Mumbai, June 29: When 12-year-old Paridhi Shah lied to her friends at school, she presented her mum Alpa with a delicate parenting dilemma: should she react as an understanding friend, or as a disciplinarian parent with zero tolerance for duplicity of any kind?
What had happened was this: Paridhi wanted to ‘fit into’ the cool gang. So she told them she was part of a music band, when she wasn’t. When her lie was found out, the group ostracised her. Paridhi became depressed. She stopped going out with other friends in the evening, became withdrawn and subdued. When her mum, who had noticed the change, asked her what was going on, Paridhi confessed that she had lied and was now feeling guilty about it.
“I could sense that it was a deciding moment in my relationship with my daughter,” recalls Alpa. “Naturally, I was upset that she had told a lie. I could shout at her, and risk losing the bond we shared; or I could tell her it was alright and indirectly end up encouraging her to lie.” Alpa realised that the confession was coming from a child looking for guidance. “I could see she was already suffering from low self-esteem. So instead of reacting strongly, I discussed the situation with her, explaining how she could own up to her lies.” Maybe it was the manner in which she reached out to her daughter, or the way she worded what she told her, but now, over a year later, Paridhi hangs out with the same group that had begun to avoid her.
Most parents will agree that Alpa isn’t dramatising events. The line where a parent’s disciplining ends and a friend’s support begins is very fine. “Good parenting is about being firm about the values you impart to your kids, while at the same time being accessible enough for them to approach you,” says Kavita Anand, educationist and mother of two. She believes it is important for parents to remain parents. “Being your child’s ‘pal’ doesn’t work,” she says.
Anand cites an example from an experience with her 11-year-old son. When he leaves his room messy, I tell him calmly, “This is not only my house. It’s yours too. If you think I’m going to clean up after you, think again.” Her son, understanding his responsibility, will tidy up his room. That, she says, is “sharing discipline”.
Children learn from example. To explain this, Anand recalls an incident that took place in an airplane. “The flight had just landed and everyone was in a rush to leave the aircraft. The gentleman two rows ahead of me was travelling with his two kids. He moved back, to let a lady to pass. His kids, seeing him, waited too,” she says. “As a parent, he had just given his kids an option. Kids imbibe values when they understand why they need them.”
Psychologist Samindara Sawant believes children need a structure of values that can only be provided by parents who understand their roles. “You can’t be a strict disciplinarian, and neither can you afford to become too friendly,” she says, citing examples of people who have learned the hard way that striking a balance is important.
Sawant remembers the case of a 14-year-old girl who shared a comfortable bond with her mother and even told her about a boy she’d been dating. Initially, her mother understood the attraction, but when things started getting serious between the two, she told her daughter to stop seeing the boy. When that didn’t help, she complained to the girl’s father, who flew into a rage and hit his daughter. “Her mother’s sudden about-face was too much for her to take. She lost trust in her mother and clamped up completely,” recalls Sawant.
Mumbai-based counsellor, Rhea Tembhekar, too believes that discipline should be enforced in a positive way. “It’s not wrong for a parent to take away his teenage son’s cell phone and credit card when he finds the boy wasting time and money. But the parent has to ask himself: who gave the teen a credit card and cell phone in the first place?” It is important for a parent to balance ‘being a parent’ and giving in to the child’s demands, she says.
As an example, Tembhekar recounts the case of a middle-class housewife who was worried about her younger son. An engineering student, the boy was out all day with his friends. “He used to ride around the city on his motorbike, drink, and even do drugs. He never came home before 3am,” says Tembhekar. Worried, his mother would keep awake till her son returned — ‘stoned’ and reeking of alcohol. Now, after she began getting frequent attacks of migraine, the mother decided to put her foot down. “He’d been coming home at 3am every night for years. When his parents told him that his deadline was now 12am, he just told them to ‘chill out,'” says Tembhekar.
Whatever approach you take to parenting, counsellors say it will reflect in the adult your child will become. “You see misfits around you all the time. These are the arrogant, self-centred and ‘spoilt’ people no one wants to hang out with,” says Tembhekar. “A good relationship with your kids, on the other hand, will ensure that you have a bond for life.”
–Agencies–