DO OUR YOUNG-ONES WANT US TO BE THEIR 'BEST FRIENDS'?
Pic.: Chetna Shetty
A mother of a teenage boy called me up, two days ago. She
wanted to talk to me personally about the problems faced by her son. So, the
next day, we met. She explained to me, that her son had lost his
self-confidence, begun to stammer and lost a year because of stress. She had shown
him to counselors and got him treated through a psychiatrist. She told me, that
there had been a lot of improvement… though he had not fully gained his self-confidence
back...
During the course of our discussion, I could
gather, that the boy’s self-confidence had collapsed essentially due to the
burden of parents' high expectations… Both, the father and the mother, did all
the dreaming for this young boy… As a little kid, perhaps, it was okay; but,
not as a teenager. It was difficult for the young-man to handle it and he was breaking
down under the burden of his parents’ expectations…
When I subtly pointed it to the mother, she
was not ready to accept it. “Sir, I have been my son’s best friend, always,”
she tried to justify her role, “He would discuss everything with me; all his
feelings… He would hide nothing."
I seriously think, that no parents can be ‘the
best friend’ of their children. It makes us feel great when we say so to
outsiders… “Wow!” we hear other parents reacting as if you are a ‘special
parent’. So, they go home and try to be their children’s best friends…
The trouble, here is, do our young-ones want
us to be their ‘best friends’… Or, do they want us to be their ‘best parents”?
I think, we parents should not encroach upon
that space called – friendship… of our young-ones. Let them have loads and
loads of friends outside… of their own age, let them do whatever we did with
our friends… laughing and crying together, fighting and patching-up… cracking
those forbidden jokes and sharing our deepest secrets… Why should we, parents, rob
them of this beautiful space… this amazing experience of growing-up?
No, we should never try to smother our
young-ones in the cover of being their ‘best friends’… Let’s stop hovering over
their heads as helicopters, all the time… telling them sweetly, “Honey, I am
just trying to be your ‘best friend’.”
The ‘best’ thing we parents can do to build
our young-ones’ self-confidence is: to stop suffocating them… yes, by our
self-crowned status of being their ‘best friends’… and by hovering over their
heads, twenty-four/seven, as helicopters…
I have rarely heard young-ones confessing to
me – with the same conviction – that their parents are their ‘best friends’…
If we parents encroach upon the space meant
for our young-one’s friends, let’s not complain – “Why are they so lonely?”
GERALD D’CUNHA
Comments