Guidance, parental

ALL parents, wherever they live (if they can do that, that is, without tripping over a plastic duck and snapping their vertebral columns or tripping over 14 days’ of unwashed laundry in a teenager’s room and snapping their vertebral column) can be divided into two broad categories: Young Parents and Old Parents.

You may imagine that there is an organic link between these two distinct sub-species. Nothing, in fact, can be farther from the truth. Let me explain what I mean...

Young Parents, having just been blessed with a Little Bundle of Joy, are enthusiastic about everything, from changing diapers to wiping off from their chin partially chewed pureed carrots spat out by the said Bundle of Joy, to chasing him or her all over the room at the speed of Schumacher negotiating a swerve at Monte Carlo. Old Parents, having lived in the same home with their Little Bundle of Joy growing into a Big Bundle of Trouble, are generally not enthusiastic about anything because they have discovered what a useful state of mind unenthusiasm can be.

Consequently, while Young Parents are rapidly expanding their vocabulary from ‘‘tho-tweet’’ and ‘‘ten little toes has my doozy-woozy’’ to ‘‘This little piggy goes to market...’’ And from thence to that amazing body of knowledge known as the alphabets, Old Parents have discovered somewhere along the way what a lovely, simple and effective, yet amazingly useful, expression in the web of human communication is the word ‘‘No’’. Or rather ‘‘NO!” (with capital letters and exclamation mark, please note). ‘‘Ma, can’t we have a pizza instead of this yuck stuff for dinner?’’ ‘‘NO!’’ ‘‘Can’t I sit up to watch Kickboxer II at 1.30 tonight?’’ ‘‘NO!” ‘‘Can’t I learn to drive because I will soon be 18 in 35 months?’’ ‘‘NO!’’

The good thing about ‘‘NO!’’ is that it comes in a silent mode as well, when the same question is hurled at you for the 66th time in the course of 60 minutes: just a shake of the head would convey the firmness of negative purpose admirably. Which is why you find parents of children who are going to be 18 in 35 months, sometimes laid low with cervical spondylitis but that is part of the evolution of a human being, from Young Parent to Old Parent.

There are other important differences that anthropologists of human behaviour could write treatises on (and it is my hope that my rather distracted Old Parent-like meanderings will persuade them to pursue this important branch of academic scrutiny). Young Parents, for instance, discover instant relief when their Little Bundle finally goes to bed and they can put their feet up and watch some television without wondering if the baby is old enough to watch Temptation Island.

Old Parents discover instant relief when their child finally turns up at the door after disappearing for a whole evening because their Big Bundle has now reached that well-known stage when he/she has stopped asking questions about where he/she came from and now refuses to answer questions about where he/she is headed.

Then, again, Young Parents can always pretend to be full of wisdom as they guide their little one through that amazing maze called life. ‘‘Now, beta, you shouldn’t put your finger-winger in that power socket because then my little teeny-weeny will get a shocky-whocky.’’ Or they could say, ‘‘Now eat that bit of egg yolk, because if it goes into your little tummy-wummy, my motu-totu will grow up to be a lovely little princess.’’ They can state such observations in the full confidence that they know everything that is to be known in the world. There is no fear of contradiction or having to contend with an entirely different set of suppositions being spat back at you like the aforementioned pureed carrot.

This is a luxury that Old Parents, alas, never know because somewhere along the way they have sprung a hole in their noodles and any grey matter they may once have possessed has long since leaked out. So Old Parents are invariably treated like they are in urgent need of a lobotomy and a couple of band-aids over their mouths, all because they are no longer young enough to know everything. Old Parents spend years, not to mention a large chunk of their salaries, just in order to impart enough education to Junior to make him/her realise that their parents need to be locked up by the authorities for posing a danger to human civilisation. This is implicit in Junior observing, with a cool crooking of one eyebrow, ‘‘You are weird!’’

Like they often say, the teenage years is that stage in life when children feel their parents are old enough to finally acquaint themselves with the facts of life.

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