May 08, 2008

My mother tells me that the thing about being a parent is that, no matter what philosophy or school of responsible parenting you follow, it always seems that your child – and yours alone – is the anomaly who refuses to respond to conventional wisdoms. In other words, she explains, you can follow Dr Spock or your nani, be new-age or old-fashioned, experimental or conservative … it really doesn’t matter, because as far as your child is concerned, you’ll end up having to make it up as you go along.

Not having gone down that path myself, I can’t really comment. But watching my friends deal with parenthood has been an educating experience. As they, by turns, fall in love with their children and remind themselves that they do actually, deep-down, love the little brutes, laugh and cry in bewildering succession, tear their own hair out or go all mushy with parental love, I sit on the sidelines and reflect that what parenthood appears to be mainly about is a battle of wills.

At the risk of being declared pariah by my friends, to say nothing of my parents, I must say that the process of child-raising reminds me of the irresistible force paradox: What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

Parents, after all, can be seen as irresistible forces that must bring a child in line with social and civilisational norms. “No, you must not throw your food all over me,” or “toilet training is essential, believe me,” are amongst the rules in life that all small children must be taught, sometimes by any means possible.

On the other hand, young children are virtually immovable objects because for the first few years of their lives, they cannot respond to the three most fundamental weapons in the armoury of civilised adults: rationality, reasoning and logic.

So what happens when such irresistible forces meet immovable objects? One response is, “An indescribable collision.”

That seems about right. Consider the hazards involved in dealing with a certain one-year-old of my acquaintance, for example, who is often left unamused by life and makes no bones about spreading the grimness far and wide. “Melt-down” is how his parents describe it, a state that has to be seen – or rather, heard – to be believed.

The child was once unfortunate enough to fall ill whilst on vacation with his parents, but nasty-tasting syrups – and that too three times a day – were quite naturally not to his liking. The first spoonful he knocked out of his mother’s hand. The second one made a rather interesting Warhol pattern on his father’s shirt. The third was destined for the hotel wall while the fourth he blew up into his own nose, thus leaving him even less impressed with the irresistible forces that his otherwise loving parents seemed to have turned into.

“At first we figured that for every spoonful he spat out, at least a drop or two would be going down,” related my friend much later, once she had stopped having nightmares about yells loud enough to bring the plaster down and the neighbours out. “We figured we just had to keep at it. But when we were still there three hours later, with a severely-depleted bottle and no assurance of any having reached his stomach, we started to get desperate. We tried begging and pleading, mixing it into his favourite juice (which joined the kaleidoscope that he had achieved on the bedspread) and trying to pop it into his mouth when he wasn’t looking. Nothing worked. And we could see the sun going down on the white sands outside, an entire day wasted of our all-too-short vacation…” she trailed off sadly.

Eventually, it turned into a case of desperate measures in desperate times. The final straw, so to speak, had been piled on and with an oath, the lady, who shall remain nameless, pinned the writhing child down and sat astride him, shoved a pillow under his head to prevent choking and opening his mouth with one hand, poured the hated syrup straight down the back of his throat in a lightening-fast movement.

A clear case of an indescribable collision – particularly since the child managed to spit the medicine out nevertheless, and added salt to the wounds by then producing the most delightful, angelic smile possible!

One is forced to acknowledge that the circle of life requires parenting perhaps simply in order to prove to otherwise high-achieving, unruffled and successful adults that they are not, after all, in control of their destiny.

Meanwhile, there may be something to be learnt from Superman’s reply when he was once posed the question, “What happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object?” He replies, “They surrender.”