I'm new at this so i'm not even sure what i'm supposed to do! Well ...what have i got to lose? Ok this is what it is. I'm a mother of a two year old girl. She drives me nuts! Well....not actually! it's just that this whole deal about bringing up a child!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Does your daughter talk? Does she eat properly? Can she climb stairs? The questions are endless as you face a siege by older,”more experienced and wiser” women. It’s like your daughter has to be a performer at every step.
Can she sing? Does she know how to count? You better teach her the alphabets or she won’t get admission into any decent school in the city. The questions and expectations seem to increase with every new generation. What was an accomplishment earlier is a necessary milestone for the child nowadays. There is absolutely no way that your child is ever going to be good enough. So you think “alright, I’ll just do as they tell me, and my daughter will know everything she is supposed to know, and do, to be a great kid”. Wrong!
It’s not that simple. Who do you listen to? That aunt who told you your daughter was too skinny and so you should give her some butter…or the friend who told you that you’re lucky your daughter is not obese and that you should avoid all fatty foods even at this age. After all, your aunt did have 5 kids and they all turned out just fine…oh wait! All of them, except the last son who has severe cholesterol and diabetes problems and is way past the obesity mark. Your friend on the other hand has a great girl...but then again...didn’t she tell you herself that her daughter was being treated for bulimia? Forget the weight...let’s listen to the rest. What about tips on talking? That should be simple...wrong again!
Your grandmother tells you that your daughter better learn her mother tongue. How else will she talk to your grandmother’s sister’s husband’s aunt’s mother who talks only your mother tongue? Your grandmother warns you that if she doesn’t learn her mother tongue she’ll forget her roots and customs and become a total misfit in her native place which she might visit once in two years! What a dreadful thought! Then in barges your city bred cousin who tosses her head with laughter as she hears this. Mother tongue! In this day and age! The old lady is living in her times she tells me. Don’t mind her. Just say yes to please her. After all what will your daughter do with her mother tongue where she goes for admission into the pre-school of that excellent convent in the middle of the city where everything but English is taboo. Won’t the nuns be furious if you taught your child to become acceptable in her native place? Acceptability” world-wide”...that’s their agenda. Your daughter will turn out having learned impeccable English and respectable manners. Is it worth spoiling all that just to hear your daughter say goodbye to your maternal great grand aunt in her mother tongue? Well then we better let this issue also go... and go to something where there’s bound to be a consensus! Behaviour! Now nobody can stand kids who have been spoilt rotten and behave badly. So there’s bound to be definite guideline about this, right? Wrong yet again!
Just listen to your neighbour talk to her little girl. You watch as she patiently clears up after the mess her daughter makes. Just as she is finished her teenage son comes in throws his shoes on the floor and seems somehow physically attached at the waist to the computer keyboard from then on. Does she say anything? No! She wouldn’t dare! After all, kids nowadays have to be treated like independent and mature individuals. They decide what to do, when to do it and whether to do it. Parents in the name of what they call “good parenting” read up big fat books on child behaviour which directs them to listen to their children, give in to the child and never ever get angry with their child. The book warns them of the dire consequences lest they actually show their children an angry face. The child will suffer for life because of that resentment, might even begin to hate you and might let that bottled up anger turn into something destructive within him making him unacceptable in society. Your grandfather’s brother can’t control his laughter on hearing this new theory. The old adage of spare the rod and spoil the child is what he believes in. He tells you how so many generations of parenting and bringing up children with strict rules and plenty of disciplining can’t be that wrong after all. Didn’t you all turn out just fine, he argues. That’s true! He waits till the children are out of earshot and then tells me that all this new fangled psychology is good if I’m bringing up children in the United States of America, since children there are a write-off in any case, according to him. He then whispers to me that I’d better watch out or my children will turn out to be just like Anamika’s son who was a rebel, grew long hair, pierced his eyebrow, wore clothes that were 3 sizes too big and eventually eloped with a French woman. After all they have some of Anamika’s son’s blood in them. At that moment you wonder...who is Anamika? He can’t believe I’ve forgotten. Anamika is my mother’s maternal aunt’s grand-daughter’s brother’s wife. What the world is coming to, he declares! Such close relatives and I can’t even remember. Well, now that issue complicates the fundamental theories of parenting! Thank god, my daughter will be able to make up her own mind about her future once she needs to. Maybe she’ll become a biomechanical engineer or whatever the trend is in her days!
My husband’s aunt stops me in mid-sentence. Let her decide? That’s not what you should be doing, she admonishes me. Her father is a doctor. It will be right for her to become one too. That’s what should be done. Send her to the best medicals schools, pay money to get her in if you have to, and then let her take up her father’s practice. But what about her choice, I argue? Start telling her even from this age that she should be a doctor and she will get used to the idea and even start making it he own idea. That’s the way it should be done.
Suddenly my eighteen month old daughter runs in. She wants to know if she can feed the fish in her pond some vegetables. I begin to explain why fish are not likely to eat vegetables. Then I realise, my daughter has a tough way ahead of her but as a mother my choices are equally difficult. Hopefully I’ll make the right ones! Hopefully I’ll let her eat what she likes while making sure she also eats what’s good for her. Hopefully she’ll be able to converse both in English and her mother tongue. Hopefully she’ll never think I was too harsh on her. Hopefully I won’t be so lenient that she becomes a spoilt brat. Hopefully she’ll make her own career decisions taking into account my career advice. Hopefully I’ll let her grow, let her learn, let her be herself!
