The Mauve Sequin Tutu
Parenting: To be, or not to be (1)
Three years down the lane,
You walk into a kid’s fashion store, and your soon-to-be-three toddler run towards a beautiful sequin-laced mauve tutu, Oh good lord, it’s heavenly pretty! He’s nowhere near a tantrum or even a lil confused, he knows what exactly he needs to wear at his indulgent birthday party. He’s clearly excited and doesn’t doubt a bit that you would decline his interest. How happy he is.
Are you?
Your son has recognised his birthday costume. He has made a choice, and soon he’ll start making a lot of them. This can be a passing fancy, yet, it could also be a powerful call for what he’s going to be identified as a grown-up.
Pause.
Of course, you have to think about the tens of guests, including your families, that are going to be present at the event; watch your handsome young man walk in wearing a mauve sequin tutu to cut his three-layered Frozen-themed cake. Your social status, culture, and tradition. Boom.
Or is it?
In-laws rolling their eyes. You might even hear their narrow-heart break, crack. For this tiny toddler was to carry on their family lineage, the Chola dynasty, their name-fame-reputation-business-politics. And a mauve sequin tutu spoiled it all. They might hate you for letting them down, for crushing their dreams, their last hope. How terrible!
Is that it?
How about your lil one’s happiness, who is proud to have found his best wear on his best day. His acceptance of what makes him content. His identification of where he fits in. His tiny heart that’s going to break when you try and shy him of his choice. He might give in for the Spiderman pressure, or a blazer and jeans. But this mauve sequin tutu might get neatly folded-off and kept safe to be exposed when he finds his space, his voice.
And then what?
It’s time to act before that speak to your spouse. Talk about parenting and doing it right. There will come more moments where your tiny act of acceptance or denial can make or break your child into a thousand brilliant stars or a million bits of trash. The choice is yours like it was about using the rubber in the first place.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
What makes you want an offspring? Knowing that it is a great responsibility, something that could nearly kill your passion, career, life, and dreams. It’s not as easy as a pet plant, or an animal. It’s going to be a human child, with human rights right from birth, and in many cases even before it. It’s going to cost you years of undivided care and attention and all your salary and earnings. All your good young age, your active sporty, party time. The type of project from which you cannot quit midway. The kind of meeting you can’t cancel or walk off. The kind of relationship that can’t be taken for granted, or called off. Especially if you’re the one giving birth.
You are parting your blood and flesh into something that’s soon going to fly away. Yet, you bring them up with all the love, wishes, values, and nutrition. You keep them alive, more than alive. You keep them entertained and educated. You give them everything, even when you know you can’t afford it. Why?
When you do all this, you are so blinded that you believe they’ll show up when you need them. You expect them to behave a certain way, have preferences like yours, and have an identity that you command. Do you think that’s fair?
You serve them enough injustice even before they utter their first word. You name them, enroll them under a certain religion, caste, creed, social sector, and financial strata. You decide on their profession, interests, hobbies, and friends’ gang. You make an entire wardrobe and toy station for them. You find a haircut that best suits them and forces it on and so on. Literally, you rob every opportunity of their identity from them. Is that fair?
And by the time they get accustomed to their ‘imposed identity’, you also decide who and when they should express their love and sexual desire. Definitely not fair.
When you impose this ownership in the name of excessive love and parental care, you deny your child the chance to develop their own independent individual identity.
So, shouldn’t we name the kid? Leave them to the streets naked? Lock them up when we visit our religious centre? Do not introduce them to our friends and family?
That’s not it. You can do all that, yet, be flexible and open. Accept their decisions, listen to their desires, aspire with them. They are as whole an individual as they’re your offspring. The knowledge you impart, the world you present them to open up an entire universe of ideas and ideologies. They find their unique personality and preferences before you know it. Being their parent, it is your responsibility to accept and support them with all your heart and soul, for who they are, what they want to be.
Won’t you be? A good parent…
.
.
-Read Part 2 — Puberty & Sexual knowledge
-Read Part 3 — Puberty & Masturbation
-Read Part 4— Adolescence & Sexting
-Read Part 5— Sex Education Guide
-Read Part 6 — Mental Health Wellbeing
