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A friend has a four year old daughter who he does not have very much in common with. (You’re probably saying, “No shi#, Sherlock” hehe.) He is interested in shooting (yes, he owns 15 guns and keeps them at home – UNDER LOCK – thankfully) and golfing. The 4 year old dear darlin’ daughter of his though does not enjoy either. Now you’re saying, “you think eh?” heheh.
At lunch today with him and his wife, the following conversation happened and I am still laughing over it:
Friend’s wife (complaining to me): He (friend) never spends enough time with Z! (Z = the daughter)
Friend: V, darlin, sweetheart, there is only so much tea I can drink out of empty cups.
ROFL!!!!!!!!
Oh gosh, I was literally in splits. So was V but she suppressed it until her face went red and she had to let it out.
ps: to help you under the stand this post, little girls like to host tea-parties ever so often, right? :)
We’ve had a couple of heavy posts in the last two days and I don’t really want to do a third. But something has come up and I figured I’d write it out. Before I do that though, I just want to say a couple of things that I learned about myself in the previous posts.
I learned that I have a crazy tendency to separate emotion from action most of the time which leads to confusion for people around me and for me as well. As HK said, people who ‘understand’ too much suffer. Oh I so agree. I won’t say that I am too ‘understanding’ cuz that would just be narcissistic but I would say that my habit of dissociating emotion from action when needed doesn’t make life easy for me.
One, not many relate to what I am talking about. I mean, people don’t get it how I can be treated real badly by someone and I still find it in me to treat them back nicely. How can I separate their gesture towards me from who they are? Well, it’s simple really. I justify their actions as some character flaw that they might have and excuse them for it. Call it a victim attitude perhaps considering that I lived the life of a victim for many years. That’s just how my analytical processes developed and still work. That doesn’t mean I’ll keep taking shit. I’ll put an end to it in a diplomatic way or walk away from the situation without any anger. I can’t see black for black and white for white. I see every character in a shade of grey. I’d even try to find the ‘why’s behind a murderer’s actions. I won’t blame him or judge him harshly by convincing myself that he had his reasons. Not many, of course, will relate to that at all. Hence, I’m mostly left alone :/.
Two, when others around me don’t get a grasp of what I am on about and are confused, that confuses me in return. :/ So I am always uber confused about why I don’t ‘feel’ the same emotion – anger for a good cause et al – as others do. I do feel it sometimes but, majority of the times, I will find a way to justify it one way or another. :/ I’ll always look for practical, rational solutions for every problem. Even the times when I do feel ‘emotion’ for any problem, the feeling is short-lived. I’d be digging for solutions immediately-after instead of fuming over the problem. And when no one else gets how I can dissociate myself that quickly, I start doubting my approach too leaving me confused … and alone, I guess.
So yeah, it’s really not that great to be ‘understanding’. I wish my brain worked differently. Alas, I’m stuck with it.
Now on to the story from today. I spoke to my mother a few days back. In our relations (far-fetched someplace), there is an old lady – about 96 – grandmum of 12 kids, mother of four. She lives in India all by herself whilst all her children are in Canada and US. They visit her once every year or so. I asked my mum as to why her children won’t bring her here.
Mum: Her son is not a citizen; so he can’t.
Me: What about her daughters? There’s three of them. One of them can apply.
Mum: They say that they don’t mind applying for her but don’t want to take responsibility of her when she gets here.
Me: hmm that’s mean. Why not? She is their mother! How can they do that?
Mum: Well, different folks different strokes.
When we hung up, I thought of the whole situation. Daughters are not fond of their mother because she gave all the ancestral property (which is quite a lot) to the son. Daughters didn’t get a share. My mother, by the way, is a proponent of the same school … that daughters should not get a share … but that’s a separate story. So, the daughters are not too pleased with the mother over that and much other discrimination that she has dished out over the years. They bear a grudge and due to that grudge, they are not ready to give her a place at their homes.
I don’t want to ask whether their choice is right or wrong cuz that’d be a wrong question to ask. I am only wondering what you would do in their place.
