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.
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| 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!).
