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when …
1. your husband tries to cheer you up with an offer of skirt-shopping as opposed to chocolate-hogging. :D
2. you run into a building with dazed eyes from being out in the sun too long and walk into an elevator semi-consciously … and a lady in the elevator asks you out of courtesy, “What floor?” … you are quick to smile back and say, “Yes, four.” 2 seconds later, as you regain senses, you look at her with a confused look and ask, “How’d you know I was going to fourth floor?” She laughs and replies that she asked you “what floor” …. not “what FOUR”. blah. summery eyed roopie.
3. you are so thirsty that you crave for coke as opposed to the good ol H2O … and since due to health reasons, you don’t stock any coke at home, you walk uninvited into your neighbor’s house, raid his fridge, grab a couple of cokes, and walk out thanking him for his hospitality whilst feeling good about not making him do the work of answering the door and getting you the coke himself. ;D
aiteeeeeeeeeeee I is back! I wasn’t gone too long in any case. I need this place, man. I need to write. I have too many things going on in this cuckoo-nest of a head. Have to write ‘em out. :)
Last two days have been one of the worst I’ve ever had. It’s really not cool when all you want to do is hide yourself in any dark corner you can fit yourself in and hope that no one sees you. Worse is when someone tells you that it’s all in your head. Would you say that it’s all in your head and that it can be rid of with a strong resolve when someone has brain-cancer? Then why are feelings of depression reduced to it being ‘just all in the head’?
Yeh, I have no shame admitting it. Yeh, I do have anxiety and depression which props up occasionally (once every 3-6 months). Yeh, I also have no problems admitting that the lovely parenting I had is most likely at fault if not genetics. Either way, it’s their fault. I also know that they will never admit it and I don’t expect them to admit it anymore. All I want is to get my past behind me and move on with my life … which, to a large extent, has happened. The frequency of me feeling miserable has reduced remarkably … and now I am more in control of how I feel.
It didn’t happen overnight. It was a LOT of work. I had to work really hard. I still have to and I know that I have a long way to go. Breaking involuntary responses that my nervous system learned over 25 years of fear-based classical conditioning will take some time but we are getting there. I include P in the ‘we’ because without him, I’d still be where I was 2 years ago.
Anyway, enough of this, we gotta revert back to happy-happy-joyness. :) No more sad talk. We gotta talk of happy things and be happy. :) … Let’s drink to happiness tonight! Water’s fine too. ;) Let’s collectively count our blessings and dismiss all sources of sadness and anxiety. It’s a lovely day out. P’s here and I shall drag him out for a walk. ;)
Until next time …
your truly :)
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?
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) :)
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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 my post on Genius Kids & their parents a couple of days ago, I present to you a photo I clicked with my phone while grocery shopping with Pati on Sunday.
The bumper stickers read:
1. My child had perfect attendance at Barrington Place Elementary School
2. I have an Honor Roll student at Barrington Place Elementary School (umm there’s TWO of them saying that)
Need I add more?
In response, a friend apparently saw a bumper sticker that read:
My dog is more intelligent than your Honor Roll Elementary school kid.
Looks like I am not the only one who’s peeved. There is a few of us. We should all combine and form a secret society to … ahem, I’ll let you guess the rest.
During my recent trip to India, I met a few new parents. They are all my husband’s friends from his university days. There also were relatives who’ve had children in the past couple of years. I hadn’t experienced spending time with new parents before that considering that I am the oldest kid in my family and most of my friends are still unmarried or got married at the same time as me. Had I known what I would go through, I might’ve thought twice before agreeing to visit husband’s friends with him or even go to his relatives’ places.
Before I go on to express my anguish, I must state that all parents I met were first-time parents. Perhaps they would be different the second time around. The general consensus of all of them this time though was that their own child was certainly one of the cleverest things to have existed. I understand that it is natural for a parent to feel that way about their child especially the first child but, really, I don’t want to know! It doesn’t really seem a big deal to me if a two year old can mumble a few unintelligible words. “Oh he can count up to three too. Isn’t he great? Pappu, count 1, 2, 3. Aww good boy. Come here. Mama wants to kiss Pappu. Pappu makes Mama proud!” Umm Great, but I remember my sister singing nursery rhymes in clear comprehensible English when she was two and a couple months. “Look, Pappu just broke the television screen. Isn’t he clever? How could he analyze that throwing a heavy object into the screen would break it? Aww good boy. Come here. Mama wants to kiss Pappu. Pappu makes Mama proud!”
Argh! Height of frustration! But I sat through it all, sat with a smile fixated on my face and awwing and oohing as much as I could. There are no mothers or fathers in the world who think that their child is less than anyone else in the world but some just take it a step further. The over-obsessed-with-their-child kinds constantly announce their child’s achievements to any audience who they can get the attention of. Most of the mentioned achievements are just a part of normal growing up for a child. The audience, however, is forced to listen out of courtesy. Add in the mix of gloating grandparents to the set of over enthused parents too. You have a perfect recipe of getting a splitting headache from too much smiling, awwing and oohing.
Why can’t these parents just keep their affection within their household walls and not try to make it public knowledge? Discuss with each other, call up the kids’ grandparents and feel happy together, vent it out in a journal entry, or better yet, start a blog! I suggested that to one of the ladies in India who had nothing else but her Pappu to talk about. In reply, she said shyly, “Oh no no, I don’t have anything to write about him.” Err?!? I really doubt that you don’t have anything to write considering that you do have plenty to talk about him. Is it by any chance that you wouldn’t get the instant gratification that you get out of torturing people live?
Ugh. No offence to anyone who blogs about their children but I wouldn’t personally read them. I would pick and choose the posts that relate to a more generic issue rather than reading about when their child threw up the first time. Actually, there are some fabulous blogs who use examples from their lives with their children to discuss issues that might be of some broader relevance to the readers. I appreciate that, but I’d so easily skip anything that has to do with a kid making a cute face and putting a lipstick on for the first time unless the writing is spectacular and I knew the parent very well personally.
In short, my request to all you parents who are madly in love with your children that you can’t find enough words to describe their new antics and the new things that they teach you, please get yourself either a diary and a pen or a blog. Write about it. Reflect on those thoughts. Feel good about them. Please don’t impose them on innocent, unsuspecting friends/strangers who really don’t care to know about the first time your little one used the potty without any assistance no matter how cute it really was. It also doesn’t matter to the rest of us if your kid accomplished potty training much before than an average kid does. We don’t want to know child statistics and how your kid fits in the top slot in almost every category. We don’t really care. Talk to their grandparents. They might be interested. Better yet, blog away!! :)
This post was inspired by Andrea Frazer’s highly comical write up:
Your kid is brilliant, now shut up! (a must read)
I share with you here the last words that I had to say about Grandpa on his funeral day. The Gurbani quote I started the eulogy with is courtesy Sidhusaaheb. The speech is recorded live; therefore, please excuse the interferences.
RIP, Grandpa. May Grandma have the strength to endure the loss.
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