What would I do in their place?
Would I want to take care of my parents in their old age if they gave all the family share to my brother? and outcast me like I was not a child to them as my brother is? If they never thought of me as a child equal to my brother, why then should I take care of them like parents? I’d happily pay for their expenses as I would for any other charitable cause but would I be able to take care of them as a child should her parents?
Knowing me, yeh, I guess I would … I am cuckoo like that … but I also think that it is fully justified for a daughter who was not treated like a child to refuse to take care of her parents when they need to be taken care of.
Why is it that when splitting family wealth, a daughter is ‘not’ family … but when she is needed, she is expected to become family to take care of parents?
I feel that she is very well-justified to hold a grudge and refuse any help if she chooses so. What do you think?
Today, when discussing with a friend about adoption (I don’t know if I can mention friend’s name), we were talking about how nurture can mold a child’s personality and compensate for nature if need be. Then I came across this video:
A must watch. WOW! Sure to shake up toughest of hearts, isn’t it? What do you say? Nature vs. Nurture? What wins? Especially those of you who are parents, what do you think?
“It’s not an everyday occurrence. It is not as bad as you make it out to be”, said a friend to me today after reading my last post. He lives in India and, obviously, is much in love with his homeland. Also, he is not someone who needs to resort to desperate means like the ’standard eve-teasers’ do to feel good about himself. He’s just your average good guy who minds his own business and doesn’t interfere in others’. For him, harassment of women on Indian streets is not that common an occurrence as I am making it out to be and hence not really that bad.
Despite my disagreement with him, I can understand where he is coming from. One, he is not a woman to have experienced it himself. Two, he hasn’t inflicted it on any woman himself; so he doesn’t think anyone else does it either.
Although I do understand his dilemma, I worry that there are so many others like him who might be thinking the same. They’re just not aware of the seriousness of the harassment problem merely because they are good people themselves and also because any talk of harassment is quickly hushed at homes. Daughters, if they do, talk to their mothers who hush the issue and advise the young ones to walk with arms folded across their chest next time. Fathers are mostly left unaware because you know what? Harassment ‘happens’. It’s ‘normal’. Why make a big deal of it? Women eventually just learn to cope with it themselves and life goes on.
I asked my husband today whether he knew about eve-teasing et al. He went to an IIT in India which happens to be primarily male-dominated. So he said, “I only really knew my sister in India but she obviously never told me anything. Only person I’ve heard it from is you when you go to India.” I was obviously shocked. He said he knew that it happened but he is completely unaware of the frequency or the intensity of it. Come to think of it, he lived a good two decades in India and he is not aware. I lived only a few years and I am more than aware. Being of a different gender makes all the difference eh?
Coming back to the friend, I asked him about what he thought of the two times that I was harassed during this recent trip to India and the few times during the last trip as well. He answered me by asking me to speak to the women I knew who lived in India. Umm how are they any different than I am, I wondered? Perhaps my body language is too ‘bold and inviting’? Perhaps because I don’t walk with my eyes glued to the road? Other than that, I look just the same as the rest. What’s the difference?
So I throw this question out to you ladies living in India:
Is sexual harassment on Indian streets almost an everyday occurrence or not? Do you not have to be on high alert to guard yourself strongly every time you step out? Do you not have to think about what you wear and how you walk just so that you don’t attract attention?
Because I always felt like I needed to be on guard in India when I lived there and when I visit there. Perhaps my perception is wrong. Please correct me.
Although I have put those questions out to you guys, I don’t find that any answers to those questions would affect the grimness of the issue at hand in any manner. How does it matter if street harassment is an everyday occurrence or only once in a lifetime? Even if a young girl is harassed once in her life, is it not bad enough?! It inculcates fears into her that are not healthy for her growth! It’s a fact. Even ONE incident is enough for her to start looking down on herself … her body … her mind … her perception of herself. She begins to question herself, her way of dressing, her choices, her wants, her desires, her dreams and begins to shape herself subconsciously to be someone who is not likely to get abused (as per her perception) and kills herself in the process. How terribly sad is that! If I had a young daughter entering her teens rite now in India, I’d be shaking with fear every time I had to send her out by herself. WHY?! Why does one have to live with this fear every day? It’s not fair! Repeat after me … NOT FAIR!
