Lesson 1 on Children(ting) - SEE, LEARN & IMPROVISE

I was dozing around in bed, doing nothing as such, in the afternoon. My son had woken me up in the morning at 5 30 AM earlier in the day. Thanks to school, he always wakes up very early, even when it’s a weekend; actually, let me take it back – when it’s a weekend, he wakes up far earlier than on week-days. Whenever I ask my son why does he not do this ‘self-propelled’ wake-up on weekdays, when there is school but only does it on weekends, when his parents want to sleep, he just laughs mischievously.

He now wanted me to play with him but I was not feeling up to it & I really wanted to sleep for some more time. Slowly, he cuddled up to me (what a great feeling!) and whispered in my ear, “Baba, there is something I need to tell you – a complaint has come from school”. All my sleep vanished & I sat up startled, as if I had just gotten an electric shock!

[CONTEXT: A few days earlier, he had received ‘warning 2’ from the school for misbehaving on the bus. This time, it was for running like Usain Bolt every time the bus reached school, not waiting for the bus monitor to take him to class. Warning 2 meant he was one step away from being disbarred from using the school bus, which meant that I would have to figure out alternative means of transportation for him, a total pain in the neck for both, my wife and me. Not only had I given him an earful at that time but also discussed the ‘what…if’ scenario with my wife – the consequences left both of us praying to Ganpati, Shiva, Vishnu and Hanuman, all together, that it never comes to that. He was around in the house as we discussed the apocalyptic nature of ‘NO BUS’.]

Now, as I stared at him, half-worried, half-angry, he smiled naughtily and said, “There is no complaint. I was just joking – will you now play with me since you are awake and fresh?”. I was so relieved that my worst nightmare had not come true that I started playing with him instantly. In that moment, I totally forgot how a 5-year old had tricked me!

My reflection: Kids understand parents’ psychology more than we understand theirs….. They are observing, explicitly or implicitly and getting better at using emotional cues and triggers. THEY ARE ALWAYS WATCHING AND GETTING BETTER LIKE AN AI TEACHING ITSELF! I often wondered why no books are written for kids on how to ‘get their parents to learn parenting’ – now, I know why. They have an in-built book-cum-video-cum Youtube channel, linked to an AI-system that helps them to ‘train parents to behave how they want them to’”😊