Having touched on Psychology as one of my intermediate subjects, I was academically sound in my understanding of terms such as “generation gap” and “sibling rivalry”. However, my course of study failed completely to prepare me for the enormity of the true life scenario, as I encountered it, when I took my baby steps into adolescent parenting!
“It becomes easier to adjust if the parents constantly refresh their memories by their own past outrageousness,” Meera Chowdhry assured me in her essay on the Generation Gap. However, I was befuddled there as well! Having raised myself through adolescence, with my mother' early demise and my father's highly introverted and inflexible “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude, I had absolutely no “memories” to fall back on for parental wisdom. My husband was no help either! He was reared by orthodoxy at its peak! Our ideas on child rearing and, more relevantly, adolescent nurturing, simply had no via media.
So I plunged in alone! Amateur though I was, I found, embedded in my sixth sense, one basic ground rule to propel me through the complex manoeuvres in getting to the bottom of , fathoming and controlling, to whatever extent possible, the integral nature of the adolescent psyche of my off spring! Paradoxical though my rule sounds, it was all about a resolution to be a friend to my children while never relinquishing my position of parent. This rule stretched through hop scotch and hide and seek to boy friends and break ups.
Having set a firm foundation at infancy, I could effortlessly scramble from the play-ground of friendly bantering and earnest heart to hearts to the lofty pulpit of philosopher, guide and, oft times, the unwelcome harbinger carrying ominous warnings of fatal consequences to mindless behavior. All this entailed a huge investment from my side in terms of time, which, I firmly believe, is the most valuable contribution anyone can make to a child's balanced upbringing. It developed a very crucial communication channel that is necessarily kept alive and open at all times, regardless of how gross the situations are that arise out of the new generation modus operandi.
I am now a 23 year old parent (for I recall some sage, at some obscure point of time, registering the fact that a parent is only as old as his or her eldest child) and, in retrospect, feel that I have done reasonably well in the mighty test of bringing up two very vibrant, very contrary children, one as different from the other as is darkness from light. The “battle” is far from won and, to quote Robert Frost from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, “...there's miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep...”
For my success, thus far, I raise my hat to and reverently toast my husband, the eternally bemused father of my children, for supporting me even when he failed to comprehend my actions and omissions, and to my children themselves, for they are, indeed, to quote them, “Basically Good”- and of course my Lord and Mentor who from His control room in the skies, has steadily shone on me the guiding light of His superior vision and wisdom so that I managed, somehow, to grope my way out of the labyrinth of my odyssey towards bridging the Generation Gap.
