A mother shared an incident that shook me. She is a working mom and as a couple, they are earning well. So the child has lots of toys. Her child breaks many toys and they buy more. So one, she broke a toy by mistake and her child was very furious and started hitting her. We may ignore a 4 year old doing that but still she could not. She asked the child that he breaks the toys so many times and by mistake if she had broken, what’s the big deal. The child became furious saying that he had right and she had no right to do that. But then she asked if the toy was more important than her and the answer was yes. he shared that when he eats, he eats with his toys and when he sleeps, he sleeps with the toys. They are important. He asked his mother to leave.
Sometimes, I feel like sitting and crying. I see parent’s pain because they do not know what to do when their children ask them to stay away from their lives or not even to enter their rooms. Or the children, who want to be with their parents but are unable to forgive them and they take out anger on their parents. But when I delve deeper into the situation, I find more and more reasons to be around with children as much as possible till the time the child has become independent and we need to make them independent too. We cannot send them in the jungle alone without giving them an assurance that we are holding their hand. Or we cannot just keep giving them more and more amenities and not be there with them.
Why a parent has to be there with the child? Why it cannot be filled up by some other support staff or anything else? It is simple, the kind of emotions and wisdom a mother can give a support staff cannot give. The second thing is the kind of emotional learning a child can get from his parent’s, he cannot get from the toys or books or someone else.
I understand we all have to work and earn. We are unable to manage the finances sometimes with one person’s earning. However, we need to make sure that is available as much as we can. We are not overcompensating. We listen to them when they say something. WE hug them, guide them, we give assurance to them when they need us, and most importantly, we do not send them away to a hostel or to grand parent’s house, to manage their own ambition here. The child feels often he/she is punished for something they have not done. Even if it difficult to manage then manage with the difficulties. Bringing a child is a big decision and be ready to let go off your whole life to raise one.