So yes, it IS as bad as I make it out to be dammit. It might take an ‘everyday occurrence’ for someone to take harassment seriously. For me, one incident in a lifetime is more than enough, thank you very much. The frequency of occurrence is really rendered immaterial. The impact left by one incident on one young mind can be much worse than impact left by 100s on another! I am surprized though that there are people who are still unaware of this taboo of a subject. Really surprized! I assumed everyone knew! I thought everyone knew that it happens quite regularly! Well, what do ya kno?! I was wrong! Though I do realize that I am to be blamed for not letting others know as well. When it happened to me, I kept it to myself and my close group of girl friends. We never told guy friends out of shame and never told parents out of fear. So, how can I expect them to know now?
This new piece of information gives me all the more reason to talk louder about it than ever. Please pass on the message. Please talk about the frequency of it if it helps make a better impact. More and more ‘decent’ people (read men) need to be made aware that their wives, sisters and daughters are experiencing harassment on almost an everyday basis. They can’t be blamed to not do anything about it because they simply don’t know in most cases. If they hear of it, they choose to believe that it doesn’t happen to their family members and that ‘it’s really not that bad’.
Unfortunately though, dear sirs, it IS that bad. If you don’t believe me, have a look here: Blank Noise Project.
I already got my Halloween scare today. It’s been two weeks since I deserted the blog and logged in today with a renewed energy to get back to the blogging mode again. First thing I did was look at stats and ’search strings’ for obvious entertainment reasons. *SHOCK* I’d left the blog at 3000+ visits/week and now I was hovering at numbers lesser than 1000. After the first series of shockwaves passed and I regained my sensibilities, I wondered why I went into shock anyway. I never cared about numbers; how did it matter now? I guess the dipping line in the graph automated an unjustified reaction incalculable to the rational me only because I’ve been consistently exposed to way too many dipping graph lines lately (thanks to my recent expenses in NYC plus the economy hullabaloo on TV).
Thank you all for your birthday wishes and the wishes for my well being. They were all read with joy on lips and a tear in the left or right or both eyes. Thank you dearly. I am officially 
back home now albeit only for a small period of time before I head out on yet another trip. The past two weeks of my life have been by far the most challenging and the most rewarding. I am so lucky to have such lovely friends as you and a great partner in my husband. Thanks to all the love and support I had, I managed to pull through as expected and have a long way of recovery ahead. The journey has started … now it’s just a matter of reaching the finishing line. Part of the process, however, requires me to make some serious life changes. It would include (get ready for your Halloween scare) me having to alienate myself completely from Unchaahi. hmm. Apparently, I am not ready to ‘give’ yet. I have to keep myself away from anything that triggers any negative emotions. Like the dear doc in NYC said, “you’ve hurt enough in your life … focus on only those things that give you happiness. work in a florist’s shop, work with old people, kids, … get away from abuse or anything that is associated with abuse … don’t talk of abuse … just get away from it all that triggers your downward spiral.” Fair enough, doc, I shall follow the prescription.
Sad as it may be, I can no longer volunteer for the organizations working with troubled women and children either. I had to call them and tell them that I won’t be coming any longer. They understood … but it was a tough decision on my part. However, I guess I need to get myself away from the ‘familiar’ (abuse) and learn to live a superficially selfish life that’d make me happy for a change. Enough of that … it’s so good to be back and be able to ramble just about anything I want to on me blog.
Two incidents that involve *shock* (halloween shtyle) that I’d share with ya before I get to cleaning the house:
Incident # 1
One of my little cousins is studying in NYC and stays in an apartment in Manhattan. She is 19 and oh-so-lovely (I’m only sayin’ this cuz she reads the blog :D). I went to visit her for a weekend when I was there and we had a great time. Yesterday, when I came back to Houston, she rang me to see if I got back alright.
