When I was in India, my friend and I were talking about our fondest memories. Like me, he too has eidetic memory and because we have known each other for couple of decades, a lot of our memories are shared. Hence I had to find memories that were unique to me. One of which was something I had written before. When my son was about 2 years old, I convinced him that I have eyes at the back of my head. In order to prove this particular theory, I would sit in front of the balcony sliding glass door and my son would stand behind me. I had to tell him what he was doing such as standing on one leg.. lifting left leg, hand etc…. pretty easy to do..I just had to look at the reflection on the sliding glass door. He used to search and search on my head to find where my third eye was.. it was so baffling.. and a mystery to him.
While I was describing this memory to my friend, my son came online on FB and was chatting with me and so I asked him
“What is your fondest memory of the time you spent with your mother”
My son replied, “mom, I have so many fond memories, but more than the memories, there is one thing that I appreciate the most”
“What is that?” I asked, a bit intrigued
He replied “Mom, from the time I was little to now, there is one thing I know, if I am right, you will always back me up, you will never let me down”
We all have choices.. a lot of us have gone through such horrific abuses that it is a miracle we are still alive. But the problem with being abused is that, it often continues to the next generation and then to the next..so on till someone makes a conscious effort to stop the flow of abuse. I never had anyone to back me up. Everything that one could do to destroy another’s life was done to me. But I had the choice. To be the horrible parent like the ones I had or to be the best I could ever be.
There is no validation greater than the appreciation your children have for you.. for being there for them.
I am happy.
We all have choices.. a lot of us have gone through such horrific abuses that it is a miracle we are still alive. But the problem with being abused is that, it often continues to the next generation and then to the next..so on till someone makes a conscious effort to stop the flow of abuse. I never had anyone to back me up. Everything that one could do to destroy another’s life was done to me. But I had the choice. To be the horrible parent like the ones I had or to be the best I could ever be.
There is no validation greater than the appreciation your children have for you.. for being there for them.
I am happy.
I am also sure it’s because you gave your children that mutual respect to establish a good relationship (with anyone). You let them be, don’t demand too much, understand them, respect them, and love them for them than forcing them to be an extension of yourself, then they will no doubt return and appreciate to have you as a mother. For my thesis, I am analyzing how parenting styles affect certain risk behaviors among Asian Americans and a few of my participants (focus group interviews) mentioned what you wrote in a similar manner and may be reasons for suicide and such.
But I totally get you. Because I also have endured abuse (more emotional than physical) from my mom and it causes so much resentment and bitterness and affects relationships (pretty much most members on that side of the family is like that). However, I guess some people like us who are educated and are heavily exposed to diverse range of people/cultures/life paths tend to break the cycle. You’re on point that some people don’t do it like in some very conservative cultures because they probably see it as “normal”, where they are like “My parents did this to me, and so I’m going to continue this way with my kids.”, without realizing that their children are of a different generation and will have some different thoughts/feelings and values than they did. So you can say that I literally learned how NOT to parent. My dad is very chill though, very easy to talk to, tries to understand us though he may not agree with some things. So for me, I had both.
It’s pretty refreshing to hear that you decided to do things differently and not be that typical Indian/Asian parent.
J1206: Nice topic for the Thesis.. are you publishing any papers?
Initially I didn’t think it was worth it since it would be 10x more work for me and I’m already piled up (revising and getting it to its best to be accepted by publishers, stupid, I know) But am thinking of it since some of my participants have been asking me if I can since they really want to read it, and the interviews have went really well and has a lot of interesting information revealed, so I kind of am interested in having it published. But I’ll have to wait until I finish this semester.
J1206: There is 24 hours to each day.. and if you truly want to do it, you can and you should. Good data and topic is hard to come by