While I am busy with my efforts of moulding him in to another regular human being in the society, who is prim and proper and behaves and moves around to please and impress the people around him, I am extremely surprised at the behaviour and attitude of a certain section of the society, with or without kids in the family, who are awed by so much of energy in a little child. They are surprised and shocked that a child can behave like a child! They frown at him when he raises his pitch to express his happiness, when he runs around in a room in his enthusiastic zeal, when (looking at the adults around in their desperate attempts to be heard) he also tries to stop others and wants them to listen to him, when he breaks down in public upon being frustrated due to an unfulfilled desire. These people might have a high sense of societal decorum with the traits of being soft-spoken, genteel, and pernickety, but they prove themselves imbecile at their expectation of finding mirror images around themselves, not even sparing kids, who are still growing up happily and are in the process of learning the ways of the world. For being soft-spoken certainly doesn’t indicate you are also soft in hearing and should react to a child’s scream of excitement; and, of course, decorum doesn’t mean you curb the innocence and spontaneity in a child.
My attempts to FIX my own son to fit in to our so-called modern society will be on. But, I feel sad for such people, who are so tolerant of all the wrong-doings around and give in to that, but so intolerant of the exhibition of excitement and happiness of a small kid. On further introspection and upon studying these characters more closely, I discovered that this behaviour also boils down to the age-old prevalent obsession to control the weak. These so called people are so tolerant of all the crime and rule-breaking around because they are weak there and don’t have the guts to stand up for the right. However, their ego gets all the boost when it comes to controlling the behaviour of a small child, who will any way hush up with an angry frown or scolding. You can clearly read victory on their faces on achieving this feat. However, the damage done to the child could be beyond their perception. Rebuking a small child in front of a big group, when he is not even aware of his mistake, may lower his self-esteem and impact his personality for a lifetime.
As a mother of one super active kid, I can only look around, laugh at my embarrassment at times, but mostly pity these people and pray for them to get some tolerance and patience in their lives and to come out of their facade because they are the ones spending hours, watching videos and reading articles on achieving happiness and peace in their personal lives. As far as my kid is concerned, I know he behaves like a happy, enthusiastic individual now and will grow up at his own pace to become an adult with hopefully the same zeal and enthusiasm for life. Therefore, I vow to myself to not kill his spirit for life under social pressures and obligations. After all, childhood is a beautiful journey of growing up through mistakes, wonders, and small successes. God definitely never meant to send readymade parcels in the form of babies.
Quoting John Lennon, “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
This article was published on mycity4kids.com on September 2, 2015
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