Cuz: Hey dee, just callin’ to see if you got there ok?
Me: Thx hun, yeah, I am here. Back home. Lots to clean up but still glad to be home.
Cuz: awww I just hung up the fone with Uncle J****.
Me: Yeah?
Cuz: I told him I met you over the weekend.
Me: *smirking* And?
Cuz: He didn’t say anything. He was just … quiet. It was weird.
Me: Yeah, he doesn’t like me too much.
Cuz: Why? Because you are cool?
(ATTENTION, dear reader, May I please interrupt you to pay attention to the fact that a 19 year old New Yorker called ME ‘cool’????? *thank you thank you … I seat myself back in my chair as you applaud*)
Me: haha thanks! Nah, he still hasn’t been able to approve of the man I chose to fornicate with for the rest of my life.
Cuz: *SHOCK* haha I can’t believe you just said that! Only you!
Me: It’s true though, innit. He would’ve been super elated with me if I had allowed him to allocate me a f-buddy without voicing my opinion.
Cuz: *laughing* You are super-cool!!
At this point, my ego got the best of me and I had to hang up the phone after quick goodbyes before I went and admired myself in a full-length mirror. I ‘AM’ cool!! :D :D :D
Incident # 2
I should’ve told you of this before Incident # 1 because, chronologically speaking, it happened before Incident # 1 did. This happened on my flight back to Houston. Pati was also flying with me. We were assigned seats 19 B and 19 C. On 19 A sat a demure petite girl who looked Indian. I smiled at her while sitting down and cordially sat besides each other 3 hours of the flight. When it was only half an hour left to land, she knudged my shoulder (I swear she must’ve been thinking all flight on the best way to talk to me and knudging shoulder was the best she could think of?). I turned to look at her with a smile …
She: Are you visiting Houston or do you live there?
Me: Oh we live there. This is my husband (pointing at Pati who smiled and nodded a hello in response before plugging back his ipod). And you?
She: My husband and 1 year old son live there. I am studying in NYC but I’ll be done in December this year.
Me: Aww that must be harsh staying away from family especially your child. I am glad it’d be soon over.
She: Yeah, me too!! How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?
Me: Na na, I don’t mind. Im 27 … actually just turned 27. Getting older.
She: Me too! I am 26 but will turn 27 end of november. I got married two years ago. When did you guys get married?
Me: (man, Indian folks really know how to drill all family statistical information, don’t they?) We got married a year and a half ago. :)
She: Are you from India? You don’t have an Indian accent. He has a little.
(Wow, she had been observing us a while eh?)
Me: Well, I’m from Canada and yeah, he’s from India.
Then, she asked me the story of how we met and yadi ya da which I shared. Then she was ever so curious to know how my parents agreed … to that I responded to her in somewhat similar words that I shared with my cousin in Incident 1. She was shocked and looked at me with widened eyes. Then she asked whether I was the younger kid in the family since I am such a rebel. Nope, I said, and she was shocked again. I am actually the oldest in my generation in the entire khandaan on one side of the family and much younger than cousins on the other side. I am basically out on my own with no cousins my age.
She: But don’t you feel that you owe your parents something?
Me: Why should I owe them anything?
She: See I am from Kerala, grew up in Dubai, did my education in Delhi and then moved here with marriage. My parents took care of me all my life and I feel I owe it to them. Don’t you feel like that?
Me: Nope
She: *shock* Why not? I mean, the oldest kids in the family usually feel the responsibility of giving back to the parents. I am really surprized that you don’t.
Me: Well, I’ll return the ‘unconditional’ love that they gave me when they need me. I’ll try to provide for them to the best of my abilities when I can but I certainly don’t owe my life or any of its decisions to them.
She: Wow, you surprize me. Don’t you ever feel that they’ve done so much for me and maybe I’ll do this one thing for them just so they are happy?
Me: Live my life as per they want you mean?
