Annoying book parents

Aka Teaching kids right and wrong…

My family recently concluded a function where my son’s upanayanam was performed. We all had fun. It was object lesson in planning and execution I learnt a lot from it as well. What was striking was the new species called “book parents”. This is a set almost as self absorbed as the Maamis we saw and are no less annoying as well.

This is the species, that probably read Dr. Spock’s books and have been reading books on child psychology explaining how to deal with “newborn – vol 1, month old vol -2, two month old vol – 3, so on – you get the idea. They have lost all evolutionary wisdom and instinct by totally surrendering to books/guides.

You can smell book parents a mile away, they can’t bear to see their child realize the value of “NO, you can’t” as a response to anything, period. Even if a child sez, “Mummy, I am going to stab you with a knife” a typical book parent will respond, “here use this blunt knife, so that my chances of survival are better”. Yes, this is not far fetched. One of our friends’ son used this technique to perfection, by threatening to kill himself, provoking a reaction along the lines of “There is nothing wrong in what you did, the world is just a big bad place etc….” and all that non-sense from the parents. One day, in my house the poor kid after damaging something tried the same technique, and was surprised to see me hand over a butcher knife and saying “Go ahead, make my day”. This particular tantrum of his ended that day. To this day, his mom wants to know what magic I did to make him stop that behavior.

Get a clue…. ? Kids don’t know what is right and wrong, it is our job to teach them that. Yes, by using NO effectively and repeatedly till the obnoxious behavior stops. Also, kids need to get used to life, in life you will hear NO pretty often -- guaranteed. You are better of preparing for that as well.

I have seen parents literally dancing to tunes to feed children. Wanting to know which of the toys I wouldn’t mind breaking, so that it can be given for playing etc. These parents are so self absorbed and are missing the very reason parents exist, which is to teach kids right from wrong.

Trust me, when I made a mistake as a kid, I immediately knew it. It made me stop that behavior. Don’t make the classic mistake of letting the child discover everything for itself, it might be too late in its life, when it discovers what is a horrible mistake !!!