thebengali.com

Most times, I cannot stand to be around people in social gatherings. Most times.

As a child, I remember disliking birthday parties and family visits to neighbours’ and festival times. Since children didn’t have much choice in such matters when I was growing up, I had to attend everything the family attended.

As an adolescent, my family was glad that I did my bit during festivals, and they did not insist when I restricted the number of houses I would visit to really close family friends. For a long while, people were under the impression that I was an extremely extroverted, social person. Possibly because once I committed to attending a social engagement, I would be as social as possible. I figured there was no sense attending events under protest – it brought discredit to the family, hurt the people who dotted on you, and of course, you made yourself miserable wanting to be somewhere else.

After I started working, I pretty much stopped going to all formal social affairs, which by then I had come to abhor. People eventually realized that I wasn’t a social person at all. And thankfully, it didn’t harm my relationships with anyone, because I genuinely enjoy the company of others in one-on-one situations or informal meetings involving 3-4 people.

Today, I’m back to square one – but on the other side of the fence. I am father to a toddler who has a mind of his own and states his preference of meeting people. For a while now, I have been struggling with the drive to impress upon him the social graces and letting him be. It’s a thin line between what the parent wants to do or thinks the child must learn and what the child wants to learn.

When I look back upon my childhood, I realize that I have learned the required social graces. But the hundreds of social outings did nothing to change my nature of seeking company on my own terms. All it did was to make me a non-conformist to a fault, a learned behaviour that I have just started coming out of.

So, what am I going to do? Will I do what my parents did and toe the social line so I can teach the child what I think he ought to learn? I am learning that my child is happy when he gets to do what he wants. He is sometimes happy when he has to do what I want but only if it is on his own terms. He is happy when his parents are happy. He is anxious when his parents are anxious and so on. At this point, he is a reflection of us with a good and growing measure of his own individuality.

I don’t have any concrete answers right now. But I am thinking it is important for me to do what I want to do instead of what I think I must do or what someone else wants me to do. I must also allow the child to do what he wants to do. And I must get into the habit of sorting out any differences in an amicable manner rather than through a contest of will powers which usually ends up with the parent arguing “you do so because I say so or else” and an indignant child bawling his head off. So the key to the child’s behaviour lies in the parent’s behaviour because the child is replicating what he sees.

It’s funny how nobody hands out clues on these things …