She: Well, not major decisions but small decisions like naming your child etc.
(At that point, I was beginning to feel like she was looking for justifications for what she had done or what she does or how she lives to please others.)
Me: Nope, I don’t owe them anything from my life. True they gave me a life … thank them very much … but it’s my life and I choose to live it my way. They really didn’t do me any favors by creating me. They could’ve used a contraceptive.
She: *shock* You are just too much! *giggles like a schoolgirl*
Flight lands and we say our jovial goodbyes. I hope to have changed her life one bit. :)))
Happy Halloween, everyone, and I am just so glad to be back! :)
(flowers photo is by me and dedicated to my darling husband and to each one of you who took the time to wish me the best) :)
Who’d have thunk that it’s not just us, the unsuspecting mortals, who are facing the consequences of the ongoing credit crunch? Who’d have thunk that fairyland people are also in the same terrible times as us?
Tooth Fairy is one such unfortunate err person ..? .. atleast in the UK … as the Telegraph reports:
The average amount left under a pillow for a tooth has dropped from £1.22 to 87p in the past six months, according to research.
[...]
Dr Nigel Carter, chief executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, said: “The tooth fairy’s visits are part and parcel of growing up for most children so it’s disappointing to learn that she’s not been able to fulfil her duties lately.
“The tooth fairy is an important reminder to children to look after our teeth.
“Hopefully the tooth fairy can weather the current economic climate and we’ll see her return to top form soon.”
:*(
To bed now with prayers for the tooth fairy from the deepest honesty of me little heart.
Related Reading: Mampi’s not-so-little-anymore girl stopped getting Tooth Fairy visits even before the credit crunch! :(
As I was loading the dishwasher after lunch today, one of our neighbors’ daughter sat on the dining table observing me and talking to me. She had asked me of the workings of a dishwasher and as I was explaining the physics of mechanical dish-washing to her, she blurted out, “God is sexist!”
I looked up with my surprized eyes to see her face lit with excitement as if she’d discovered life on Mars. “What did you say, sweetheart?” I asked in a confused and a feeble voice.
“I said God is sexist, ” she replied casually.
Certain that she couldn’t possibly know what sexist meant at her age, I confidently put the question “Do know what sexism is, J?” before resuming to load the plates.
“Of course, I do”. The reply was not good for my confidence. I was wrong in not giving her enough credit. I left the wet plates behind, dried my hands with the kitchen towel, and went to sit with her on the table.
“Ok, what is it then?” I asked her with a smile brimming with the belief of victory.
How could an eight year old possibly know the ‘real’ meaning?
Her eyes lit up as if she was waiting for me to ask her the question. She didn’t waste a breath before saying, “Sexism is discrimination against people because of their sex and people who do it are sexist.”
Dumbfounded and a crushed ego later, I admitted defeat.
“Where did you learn this?” I asked because that’s all I could think of at the moment.
“On TV”, came the prompt reply, “You know how people were sexist against Hillary Clinton. That’s why she didn’t win. Didn’t you know?”
She was the one with the surprized eyes this time. It was obvious from the contortions of her face that she wasn’t very pleased with my lack of knowledge.
“Yes yes”, I stammered trying to maintain my default dignity bestowed on me merely on the account of me being older than her, “but how is God sexist?”
She sighed.
“See, when I have to go pee, I have to use toilet paper to clean up but when P (her brother younger by 2 years) goes, he doesn’t need it! When we went camping, he could just go anywhere in the trees right? but I had to carry a toilet paper around. It’s not fair. God should’ve made me like P too! He didn’t. So he is sexist!”
It was my turn again to have the surprized eyes, but they were accompanied with a happy smile of pride and awe for my young friend’s analytical abilities. :)
I write this post as a follow up to the comments (that I am grateful for) left on the previous post on Child Abuse.
