parenting 102

I am a mom and I yell at my child at times. 

And yes, to all of you au­thors of all kinds of nur­tur­ing par­ent­ing ar­ti­cles out there – it is okay. I am not ru­in­ing her life by yelling. I am just be­ing hu­man. That hu­man who for nine years has tried EVERY method for her child to do one, just one task in the amount of time it should nor­mal­ly take for a child her age. 

So, it is okay for that child at one point to know mom­my is tru­ly frus­trat­ed. That is life. That is be­ing real. And if she does not like be­ing yelled at, maybe, just maybe, she can do what she needs to do for the yelling to stop.

What I’m try­ing to say is that the en­vi­ron­ment we try to bring our kids up in this coun­try is too unreal. 

I still re­mem­ber from sev­er­al years ago a friend of mine was vis­it­ing with her lit­tle girl and she had by ac­ci­dent left the tap run­ning in the bath­room sink. Once she re­al­ized what she had done, she was mor­ti­fied. For a sec­ond I was pret­ty im­pressed till her mom held her cry­ing daugh­ter and com­fort­ed her by say­ing, “hon­ey, no need to cry, its okay. It’s just wa­ter.” JUST water??? 

Now I was mor­ti­fied at the fact that to some peo­ple it was in­deed JUST wa­ter and there was no way on earth that child would ever know what it meant to not have clean wa­ter like in many parts of the world. She would def­i­nite­ly grow up and hear about it in the news and feel sor­ry for those coun­tries and maybe par­tic­i­pate in a run or do­nate some mon­ey. But she would nev­er know what it means to turn that tap on and not have wa­ter flow through it, as and when she de­mands, even when her state is go­ing through a drought.

There­in lies the first prob­lem of first world par­ent­ing. There are no real prob­lems. So what do we do? We start writ­ing ar­ti­cles and blogs about how be­ing real par­ents is harm­ful for our kids and each day there is a new the­o­ry about how tox­ic we are to our kids. I want to write about how en­ti­tled our kids are be­com­ing with all the cod­dling you con­stant­ly en­cour­age the new age par­ents to do and I’m just ex­haust­ed from it.

When you cod­dle your kids so much and for­get they have a child­hood to live and mem­o­ries to make, which might en­tail among oth­er things play­ing out­doors with friends a lot with­out you hov­er­ing over them the whole time, what do you do? 

You buy them shit. So much shit that all the kids can think and talk about with their friends are things they have and the things they want. They con­tin­ue to want more and more, till they have no idea what they ac­tu­al­ly own and where they are located. 

From crap­py plas­tic toys to elec­tron­ic gad­gets, they have it all. In fact they have more stuff than their par­ents ever did in their life­time. Kids don’t re­al­ly need that many things. In­stead of turn­ing them into en­ti­tled ma­te­ri­al­is­tic mon­sters, let them be that gen­er­a­tion who ac­tu­al­ly val­ues mon­ey for what its worth and learns to work hard.

You know you also don’t have to com­pli­ment your kids ALL the time, even when what­ev­er they are do­ing is pret­ty lousy. I have seen so many kids who think they are pros at some­thing be­cause their par­ents have al­ways told them what a good job they do. 

Trust me, it will be heart­break­ing for them to find out that is not the truth. Lets be hon­est par­ents, our kids can­not be good at every­thing they do and it is okay to let them know what they are tru­ly good at, which ones have po­ten­tial and which ones are just ap­pre­ci­at­ed for their ef­forts. That won’t break them. That will pre­pare them for the real world and save them and you a lot of dis­ap­point­ment lat­er in life.

If I have to hear one more time “my child is a picky eater” I will cry. Yes, I am one of those nasty par­ents who doesn’t give my kid a choice on the menu. She has to eat what I serve or go hun­gry. Period. 

Even bet­ter, she can only get her sweet treats if she eats what is served with­out com­plain­ing. She is a kid and she still com­plains, but I don’t give a shit. 

I will not bow down to a dai­ly mac and cheese menu be­cause she won’t eat any­thing else. I know she is a kid, but it is not an ex­cuse for her to not be aware that there are sev­er­al kids in this world who go hun­gry each day and frown­ing on food is the worst pos­si­ble crime one can com­mit. I mean it. That goes for adults too. That be­ing said, I serve every­thing un­der the sun that in­cludes home­made food and fast food junk.

I could go on and on about par­ent­ing that dri­ves me to­tal­ly in­sane. My chal­lenge in par­ent­ing lies in the fact that I have part­ly seen both worlds. One part of the world brings up their kids in a way they can sur­vive so they can at­tain the ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties of healthy liv­ing and ed­u­ca­tion. Noth­ing else mat­ters. In this coun­try the fo­cus is for our kids to flour­ish be­cause as I men­tioned be­fore, who cares about wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty. If our child needs to waste them in or­der to ex­press their in­ner self, so be it.

Just as it is im­por­tant for our kids to flour­ish it is also im­por­tant for them to sur­vive and vice ver­sa. For that, we need to cre­ate a bal­ance. Bal­ance of what is real, achiev­able and what works for each of us, as par­ents, as kids.

So last night when my daugh­ter had a mini fit about her hair be­ing cut too short and how ugly she looked and how she thought her friends would make fun of her at school, I tried the holis­tic in­ner beau­ty ex­pla­na­tion first. 

But when the whin­ing reached lev­els where I could tell I would lose my mind, I told her what re­al­ly looked ugly was her cur­rent whin­ing face and if she was so up­set about los­ing her hair, maybe it was time to re­al­ize the first rule to be­ing al­lowed to have such long hair was brush­ing it and not look like a crazy per­son, es­pe­cial­ly in pub­lic places.

I was told I was mean. The whin­ing stopped. She ex­plained to me what “balls” meant. 

I re­frained from let­ting her know what it re­al­ly means. I took wine to bed. 

Bal­ance was restored.
 

—mala paul

Flom­mist Mala Paul is a pro­tégé of the god­dess of ten hands. Form to form­less all in a day’s job. A moth­er, de­sign­er, dancer, food­ie, fash­ion­ista, blog­ger, who is al­ways ready to be the change. Copy­right © 2016 Mala Paul. Pic­tured: Goof­ball with crown.

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