Did You Parent It Right Today?

Photo by Jonathan Sanchez on Unsplash

 “ Hey, you didn’t finish your dinner, is everything alright?” asked Siya to her 15 year old son Phil.

“ Ya, all well, just not hungry much” he replied and went inside his room.

It was a short conversation but somewhere Siya wasn’t satisfied with Phil’s reply. She finished her chores and went inside his room as she always did before sleeping. He was busy watching a movie but stopped while he saw Siya at the door.

“ Did I disturb you, Son?” said Siya

“ No, no please come, Mumma” Phil got up from his bed and looked at his Mom with a smile.

“ Hey sweetheart, I thought to give you a nice head massage before you sleep. Come on sit down and let me do it.”

“ Mumma, you are already so tired, in fact I should be the one doing this to you, I am fine, you take rest or you sit I will give you a nice head massage”

“ You sit darling, let me do it first.”

And he politely sat down while his mother started giving massage. 

“ You have grown up with the blink of an eye my son. It seems, it was just yesterday we celebrated your birth. Then all of a sudden one day you managed to speak your first word, Mumma. You have come a long way my son, there was a time you had a lot to know. Full of questions and queries, your curious brain wanted to know it all. But today it seems you actually know it all.”

“ Why are you saying so Mom? Whatever age I reach, I will always be far from the experience you have in life. I am and always be called as your son.”

“ Then why you don’t want to tell me your problem. Why you think I won’t be of any help to you?”

“ Mom, it’s really nothing much, just that I prepared so much in Accounts but while solving today’s practice paper, I was so stuck at balancing the account sheet that I didn’t bother to look other questions. It was only half an hour left for the paper when the teacher realised that there’s some mistake in the figures and corrected it to us. I thought I am doing some mistake, I was full of confidence that I can’t miss balancing the credit and debit but not able to match puzzled me and I kept doing it. When I realised there’s some mistake It was too late. I had to hurriedly solve rest of the paper and even I wasn’t able to finish it. Why did I do that?” Phil had tears in his eyes while saying so...

What as a parent you would have done in this situation?

1. Must have consoled him saying, “ No problem my Dear, that’s ok, it happens, Don’t overthink and prepare for your other subjects.”
2. Understood him, his situation. He is a teenager after all. Have kept yourself in his shoes and tried to understand his situation.

As a parent we have different kinds of reactions to the situations we are put into by kids everyday. There are times when we think, analyse and react but there are also times when we react quickly with an aim to calm our child and bring him/her out of the situation.

In such cases sometimes we try to resolve the issue by simply saying, That’s Ok child, you have learned a lesson, Don’t overthink, everything will be alright. And we feel we have done it right.

Whereas these words cannot solve the situation they are in. Our priority out here shouldn’t be to just console the child but to counsel.

It’s the time to understand what is the situation and how you can help your child.

Siya sat in front of him and said, “ Oh!! my child, your incident took me back in childhood days when similar thing happened with me. In solving a single maths problem I didn’t bother to solve rest of the paper and later realised the question was wrong. I was so puzzled that I couldn’t finish the paper at all and scored the least I ever expected in my life. That was very embarrassing but I was left with a lesson for lifetime. It’s my fault, I should have told you this earlier. Always remember, sometimes we are very much confident about certain things, like this question of yours but it doesn’t mean it’s the same way we are looking at it. So better is , solve it, check every figure properly and if it’s not working the way you wanted to,  immediately skip it and finish the rest of the problems. When you have enough time in the end and are mentally free, come back to the question and finish it. It was just a practice test and you have learned a big lesson out of this. So now just stop overthinking and prepare well for the next time.”

Phil immediately hugged his Mom, he felt relieved and was happy that she understood the whole situation well.

So next time your children are in need of such help, try to help them right. Rather making them come out of the situation try to make them understand everything, analyse, think from their mindset and resolve everything they are going through.

Do it Right !!

Sarita Shukla is a Graduate in Microbiology and MBA in HR, currently staying in Navi Mumbai. She is a proud Homemaker and mom to two naughty, cute little boys. Writing is her passion and blogging gave her a wonderful way to fulfil it. She writes Quotes, Captions, short stories and blogs right from her personal experiences, current topics, to the stories. Many of her stories won on various online platforms. She is a passionate writer and reader.

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