I thank Mampi and Sandy for stating (in comments section) what I couldn’t have done a better (or even equal) job at. Hence, I’ll just run with the thread that they started. Mampi states in her comment:
Why are the children expected to forgive and forget? Why is the erring parent not made to say sorry to the child? If at the end of the road, after becoming an adult, it is upto the child to analyse his/her life and look at his/her abusive parents in the positive light so as to forgive them and to move on in his/her own life, what was the contribution of the parents to his/her life at all? Of course it is the negativity in the personality that we are reading about in Roop’s post. In order to rid that negativity and to help the victim “forgive,” an apology is needed from the erring party. Parenting is a responsibility and the personality of a child is squarely our responsibility. We teach them not by disciplining them, we teach them by disciplining ourselves.
And that’s exactly what I feel. Onus is NOT on the victim to forgive and forget. Why should it be? Plus it is not easy to forgive and forget pain practically as it can be expected theoretically. As I mentioned in the previous post, I tried and failed to both forgive and forget. I had to settle to learn to live with it and the process is effective in helping me live a positive life now. Further, Sandy adds:
The lessons you teach your children, even if you are doing the best you can, will effect them forever. And again, I am not talking about not getting what you want for Christmas or not getting candy or not being allowed to jump off the roof of the house, or even made to eat all your peas. However I am learning with my own children that there are ways to do things that do not include belittling a child or hitting them. We want them to grow up as strong adults who can make their way in the world on their own when we are gone…and beating the, burning them, attacking them mentally is not the way to do that.
Again, Exactly!! Thanks, ladies, for sharing from a parent’s point of view which, for obvious reasons, I can’t relate to yet.
Whenever I’ve talked to people about abuse, I’ve often heard responses like:
“Oh but I was beat too! So what?”,
“I was forced to go into engineering as well, so what?”,
“My dad used to beat me with a belt, so what?”
“Parents only do what they think is best for you.”
… and so on.
At one point, my own husband was one of those people too. When I asked him what he was beat for, he couldn’t remember clearly. And I, on the other hand, can narrate the times, the days, the moments (all of them) in chronological order accompanied with the emotions I felt, the hatred I felt for myself, the dismay I went through, the physical pain, the helplessness … before I blink an eyelid. Where lies the difference?
One, he was hit a LOT less than I was. Two, every person has a different breaking point. Mine’s different from his and his is different from the friends he grew up with. If he was slapped in front of guests for not serving tea properly, he might not care but it hurt me. It hurt me and my self esteem immensely. Physical pain (as Sandy did mention in her comment) was trivial but it was the emotional pain that gripped me. I constantly kept expecting that the realization would dawn on them miraculously and that it would be obvious to them that I suffer every time they told me that I was not even a zero but a negative. No miracle ever happened. Instead, negativity persisted and I couldn’t handle it. I crumbled, I lost confidence in my decision making capabilities, I faltered in social relationships, I learned to distrust people and distanced myself from anyone who tried to be friendly with me. When I was going through it, I was told by an adult in the family that I needed to be stronger and not take everything too personally. But WHY did I NEED to be stronger? Stronger to live with my own parents? Stronger to face the punches that I had to bear from my own parents? It was my bad luck that I was not strong enough to accept getting hit because I wanted to wear contact lenses like my friends did but that wasn’t ‘allowed’ as per their rules. It was my misfortune that I got bruised for wanting to be like other people my age. School, sleep, exercise, eating, and bathing was all I was supposed to be interested in. Everything else including TV was taboo. If I stepped over the arbitrary lines, I was ‘punished’ and then expected to be strong to take it? And now I am expected to be strong to forget about it all and forgive them? Why? I hate asking this question … but why me?!?! Why should I be asked to keep accepting and then forgiving and forgetting?
NO, I will not forgive.
I will not forgive for …
- being made to sleep on the cold and hard kitchen floor all night
- every bruise I’ve had on my body
- getting belittled every day
- having my ambitions, my dreams crushed
- having me live in an atmosphere of fear
- the physical pain that I still go through
- the stress that my husband has to go through seeing me suffer
- my lost years
… and much more.
