Kirtanya

Your husband, (wife if you are a male) comes home one day with a much younger, adorable, sweet woman(man) and tells you excitedly, “Honey, guess what?!? You are so sweet, so cute, so adorable that I decided to have another wife just like you!” Even as you are recovering from the shock he goes on to say, “Is n’t it thrilling to think of the stuff you both can do together everyday! Ahh, its so much fun to have company for you!” Just visualise the scenario as though it is happening now. How would you feel? (Substitute wife for husband and ‘she’ for ‘he’ through out the post if you happen to belong to the male species.)

A few days later you, your husband and the new wife go for a party. All your husband’s friends and even your friends just pass over you with a casual “how are you” thrown half-handedly over your head, but are gushing endlessly over the new wife “Choo chweet, Isn’t she a darling?!! Awww.. cutie pie!!” Again, visualise yourself nibbling your lower lip, and tell me how are you feeling?

As the new wife is settling in very well and consuming all your husband’s attention, you are sulking in your room. One day, your husband barges into your room and starts rummaging in your shelf. He selects few of your clothes and accessories. You ask what is wrong and your husband off-handedly answers “Oh honey, I am sure these things have become old and you can give it off to her!” – Your reactions?

The new wife is growing more attractive and lovelier by the day and is very much at home. One day you are fiddling with your iPhone and are trying to understand the way google maps work. And she looks over your shoulders, grows all excited, jumps on next to you and says, “here, give it to me! I know exactly how to do it!” You are much affronted and snatch your phone out of her reach. Her eyes fill with tears and she rushes out of the room. In a couple of minutes your husband walks in with the new wife in toe and asks you, “What is wrong in letting her have your things for a while? Why should you be so selfish always?” – How do you see yourself reacting to it?

When you complain you don’t want to do that, he has a stern expression in his face and tells you, “Come on! Don’t be so mean! Don’t you know we have to always share our things?? You are a bad girl!! I expect you to behave better in future. And remember that I got her home basically because I was afraid you would end up being lonely and now that you have her, you are behaving so obnoxiously! – Well, your reactions please?

Now you have almost begun to think your husband and his new wife are so much closer than you are to him. One day you watch him kiss her as they watch TV together, he is breathing something in her ear, tickling her nape and she is giggling. Exactly at that moment your neighbour knocks and calls your husband for a short meeting. Your husband straightens himself and looks at you and tells you to take care of the other wife when he is gone and that he expects you to be responsible for both of you. – Are you visualising yourself in this?? Have you reached the point of freaking yet?? You have? Then you will scream out saying you dont want to do that. Your husband looks at you as though you are a worm, and orders, “Why should you always be negative and irresponsible, I don’t want to hear how you can’t do things, just make sure that she is safe and out of harm’s way. Or else I will see that you are properly disciplined!” – Your feelings again??

If you have been visualising this accurately and feeling the outrage of all this, and if you happen to be a parent who complains on how much your children fight and behave meanly towards the younger sibling… Well??!! (And if you still don’t get it read through the post again with husband = you, you = your elder child, new wife = your new born baby/younger kid.)

Now you know why your child is mean towards her brother! Even the best of us sometimes can’t tolerate the presence of the ‘other’, what about a mere child who behaves badly to the sibling?

Please parents, put a halt to your trying to teach your child as to how she must love the brother or sister all the time, how she must share her toys, how responsible she must be for both of them, how not to behave mean and other such non-senses. Please, oh please get a handle on yourself and teach yourself parenting skills and how to deal with your child’s bad feelings instead of mimicking goody-two-shoes and preaching all the time.

And now don’t be mean, share this with your fellow parent friends!

Inspiration : Adele faber.

Light your hair on fire.
Swallow a caterpillar.
Bite down your ipad.
Put your finger on a live-wire.

Bad ideas, isn’t it?! But not so to teens. As you imagined the above tasks, if you were a adult and your brain were to be connected to a scanner, your distress and danger area will glow screaming automatically at the mental imagery. You will say these are bad ideas!

Supposing you were a teen-ager, you will still say these are bad ideas. But there is a difference. You will answer a moment later and it will not be a automatic response. No distress! Instead the cognitive parts of your brain will glow as if you were deliberating as to what dress to wear next day for college. You are actually thinking about them. There is no aversion that gets triggered automatically.

Now lets use this study* to bring into perspective the turbulent times of the teens. I was a terror in my teens to most people who knew me. There was the time when I was thirteen and I challenged my friend that I will break a slate, “palagai” as it is called in Tamil (A small writing tablet made of sandstone I guess) over my enemy (a classmate who complained on me to the teacher) and I actually broke it on her head and let the frame hang on her neck. And everyone kept throwing this question at me,

“Why did you have to try it? Didn’t you know it was a bad idea?”

I stubbornly stood my ground though guilt crept in later. But now in retrospect I can see that I knew it was a bad idea, But I couldn’t “feel” it as a bad idea. And ‘feeling it’ as a bad idea is what will keep you from doing it. I didn’t have enough life experience to draw upon then for the feeling part to be triggered by my topbox.

There must be some kid somewhere who is in the same position as I was, going through hell for attempting a bad idea. When I was in your shoes, for some time I was very scared about all the scoldings. Later I took it to heart. They branded me as troublesome and I really believed them. In every situation I enacted the role that was given to me like a programmed robot. I attracted trouble like a magnet. The truth was I was just passing through a phase which I would have outgrown naturally sooner, if I was not branded. Maybe you are in the same boat as I was. And wasting your precious self, in meaningless role-plays. Just a word to you, you cannot expect everyyone to understand what is happening to your biology. But YOU can understand and not get stuck there.

Don’t take any name that is given to you or a behavior that is attributed to you into your personality. Don’t feel compelled to act them out and make it your comfort zone. Life is just too beautiful to waste out being fixated into a personality. Explore yourself beyond that tag.

If you are a adult and are flabbergasted at your teen’s behavior and now after reading this post are wondering if you should or should not scold your teen, here is something to keep in mind. You should definitely correct any reprehensible behavior, but make sure to condemn the behavior and not the person. Do not character-assassinate the child, and give him a ‘cross’ to carry forward into life. For these derogatory names will be duly registered by your child and he will use it as a weapon against himself at some later point in life.

*Experiments by Dr. Abigail Baird at Vassar