Am I a good girl, Ma?

When I was quite young, I read Swami Vivekananda as having said (I paraphrase) “Good and bad are both chains… one is golden and the other is iron. Even if it be of gold, would you want a chain around your foot?” No sir! I don’t want a chain around my foot, thank you very much.

  

Since then I have always regarded the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tags with the suspicion and relativity they deserve. Nothing is absolute. Of course I know one has to do good acts and avoid bad acts as a member of society. But I don’t want to “label” myself or anyone else good or bad. Good or bad is as good or bad does. They are merely markers for acceptable behavior. Swami Vivekananda recounts his master Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s analogy of a thorn – just as you use a thorn to take out a thorn, use good tendencies to clear up negative tendencies. But then go beyond all tendencies.

Image: www.balltrotter.com

Also, there is just too much baggage around “being a good girl” because of society’s stifling and convenient definitions of what a “good girl” is and the inordinate psychological pressure on women to be “good girls” all the time. But that would be another post altogether.

What has all this to do with learning to be a mom, you ask?

With all my complex thoughts around good and bad, I was careful to avoid the “good girl” tag with N. I usually give praise by saying “Good job!” or “Very good!” and censure by saying “That is bad behaviour, that is not good behaviour.” But years of conditioning can sometimes get the better of you, so I have often checked myself saying “If you’re a good girl, eat this up!” or “Don’t hit your cousin, aren’t you a good girl?” But for the most part, she didn’t really care about good and bad.

However, the moment she went to playschool (starting this July), she caught on to “good girl.” The very first day she came back with three stars on her hand. I asked her what it was for. She said proudly “N good girl!” I don’t know what her mental image of a good girl is. But I don’t want my daughter to give up her natural impulses for the sake of a cheap label. I was worried but didn’t say anything to the school. After all, I can’t always control how society treats my daughter. I can only give her a foundation with which she is hopefully able to hold her own in any situation without mommy having to back her up.

So I said nothing and just let her be. Her happiness with being a good girl also led to other people around the house using that to banter with her. Someone would say, “You are not good N., you are an aye N.” (because she keeps saying aye) and she would run to me and ask for affirmation, “Am I good N. amma?” No matter what the situation, I would always affirm her and say, “Yes you are always ‘good N.’ But I don’t think you should shout aye, that is not very nice, isn’t it?” If her cousins wanted a reaction from her, they would rile her with “You are bad N.” and she would again come running for an affirmation from me that she is indeed “good N.”   

This obsession with being “good N.” went on for a while. I continued to worry silently if my daughter would succumb to pressure and tailor herself to win society’s ‘good girl’ tag.

And then it happened.

N. loves playing hide and seek with her cousins. She is always the seeker and goes wild searching for them in exotic and magical places like ‘behind the cupboard’ and ‘under the table.’ The other day I overheard a conversation between my daughter and the boys. The boys (aged 11 and 8) were trying to get her to play hide and seek as usual but she wanted to do something else. They tried every trick and she stubbornly refused to yield. Then they used the most powerful salvo they had. The elder one asked her belligerently, “Look at me, aren’t you good N.?” At which my daughter, all of two and a quarter, looked up at her two towering brothers and coolly said, “No. I am bad N.”

In that moment, a mother’s heart lifted and sang. I laughed aloud, drawing strange looks from my nephews. But I only laughed some more. You see, my daughter is “bad N.!”