No, I will not forgive!! Neither would I take anyone telling or asking me to forgive anymore. Yes, I am resentful … but the resentment is receding gradually as I convince myself that I am out of the negative environment. The resentment turns into positivity on hearing my husband’s voice of encouragement whenever I find myself in a sinking low. Resentment does not go away by forgiving someone. Instead, you can only forgive someone when resentment goes away. Resentment goes away by learning to believe in your own self once again. Resentment is overruled by positivity as soon as you hold your life’s reigns in your own hands. The reigns that were taken from you a long time ago by making you feel like an incompetent individual who can never make a ‘good’ decision.
No, I will not forgive! But that doesn’t mean I won’t take care of them if they need me. I will for if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t even have been born. They have no one but their children to take care of them in their time of need. I understand that and I will be there for them anytime they need me. I’ll give them all the love and the care that they need … but not as people who I am supposed to share my life and its achievements with … but as people who are also human beings just like the people I work with in all non-profit organizations I volunteer with.
I, as an individual, have some responsibilities to myself. I, as a wife, have some responsibilities to my husband. I, as a mother, will have responsibilities to my children one day when I have them. These responsibilities include me leading a healthy and a happy life myself so that I can support rest of the members in my family in an encouraging and a positive manner. In order to have that happy and healthy life, I don’t need to forgive anyone. I only need to not blame myself, close the chapter of my past by accepting it, learn to live with it, work on the present, and celebrate life’s every joy and achievement with those who make me happy.
And that is exactly how one purges the negativity and resentment after having gone through an abusive experience …. to answer the very valid question that SidhuSaaheb raised in the comments to the previous post.
Following up on previous post: After-effects of abuse -1, I want to write more about abuse – verbal and physical – inflicted on children by parents. I had read a book titled Children First by Penelope Leech a while back and, today, when I googled for her, I found a brilliant article which starts off with a quote from Children First:
Almost everyone in Western societies agrees that it is morally wrong for people to settle arguments or impose their will on each other with blows. When a big kid hits a little kid on the playground, we call him a bully; five years later he punches a woman for her wallet and is called a mugger; later still, when he slugs a fellow worker who insults him, he is called a troublemaker, but when he becomes a father and hits his tiresome, disobedient or disrespectful child, we call him a disciplinarian. Why is this rung on a ladder of interpersonal violence regarded so differently from the rest?
The author of the article mentioned above, Dr. James Kimmel, helps me out further by writing most of what I was intending to write (you can see the entire article here):
As a psychologist who specialized in working with emotionally disturbed children, and as a person who has a special fondness for children, it is extremely troublesome to me that punishment, both physical and otherwise, is an intrinsic part of child rearing in the United States. None of my three children, now adults, were ever punished. Just as people who state, “I was spanked and punished and I turned out OK,” my children are able to say, “I was never spanked or punished and I turned out OK.” And based on the kind of people they are as adults, I would agree that, not only did they turn out OK, but they are much more caring of others, including their children, than most of their contemporaries. They do not, of course, punish their children.
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Why do parents punish children?
For some parents, whose own punishment as children was accompanied by rage, hatred, and sadism, punishing their own children is an opportunity for them to legally inflict pain on another human being a chance to get back at someone for the pain that they suffered. But for most parents, it is a matter of controlling behavior which they were made to control in their own childhood. It is a matter of ignorance, of passing on malevolent and inappropriate behavior toward children which they learned to accept as appropriate in their own childhoods. They are acting from an attitude that says it is just and right to hurt children in order to achieve certain ends. They will defend their belief that their own parents were right to punish them, that they are right to punish their children, and that their children will be right to punish their children. “After all,” so many parents say, “how else can you get them to behave?” And many, even when they are told “how”, still punish their children. On a deeper psychological and social level, parental punishers of their children do so because their children make them anxious by confronting them with behaviors and feelings which the parents themselves have learned to hide, suppress, repress, and disown. They must condition their children as they were conditioned.Children threaten our identity, security, and reality. We harm them in order to stop our perceived threat that their behavior will harm us. It is a myth that we punish children for their own good. We punish children so that we will be secure. Our children have the power to elicit our tender and loving feelings. They also have the power to frighten, anger, and embarrass us. From being punished, children learn to distrust and fear their parents. Other than that, children and parents learn nothing. By condoning punishment as a disciplinary tool, we perpetuate the acceptability of the use of force and power to control others. At the same time we perpetuate our ignorance and our fear. We use punishment in order to stop behavior rather than having the courage to confront and understand it. By openly dealing with the underlying causes of the child’s behavior, both parent and child have the opportunity to get a better and more realistic view of the child’s actions, and any potential danger to the child and/or to the parent. We evolved to protect children from harm, not to harm them.
