I have always prided myself on being a very caring parent. I
love spending time with my kids while giving them space, letting them know I’m
there for them but generally allowing them a good degree of latitude. In short,
what I thought an ideal father should be.
Six months ago, my world came crashing down. My wife had
always been complaining that I do not attend the PTA meetings of my 6 year old
daughter. Apparently it is important and signals to the teachers that we care
about our kid and mainly, all other parents seemed to be making time for it.
Even Samar’s dad participates and he is a far more successful and busy man than
I am, so what was my excuse? My strategy of delegating this task to my wife had
run it’s course, and it was time for me to show up.
A day prior to the meeting, I read through my daughter’s
recent report card. Interesting – she had good “Pronunciation”, “Comprehension”
and so on – and then my attention was grabbed by “Environmental Sensitivity”.
Whoa!! I didn’t realize that my daughter knew there was an Environment, much
less being sensitive to it. And even more incredible was the fact that her
grade in Environmental Sensitivity had fallen from A to B since last term!
So, what did she do wrong this term? Not comply with some
law of the Pollution Control Board? Very flummoxing. Finally, knowing my
daughter, I settled on the possible solution being linked to some form of noise
pollution. However, this was coupled with a growing awe of the teacher. That
she could actually grade a 6 year old on “Environmental Sensitivity” and further,
be so acutely discerning to grade it differently every term was amazing. Teachers
these days are hot stuff!
The PTA meeting day. There were queues everywhere! It was a
revelation. In every queue, parents were chatting and the competition was
fearful. Notes were being exchanged on how to keep the kids occupied after
school, where to take them for dance classes, music classes, badminton classes
and the like.
I realized with a sinking feeling that while Samar was
attending classes for Piano, Phonetics, Tennis and Cricket, my daughter was
spending her time running around the apartment building with other kids in a
rather aimless manner. Clearly, her life had less purpose to it than Samar’s.
We were finally in the sanctum sanctorum. The Class Teacher seemed
to have a good opinion of my daughter, but felt that her project work needed to
be of higher quality. She pointed out with some pride to Samar’s project that
she had displayed on the table next to her. Obviously Samar had had some
outside help – I couldn’t conceive how a 6 year old could have done that. And yet
again, it was made clear to me how I had failed my daughter. I left the room
red faced saying resolutely to myself – “Never Again”. As Samar’s parents
entered the room while we were leaving, I met his eye, not failing to notice
the proud gleam. Poor man – he didn't know that he had woken the sleeping
beast in me.
It was ridiculously easy – in a few days, my daughter was enrolled
in a Mental Math class after school. Soon enough, the event I was desperately
waiting for – my daughter had to do a project - on “Insects”. The next few days
I was all over the Boat Club area with a glass jar, snaring all kinds of
insects, while in the process psyching out quite a few of the joggers and
walkers that happen to infest this area, apart from the insects of course.
Though, none of them would have had half the work out that I had. At the end of
a week, I had a solid collection of beetles, bees, butterflies, moths and even
one locust. No insect in the vicinity was safe - such was my single-minded
focus.
It was indeed gratifying and one of the defining moments of
my life when my daughter’s project was awarded the best in the class. I did run
into Samar’s Dad the next day and was finally able to engage with him as an
equal, and spent some time discussing with a careless demeanor as to how my
daughter put in some serious effort to create the project and how she is
“Sooooo interested” in insects and we spent some time sparring on whose
intellectual curiosity was higher – Samar’s or my daughter’s.
That was just the beginning – I went from strength to
strength and pretty soon, my daughter was attending music, badminton and mental
math classes. I was spending enormous amounts of time on her projects. I was a
regular at her school, even picking her up when I could so that I could catch
up with her teachers on her areas of improvement. I was on a roll.
My daughter initially seemed pleased at the attention, but
pretty soon she was complaining about how she never had time to play. My
efforts to explain to her about how these things helped create a well-rounded
personality didn’t help. She may be aware of the Environment, but hadn’t yet
gotten around to the thing called Personality. Well, I philosophized, if you want to cook
onions you have to go through the pain of peeling them. And while she and Samar
were good friends, fact is she was now whipping him in every possible area at
school. Way to go, kid!
--
Cut to my school reunion a month ago. I reconnected with a
bunch of guys and girls who I remember as scrawny kids from many years back. Here
were the guys who had flunked a year or two. There the bunch that had been caught
drinking and throwing up during the math class – in class 8! And the small,
snooty group that was the “brains” of the class. Not to miss the large, invisible
middle. But the thing that struck me was that, across the board, we had not
done too badly in life.
Those days, we were a bunch of children who had a childhood.
We were living life and not really trying to make too much sense out of it. I
hardly remember my parents obsessing over me – in fact, I distinctly recall
being uncomfortable when they did turn up at my school. And we all seemed to
have turned out OK. So what’s so different about today’s kids? All right, there
is more competition, but there was more competition in my generation compared
to the earlier one too. Here I was, fighting my daughter’s fights, doing her
projects, pushing her from one class to another, ticking off the right boxes,
shadow boxing with Samar’s Dad – all of this mainly to ensure I satiated my
need to be seen as an Active Parent – it actually had very little do with my
daughter! And in the meantime, her childhood was slipping by. And with it, my
only chance to live through her childhood.
Surely my daughter will figure things out as she grows.
Surely, while there is more competition, there are more opportunities as well.
The Scales fell from my eyes.
When I returned from the reunion, I saw my daughter sullenly
dressing up for her mental math class. Some kids in the building (who were
lucky enough not to have been bundled off to do more serious work) were running
around below, generally creating a big ruckus. “You can join them if you want”
I said, and felt my heart expand as I saw the grateful look in her eyes…
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