The Responsibilities Of Parents

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF PARENTS

                A small snippet of information in the newspaper today caught my eye – “Child Dies While Parents Shop In Mall”. The tiny four line tidbit reported that a four year old girl died in the play area of a mall in Goa, while her parents were busy shopping.

               

As with many other young parents longing for a breather from the demanding non-stop duties of bringing up young children, the unfortunate couple too must have opted to shop in the air-conditioned pseudo-sophisticated ambience of a mall. Having been engulfed by a false sense of security on entering the mall, they would probably have deposited their young child in the play area, assuming that she would automatically be safe there.

                

Actually this news ought to have been on the front page of the newspaper, as a lesson to other young parents, for the level of care and alertness among the vast majority of parents leaves a lot to be desired.

                

I consider it a fallacy fostered by newspapers and magazines, that mothers provide the best care to children. It is not uncommon to see young children accompanied by their parents walking along roads. However instead of using common sense to see that the children are shepherded along the edge of the road away from the traffic, the little ones can invariably be seen scampering along close to moving vehicles, while the Mums would be in a gossipy gaggle themselves at a safe distance, unmindful of the presence of vehicles and stone deaf to their horns besides every other thing on the road. The Dads or the accompanying elderly uncle can usually be spotted five yards ahead chatting or taking in the sights, but equally oblivious.

                

On the rare occasion, when a mother or father is actually holding a child by the hand, chances are that the child will be on the inside of the road nearer the traffic rather than away from the traffic. But these are probably the less educated lot, who if not forgiven, can be expected to make these mistakes.

               

On the other hand, take airport lounges – educated, well off parents with the typical NRI ‘chhaap’ of grungy collarless T shirts, 3/4^th shorts and chunky sandals (to say nothing of the acquired accent), with a couple of kids in tow are a common sight. The children, miniature versions of their elders, can be seen tearing around the terminal on a baggage trolley, yelling to each other in their Americanized twang. Quite likely Mom and Dad would be window shopping, oblivious to their offsprings’ antics. After all they are trying to do things the American way where you are expected to treat little kids like young adults. Yeah right. One wonders, can these educated people not discern the distinction between an airport lounge and a playground. Or have they completely lost it in their bid to acquire the sheen of a foreign culture? Unfortunately what they increasingly appear to acquire is the corrupted version of western culture for it certainly isn’t an American or European trait to let children run wild in public places, causing a nuisance to others.

                

Recently while dining with some friends at a fine dining restaurant on Marine Drive, we were repeatedly distracted by a noisy family including a hyperactive youngster at a nearby table. The child obviously bored with the conversation of the elders was trying to amuse himself in the manner of most two or three year olds, that is by hopping up and down on the seat and playing with whatever struck his fancy. Suddenly we heard a loud crash. The child had pulled a vase off the shelf and it shattered to pieces. The restaurant staff silently cleared the pieces and equally discreetly, handed over a bill of Rs 25000, politely explaining that all their artefacts were genuine antiques. As we left, the staff was in the process of packing the pieces in a bag which was handed over to the family like a doggy bag to take home.

                

The point is, did they need to bring a small child into a fine dining restaurant? Assuming that they had their compulsions, could they not have restrained the child seeing the ambience of the restaurant? Couldn’t the vacuous parents have spent some time teaching their pride and joy how to behave? Obviously they hadn’t, which is why they were unable to control him in the restaurant or they were simply too spaced out to have bothered. Either way, the Rs 25000 must have pinched as it ought to.

                

An increasingly large number of parents are unable to draw a line on indulgence and attempt to pass off obnoxious behavior of their children as cute mannerisms. Many fail to realize that the chubby two year old who, till recently cutely snatched things from other children has indeed grown into an obese twelve or thirteen year old with boorish habits. Besides, it has nothing to do with both parents working, as some would imagine. There are enough examples of housewives simply being unable to shake themselves out the torpor induced by soaps and consequently unable to see the writing on the wall. Left unchecked, these habits only get worse as the child develops.

                

Sometimes, even grandparents who are expected to be more mature, fail to discern this loutish behavior and even encourage it. On one occasion, I had to politely listen to grandparents fondly relating the antics of their grandson, wherein the child would walk into any shop in their local market, pick up whatever he fancied and walk off. No doubt, the bill would be settled later, but no one except my wife and myself seemed to see anything but sunshine in such actions. Surely it did not take a gigantic intellect to appreciate that, unless corrected early, the boy was headed on a collision course.

                

The recent TV ads highlighting the need to inculcate a sense of civic awareness among adults and children alike have hit the nail on the head. The ad depicts some foreign tourists at the receiving end of a banana peel flung carelessly out of a car window, and, the scene of a car stopped on Mumbai’s iconic Sealink while a mother assists her child to answer the call of nature on that busy roadway unmindful of her child’s and her own safety.

Some years ago in Delhi I read about a motor accident where an infant child was killed. The infant was in the arms of an adult who was sitting next to the driver. The driver did not see a bulldozer parked on the edge of the road at night and rammed into it. The child died because he flew out of the adult’s hands and hit the windscreen. The news item stayed in my mind. More recently, while driving in Mumbai, I observed a taxi ahead to have child clearly unbelted on the front seat next to the driver, while two ladies sat on the rear seat one of whom was the mother, busy in their conversation. The child would happily stick his hand or his head out, or would climb up on the seat and look around, quite enjoying himself. The taxi driver wasn’t particularly bothered either, for him it was just another passenger. However with the memory of that Delhi newspaper, I couldn’t continue to do nothing, so at the earliest opportunity, I pulled up alongside and sternly told the ladies to restrain the child. While they did make some effort, I don’t know how long it lasted.

We may sing paeans in praise of India Shining and we may take justifiable pride in the development of our nation, but the vast majority of us are content to merely bask in the radiated glow of other individuals and organizations who have actually contributed to the India story. These people and organizations have achieved their lofty heights through an unseen discipline and observance of strict rules imposed on themselves. The vast majority prefers to befuddle looking at the world through rose tinted glasses preferring instead to let someone else do the work. On any street, groups of men can be seen clustered around a street tea stall happily spouting statistics of projected GDP growth and how India will eventually overtake China, while calmy spitting paan juice into the road. Why then do young people still hanker for jobs in Dubai and the holy grail of Indians living abroad – the US Green Card, if conditions abroad are not what they used to be, and salaries in India are competitive? 

To my mind, the western world still has one thing that we haven’t yet trained ourselves for – civic awareness and public discipline. While we may crow about having a young workforce backed by traditional Indian values and middle class virtues, unless we as individuals reintroduce the habits of discipline in ourselves and in the younger generation, we may find ourselves floundering. Just as motivated troops can turn defeat into victory, an unruly workforce can just as easily be the undoing of any organization. We, as parents and citizens need to take our responsibilities seriously.