The belief in our society that punishing children will make them into social beings reveals our alienation from the socialization process that is normal and natural to our species. We become genuine social beings from developing in relation to tender, nurturing, and non-harmful others. Alienated from our own need for tenderness, and hardened since birth by life in a non-nurturing society, we teach our children that punishing them is proper parenting that will help them to grow right and to be good. We do not seem to understand that punishment does not make children social, it merely teaches them to fit into a society which separates us from each other; a society which is not based on the human capacity for tenderness or on concern for another, but on the absence of these. Punishing our children sabotages the nurturing and protective feelings that we evolved to have towards them. It destroys the unity of parent and child. It teaches us to violate the rights of others. As a socially condoned practice in child rearing, it damages and insults the human species.
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Does Punishment work? What are the after-effects of Punishment (abuse)?
One of the troubles with punishment as a way to teach children proper social behavior, aside from the infliction of pain, is that it makes children feel weak, impotent and incapable. Punishment teaches children to look to external authority to decide for them how they should behave, rather than looking to themselves. They do not learn how, in collaboration with others, to make choices; they do not learn how to decide what is good for them and for those who are important to them. What they learn instead is to submit to authority and power, to obey. By being punished and treated as inferior beings, they become inferior beings – they do not develop the power of the human individual to love and trust. Children who are regularly punished learn to fear their parents. They learn the behaviors that their parents like and don’t like and also, how to hide these behaviors from their parents. They develop “proper” behavior out of fear, not choice.Some children openly defy their punitive parents. These children usually end up getting into worse trouble with their parents, and with other authorities as they mature. Most children, however, go underground. In order to protect themselves from parental power they develop a “good”, submissive-to-authority, social pose to hide their secret misbehaviors and improper thoughts and feelings. Their social behavior is not genuine because it has little to do with who they really are. Once out of the realm of authoritarian control, they adopt new ways and new codes consistent with the values and priorities of their peers. They go in any direction the wind blows to avoid disapproval and to gain approval. The lack of respect their parents had for them has prevented them from developing respect for themselves.
I can fully relate with the last two paragraphs. Word to word. Again, no shame or fear of admitting it now. It was my past. A past that taught me a lot of lessons that help me lead the life of today. A past that I hope to fall back on to help anyone else I can. A past that keeps me motivated to get involved with the community, give as much as I can to whoever needs support. But that doesn’t mean that the past is wiped. At the cost of sounding melodramatic, wounds stay. Always stay. I will never be able to forgive or get over ’stuff’ as I am expected by many … and neither do I carry the past happenings as a weight on me. It’s just something you have to learn to live with. Wishing it away or hoping it to stop affecting is a lost cause. I know. I tried. But the minute I accepted that the pain, the hurt, the bitter memories are with me to stay and that I need to build on the present to co-exist with the past, paths started to clear up.
Why am I writing this? Perhaps a cathartic process. Throwing my thoughts out. Emptying the overcrowded head out.
In continuation to the previous posts on ‘Genius Kids’, I found another truck this Saturday in our residential parking lot with a bumper sticker that follows the already discussed theme. Cautious not to waste a single second, I ran home hurriedly to grab my point-and-shoot in hopes that the truck won’t leave the lot. Following is the picture (please excuse the glaring flash):
You’ll have to see the previous two posts linked above to fully understand what I am on about. :)
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