Sometimes I feel I am
balancing on a double-edged sword telling my son to do whatever he wishes to do
in life while simultaneously screaming to him ‘will you just stop that’ every
two minutes!! Vow!!! Talk about
paradoxes. So this morning as usual he starts jumping while I make him ready
for school. And I tell him, ‘so you want to be footballer I see. He grins and jumps
higher on the bed and then in my sweetest voice I tell him, ‘please don’t jump’
while making him wear his uniform and the next moment I hear myself say, ‘can’t
you stand still. What’s wrong with you?’ so he stops and smiles, ‘you said I
was a footballer so now why are you angry? You are sometimes laughing,
sometimes sad and always angry at me.’ And he makes that long face and hugs me
and says, ‘don’t be angry. If you will be angry then your whole day will go
bad.’ Talk about my toddler giving me my teachings back!!!
So I apologise to him but I
want to know the assessment of his observations. So here it goes. ‘I was angry
because we are getting late for school and you have been jumping all around.’ He-
‘but you are always angry and you always so no for everything.’ Now where the
hell did that come from? So as calm as I try to be I say, “When do I say no to
you?” With his hands tight on his waist he says, ‘for toys you say no, for ice
cream you say no, then?’
For a brief second I am
taken aback and I know I have a delicate path to cross and I cannot falter so
even though the clocks ticks and in my mind I am already seeing my self-late to
school, I know I cannot break this conversation. So I tell him, ‘Mommy has a
responsibility towards your well-being and to discipline you and there are ways
I can do that. Sometimes I make you understand that we already have three
airplanes and we cannot buy one more just because it’s blue in colour. I can
deny you an ice-cream if you have a runny nosy. And I can shout if you misbehave
also. So if in doing all this you think mommy is bad and always gets angry then
its okay to feel that. But mommy also loves you berry berry much.’ And I wait
for his response.
He looks at me with those
mousy eyes and finally says, ‘but what disciple means?’ Ahhhhhh, all my gyan huh!! So, I roll my
eyes, rush to pick up our bags, with an already cold sandwich in one hand and
holding my young one with another I rush towards the door yelling yet again. ‘Discipline
also means running to school to be on time.’
