of failure, I will love it all the more. I will never destroy its self-esteem by making it think that it has to deserve to be loved by its mother. I will love and support it, not because of what it is, but IN SPITE OF what it isn’t.”

I said a short inward prayer of thanks for this meeting, and echoed in my mind: “So will I … God willing … so will I”!

Born Again

I was born again when I gave you birth

To a life with new meaning; a new sense of worth…

So much has been said and written over the centuries about the joys of parenthood that there seems little left to say. However, it is equally true that each parent-child relationship is unique, as are the memories. I, for one, have had many, many moments of revelation in my thirteen years of parenting, and so has every parent I know.

And finally, after thirteen years of the joy, angst, euphoria, grief and the sheer madness of being a parent I am giving in to the urge to record all of it — memories, anecdotes and thoughts on Being a Parent — my own as well as others’.

Might also share links to articles and stories on parenting 🙂

All those who wish to share their own experiences are welcome to send in their anecdotes and thoughts to <beingaparent@outlook.com>