Friday, August 16, 2013

Go play.

I am almost 25 (not there yet!) and I am nowhere close to becoming a parent, but I want to pen down my thoughts about parenting and being parents, before I get blinded by the overwhelming experience of having a child. I think having a child changes you in ways that you can never imagine- that is a clichéd line, but clichés are so true! So before I get ‘converted’ into Motherhood, I want to record all my thoughts and feelings looking at it from a distant unbiased platform. As soon as I have a child, I know, I will be allured by the antics of the little one, to even consider any of the opinions I am going to write down here. But, I want to remember what is in my mind right now, so that I can look back at it in the future. Perhaps, derive something out of this ‘gyaan’ of a naïve 24 year old.

What I am going to write now, is like an open letter to all parents, from a child’s perspective. And I write this at a juncture of my life, when I have experienced both sides of it- being a child, and being an adult (having looked at things from a parent's perspective). Having an adorable niece also contributes into this ‘holistic’ experience.

Being a parent is the toughest job description on earth. Being a good parent is even more difficult. I look at life as a game, there are so many characters, and every phase of life is a ‘level’, and difficulty level at each stage keeps on increasing. So while you do need to keep collecting ‘points’, another important part of this game is to keep going forward, without dying. Protecting yourself from the beasts that show up in the game. There are always life lines / weapons / potions (depending upon how lucky you are in life) but at the end of it all, you have to keep moving forward. If you want to collect all the points that show up on the way, you will never move forward. Ofcourse, you will move forward, but slowly. Who wins in the end? The one who has collected maximum points. Instead of collecting all of them in every level, keep going up the ladder, experience all the levels and collect points on the way. You would have more points ultimately. Aren’t the points of higher value in higher levels?

Now, when you have a baby, your life game reboots. You start all over again. You remember all the obstacles, all the beasts. You know where the potion is hidden, you know which one is a deceptive potion, you know where to collect the weapons from. You are excited coz you have done it all. And now you want to ‘guide’ your baby so that he doesn’t make mistakes. But you know what? When the game was rebooted, there were a lot of ‘app updates’ . . . it is not exactly the same game anymore. Ofcourse, the pattern is same. But it is ‘new and improved’. So while you are telling your baby how to play his game, there are a lot of points he is missing on- the points that are hidden somewhere else. Yes, there might be some beasts there, but he has weapons and potions, right? So when you guide him to the path that you had taken, grabbing all those golden, silver, platinum points, trying to score the highest score, you are making him miss the new nuggets that are added in the game.

Let him play his game!

Now, that sounds easy. But I understand it isn’t. What scares me at this moment about being a parent is having this huge responsibility of how that person who, by the way, looks like you and sometimes acts like you, turns out to become. I don’t know how I am turning out to be, and whether I am doing it right, taking responsibility of somebody else’s life . . . is way out of the league. And that is where, everything gets messed up. The need, the paranoia of doing it right. ‘The right upbringing’. That is the burden under which all parents mess up their life. They try to hold themselves accountable for everything their kid does. They want to be perfect and raise perfect kids.

But now, being a child, let me tell you one thing, very honestly. You can never be perfect parents. However you try to be ‘friendly’, ‘open minded’, ‘liberal’ . . . your kids are always going to be unhappy with you. They will have grievances and qualms, irrespective of whether you gave in to all their demands, or were strict and a disciplinarian. But in the middle of all this, there will be spurts of unexpected joys (that will melt your heart, you will be in a spell, but don’t be fooled), mostly during the early stages of their life. After that, it is downhill, believe me, until they become old enough to become parents themselves. Oh and all the sacrifices you make is part of the job description of this thankless job. The retirement plan, may be sweet (there is hope!) if you have done your job well. Wait for the fruits.


So what I want to remind myself here, before I become a parent, is that being a parent is really difficult. Don’t stop playing your game. Their game is part of your game. Like Inception. Dream within a dream. Haha. While your life revolves around them, I understand, don’t stop playing your game. That is the only advice I want to give my older self, when I become a parent. Be scared, be worried, be concerned, but play your game and let them play theirs. 

13 comments:

  1. Beautifully written :-) Not a parent yet, so I can quite understand...

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  2. @ Ashwathy:

    Thank you :) I am glad you could resonate with my thoughts.

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  3. Perfect timing. Yesterdy at a shopping mall a 3 year old just collasped infront of me and started whining for balls (don't ask me for explanantions !) He then proceeded to do a break dance on the floor the likes of which I have never seen before. The dad looked absolutely perplexed, since mummy was not around. Felt sorry for the poor sod ! :D

    P.S: Humble advice : If you trun off the form asking people not to prove they are robots you'll get more comments! I'm not a robot and don't intend to become one in the near future ;)

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  4. @ Pan:

    Hahaha.. it is almost like a button that switches 'on' when kids leave home. Agenda: I shall find new ways to embarrass parents.
    But they are still adorable devils, aren't they! :)

    About your humble advice- it is not a 'form', just a number (captcha) that you have to put :P. Otherwise I get all these weird spam comments which is annoying. And anyway, even when I didnt have that captcha, it's not like I was getting a lot more comments :P Anyway, I will try to remove and see how that works :)People who want to comment will comment anyway :)

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    1. S, didn't realize you were spammed. Can i suggest that you enable comment moderation and just delete the unwanted comments? See the thing is, blogger gives a word that's usually skewed and makes no sense, with a capital letter or two thrown in the middle which I have to stare at for 5 minutes to decipher. Sometimes i have no idea what the bloody word actully is :). Is that letter a 'n' or 'r'? Real prob for oldies like me with weak eyesight. ;) So please be a sweetheart and remove it atleast till the time i'm done prowling around here :)
      P.S: adorable devils? don't think that's actually what the guy was thinking when his kid break danced on the floor ! ;)

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  5. So when you guide him to the path that you had taken, grabbing all those golden, silver, platinum points, trying to score the highest score, you are making him miss the new nuggets that are added in the game.

    Let him play his game!

    Love this post :)

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  6. Very well thought and written, its a matured approach and I am sure you are playing your part of game well, and have earned some great points already, keep at it !!

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    1. Thanks, Nelson. Have never seen you around. Welcome to my blog :)

      Well, the game. It just keeps getting more difficult! Why did we want to grow up when we were little? :)

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  7. S, I am a father of two grown up daughters and keep discussing with them on various fronts on do's and don'ts of life, I was suggested by my elder daughter about your blog and yes I am impressed and it is good insight to what a parent is and how the children feel about them, so Bravo! learning is good and should not stop ever. Agree with you 100% why did we ever grow up, innocence was so good and so pure.

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    1. "Learning is good, and should not stop ever."

      That is so true! The other day, I was talking to a friend about the same topic, and I realized that while we, as children, are struggling and growing up. . .it is a 'growing up' experience for the parents as well. Parents grow with the children, isn't it?

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  8. This post is a very good idea....once we cross a stage and look back, all these thoughts are hazy memories;-P.

    You are not alone...almost everyone who want children in their lives wonder how they'll manage, whether they'll be responsible enough once their child comes into the world.
    And finally when it happens, they manage, we all give the best we can. If each person wd just remember Kahlil Gibran's words "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you.....". I always felt if we got this concept right in our heads then everything will be alright:-).

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    1. I loooove those words by Gibran :) So perfect for what I was trying to say in this post.

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I love hand-written notes :)