Of Monsters and Evil Men...

Being a learning and growing child is definitely one of the single, most bravest things to be on this planet. In a chaotic world of random shapes and textures and tastes, a world of towering adults and their inconsistent language and behavior, a world of tough obstacle courses to master each day, a world of complex relationships to navigate, this pair of bright eyes and bundle of baby fat starts to flex its tiny muscles of will and independence.  If that doesn’t require courage, I don’t know what does.

So, on top of all this, why exactly do we scare our children? 

Eat your food, else the goblin will get you. Drink your milk, else the monster will gobble you up. And the worst is the open-ended, Do this (or Don’t do this) or else, the ghost (or any XYZ) is coming!

Most of my struggles with N are about eating. Either she is an angel with everything else, or I just don’t care so much about the rest. But however much I struggle, for the longest time, I’ve tried to protect N from fear-talk. I give her real consequences for her behavior. My reasonable, happy self starts off like this:

If you don’t eat, you won’t have shakti, you can’t run like Milkha Singh (her favourite). If you throw your pens, how will you find them when you need them next? If you run on the road, you might fall, didn’t that hurt so much last time? If you stamp on your books, Saraswati Devi won’t like it at all, how will she give you knowledge and wisdom?

It doesn’t work all the time of course, N loves testing her limits and I let her test her limits when it wouldn’t hurt her too much, so that she can see the consequences are real. She understands this with some repetition and internalizes this. So when she falls, she tells me she fell because she was running. I am glad she is making logical connections and that she knows she needs to behave a certain way, not out of fear but because it makes sense that way.

My clever shortcut for when I am running out time is to use praise/ competition. Sanju can’t eat with a spoon like you can, you know that?! Or: If you aren’t eating, I am just going to give all this Harshita. Or: I am going to feed Tommy (our neighbour’s dog) all your awesome pongal. The problem with this one is she loves feeding Tommy. Sometimes I make extra portions just so we can feed Tommy for every bite she takes. Sigh.

However, ermmmm, life isn’t perfect (yeah, like we need reminding!). Many times, when logic and reason fly out the window, I use emotional consequences in various intense voice modulations. I am really angry now. Amma is very upset. Paatti is very upset you aren’t eating. See uncle is watching, have a bite and he’ll say you’re a good girl.

My final level is to threaten her with physical consequences. That’s it, you’re going to get a whack. I’m really going to give you two whacks. This never works. It only helps me let off steam. And feel guilty and calm down. Or she makes me laugh by saying, “Ammaakku rendu adi” (two whacks for amma). In any case, we all get back to baseline and start from logic and reason again.

So this has been our tango.

And then one day, I slipped up.

N loves her “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp” picture book. She loves the huge genie appearing in smoke out of the magic lamp, bearing a tray of food. At first, she just said, ‘genie, mammam’ (mammam meaning food). Then she noticed this genie was huge and Aladdin and his mom, sitting near the lamp, were tiny compared to him, and in another picture, the strong genie flew to safety with Aladdin and the Princess on his back. Her reaction to the genie till this point was positive, if filled with amazement. Then I sang to her a song, from an ancient Tamil movie on Aladdin, which goes “Allah-ud-din-in adimai naan, arpuda vilakkin pillai naan, jeeboomba jeeboomba jeeboombaaaaa!” where the name of the genie is Jeeboomba. She loved the name and promptly appropriated it. She kept saying that word both in and out of context, with eyes wide open to indicate wonderment at the genie’s size and magic.

Image courtesy: www.disney.wikia.com

I don’t know how or when but I must have said in a moment of frustration, “Eat or else, Jeeboomba is coming!” I honestly don’t remember. Either I said it, or someone else in the house said it. Since then, my brave little explorer refuses to be left alone in a room, sobbing that Jeeboomba is coming, especially at night. Every now and then, she looks behind her shoulder. She points to any dark background and says “Jeeboomba!”  

The worst kind of fear is that which has no reason. It is terrifying, simply because you don’t know what to expect. It fills you with nameless dread, starting at the base of your stomach. And this is the fear that we put into a child every time we scare her with the bogeyman. For what? Because we are running late? Because we think she should eat a little bit more?

Nourishing her heart and soul trumps nourishing her body any day! We can make up for a partial meal later but no amount of explaining can really erase a scary vision or ease a queasy stomach. It is so easy to feed images to a child’s brain, we have no sure way of changing them at will.

Also, there’s another angle. If a child has to be scared into doing something every time, fear becomes her call-to-action. Growing up, she might respond to fear by acquiescing to whoever is causing that fear. That would be a dangerous trait to foster.

Children don’t explore because they are fearless. They do so in spite of their deepest fears. As adults, we need to be their pillar of strength, and not deliberately add to this fear. We should celebrate their strength and not hit them where they are the weakest.

I’ve of course done all the damage control I could. So what If Jeeboomba is coming? Jeeboomba is your friend, isn’t he? Or, Oh Jeeboomba is coming, that’s nice! Let’s give him some tea and biscuits. She is slowly getting used to the idea. “Jeeboomba friend!,” she’d suddenly declare out of the blue, showing me that her mind is working it. But I know she is still afraid of him. And I feel so sad that my daughter’s once-loved genie has now become her nightmare, all because I wanted her to eat a bit more.

Now, my resolve against fear is further strengthened. The idli can remain half-eaten and the chapati be fed to the crows if need be. But I promise I will not scare my child with the bogeyman again (So help me God!).