My distant cousin’s wedding video landed up in my inbox recently, and as luck would have it, it threw something surprisingly profound at me. My aunt, the bride’s teary mother, said with nostalgia,
When you stand back and watch your children take decisions, good decisions, that’s the only way to gauge how well you’ve done as a parent.
All thanks to my new and heightened hormones of motherhood, I observe how deeply words can shape a child’s personality. Don’t we often find ourselves undoing damage and baggage from things that were drilled into us as kids?
Even though I stand a few years away from hands on parenting (eat-sleep-diaper-repeat years excluded), I’m building a vocabulary toolbox, that will help me build my child’s spirit, rather than breaking it unknowingly.
Screw Out Failure
“There’s no such thing as failure, if you can learn from what makes you unhappy.”
This was my dad’s standard response to exam results, break-ups and every one of my bawling situations. It’s taught me how to gauge my own actions objectively and move forward. This mantra is my screwdriver. Whenever I feel like the loose and clunky handle of my pressure cooker, it takes the fear right out me, and prepares me for the high pressure madness I’m about to hit.
Dad could’ve said the commonplace “You’re a lazy bum” or “If you don’t work hard, you’ll never succeed”, but that would’ve been damaging.
Hammer In Self Worth
Sana has been my pillar of strength and partner in crime since the eight grade. Her clarity and independence drew the clueless child in me to her proud head-girl personality. My parents worshipped her and it would’ve been easy for them to compare us in a way that left me feeling inadequate. But, “Sana is so bright and independent” was always followed or preceded by “you are so talented and creative beta”. Not once did I hear “You should be like Sana”.
No, they weren’t faking it. How do I know? Because if they were, I would’ve probably ended up resenting Sana, instead of feeling grateful for having her in my life.
As an adult in a professional world, when I meet someone more skilled, experienced and valued than me (and they’re everywhere), I see an opportunity to learn, rather than wanting to run away with my insecurities. And only words will allow me to drill a high sense of self worth into my little one.
The Money Drill
“Too much money is a bad thing. It’ll corrupt you as a human being.” I grew up with that. To top it, ever so often came, “You have to work hard for every rupee you make.” No wonder I grew up believing that I’ll never have enough cash. Bills brought panic. By the time I got my first paycheque, I was a person who believed that I didn’t deserve a good life, unless I kill myself for it. That’s when Louise Hay came into my life. At the risk of sounding like a cheesy and ambitious self-help book, I must say that her talks helped me understand that dwelling on lack, creates more of it. What I should be thinking of, instead, is abundance.
I trained my inner voice to not say “you’ll never have enough". Instead it now says “you deserve the best and you're worth Not an easy one to pass on to kids, but one that’ll help them take calculated decisions.
I trained my inner voice to not say “I’ll never have enough”. It now says “I deserve the best and I’m worth everything I have”. Not an easy one to drill into kids, but surely one that’ll help them take calculated decisions.
The Nuts & Bolts of Love
What’s love without self-worth? While that was wired into me a long time ago, Suparna grew up with a different voice in her head. My bestie from our toddler years, is unlearning the concepts of love and marriage at 33. Her parents don’t make for a happily-ever-after story. In fact, she’s grown up hearing “You can’t trust anyone, not your husband, not your family, no one. You have to fend for yourself, always.”
I never understood this, because in my house, marriage had one meaning –partnership. Now as adults, we understand that our parents are simply passing on their own learnings. Although judging them is counter-productive, their words have certainly shaped our beliefs.
As a fiercely independent, successful and beautiful woman, Suparna now understands, after years of therapy, that love can only come with trust, and vice versa. She’s grown wise enough to believe that her mother’s discontent will not become her story too.
The words that we say to our children, they’re all that matter. You’re welcome to add to this toolbox. And hopefully in that process, you’ll stand face to face with the fears and failures of your life, that might be shadowing theirs.
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