I have been a very careful parent. Always following the right parenting rules, proper balanced diet, discipline, good education etc.I was quite impressed with and confident of my way of upbringing, until one day.
I was preparing our lunch after bringing my son Yash back from school. He followed his routine of changing clothes and washing hands before sitting on the dining table. As we sat down to eat, he made a startling announcement- “Mom, I have decided to become a teacher”. I was amazed at the career goal my 10-year old had chosen so soon but I asked casually, “That’s great! Which subject do you want to teach?”
Yash replied, “None of the subjects, Ma. I want to teach a skill, a practice”.
‘What skills?’
“Mommy skills but in a daddy style”, he said naughtily.
‘What’s that?’ I gave a weird expression.
He laughed out loudly, spilling his food around. I quickly grabbed a napkin to wipe the mess.
“This…Mom….This. I will teach all these caring skills a mother has, but with a twist. First I will create the mess like Dad does and then, sort things out like you. In short, I will be the problem creator as well as the solver”
Happy to be the ‘problem-solver’ of the house and happier with Dad’s role of ‘creating a mess’, I tried to inquire further. “Why do you want to do that?”
“Because I have realized that we humans, create our own problems and if we begin to trouble-shoot them just then, we will be forever happy”
Quite a deep thought for a 10-year old, I must say!!
“And how would you do that?” I could feel my curiosity building.
“Like a SUPERHERO”, he winced and ran to his room to sleep.
Though I laughed off and moved on with my household chores but his words stayed in my thoughts. “we create our own problems and if we begin to trouble-shoot them, we will be forever happy”. So true!! And sounds so simple. How did I miss it? My son had naively, taught me a very important lesson.
So I listed some of my problems to try ‘troubleshoot’ them. To top the list was my backache. I had ‘created’ it due to my negligence and I ‘resolved’ it by exercising and taking proper rest. Next on the list was stress due to a family argument. I resolved to apologize and mend the issue. Gradually, almost all of my problems vanished and I actually, felt very happy.
I was proud of teaching my son the basics of life but my son had unknowingly, became the greatest teacher of my life.
