Perfect Parenting

Picture the classic bad beginning for any parent. First of all one oversleeps and it’s sacrilege for a parent to oversleep on a school day but that’s inevitable if you cook late, have a delayed dinner, catch the latest of CSI: Miami and postpone sleeping because you know you can crack just one more clue on that crossword. So you get up late, grab a dose of the mandatory morning tea and then suddenly it’s red alert in the brain. You throw back the last drop, rush to kid’s room, give hug and kiss to wake up the little thing gently. It obviously does not work so you shout. That doesn’t work so you throw a ferocious ultimatum, roar like Aslan, bare your teeth, spring out the talons and drag the child out and thrust the child into the bathroom. You rush to begin your work in the toilet and come back to supervise kid—you find the hapless little thing still standing where you positioned it, with eyes closed. You turn on the taps, direct water into the eyes, get things started and rush back into your space to get ready for work. Uniforms are pulled on. Milk is glugged and other food items are chomped, and shoes are put on simultaneously to the working of the jaws. Respective hairbrushes are carried to be used in the car. You lock the door and rush down to be reminded by kid about the project work forgotton on the dining table. You rush back faster than Flo-Jo and retrieve the project—like a super hero you have saved another day. In the car you wait for the school bus that rolls in like a messiah for you and you look at your kid whose hair has been brushed, buttons straightened, homework in place and say “You look all set!” Kid turns to you, gives a grin that would turn the dreaded Medusa of the Gorgons to stone and says, “I forgot to brush my teeth”. You see the messiah (now for your kid) roll in, but you are already breathing fire. As kid senses the angry charge of the bull, you begin to hear the chants “Toro, Toro…Toro!”. With one sweep your hand makes a contact with the school bag that’s dangling on the back of the kid like Karna’s armour and kid is automatically propelled into the bus. The last thing you see is small face, safe but looking a little relieved, a little scared and a little sad. ‘Sad’—because you forgot to paste the lipsticked kiss that is defiantly wiped away but is what is the mark of a good beginning for the perfect day.

You did not want this kind of a beginning. You wanted to be the picture perfect parent in the ads who smiles and waves and looks picture perfect. You are far from that—you are a messed up oil painting and after you slump into the office guilt-ridden, you take a survey of other moms. “Yeah sure’, says one mom, “I have the same problem at home and I do not save the rod, though I do not use one—my hand is enough”. “I would call it a gentle push on the rudder”, says another mom. “What would kids be without some kind of constructive physical prodding”, says yet another mom. Feeling slightly consoled, you turn to one of the Dads. “Oh I never would do that to my children. Children have such impressionable minds. It’s not fair to force them into routines and expect them to comply. These are children not robots”, is what he says.

Your jaw falls, your heart breaks, you think of yourself as beneath even those horrible Orcs of Tolkein…you are leaving this paragon of a papa’s desk and you hear him mutter, “ I leave all the disciplining to the Mrs and she has quite a free hand”.