My son is very afraid of water,
or atleast was till sometime back. Actually, this is an understatement. He used
to hate water – even water splashed on his face would bring tears to his eyes. His
sister, on the other hand, is a very good swimmer and can do all kinds of
acrobatics and strokes in water. And boy! She loves to show this off to her
parents and relatives, especially in front of her brother to hog all the
accolades.
My son realized that every time
a swimming coach (or his father) push him to swim, they will invariably make
him put his head in the water and force him to take out bubbles inside. He used
to howl a lot and used all kinds of tactics to avoid it (e.g., crying in
advance, promising to do a lot of other things in return for not having to put
his head in water) but no luck. More than me, his swimming coach kept
pushing him to do it since that is the ‘right way to swim’.
In a matter of weeks, he started
doing it for 5 seconds at first, then 10, then 15 secs and now for over half a
minute. He is still as afraid of putting his head in water since he has yet to
master the technique but he just ‘does it’. He knows resistance is futile and
has now trained himself to do it before anybody tells him. He still shakes when
water is splashed on his face during bath but instead of crying, he smiles and
laughs it off, almost saying, “Bring it on, I am not scared”.
What goes for swimming goes for
other things too – he does not like to eat healthy food and prefers junk
(pizza, pasta, chocolates). However, given that he is grossly underweight, on
the advice of doctors, we had to give him one boiled egg very day at breakfast.
On the first day, he threw a massive tantrum that shook the house but he was
forced to eat it. The second day, he tried to demonstrate retching and also
vomited – but we fed him another one. When he refused to eat the egg, we
refrained from giving him anything else. For over 4 hours, he starved himself –
and then, he went into the kitchen and asked for ‘his boiled egg’. Next day on,
we had no complaints at all. And now, he actually looks forward to his egg. He
has started linking eggs to his favourite super-heroes – “How many eggs does
Hulk eat each day to become strong?”, “Does Thor eat more eggs than Captain
America?” “How can Flash run so fast if he does not eat any eggs? If he eats
eggs, then why is he so thin?”. Since comics have come into the mix, we were
rest assured that eggs wont be a problem henceforth.
My reflection: Kids seem to be able to expand their comfort zone so easily
through various ways – an uncanny sense of ‘realism’ (or inevitability) seems
to be amongst the top one. They do not over-think it nor do they keep reliving
the same fear indefinitely. As adults, we are nowhere close to exploring things
outside of our zone – well, for kids, like Nike, they ‘just do it’. This often
reminds me of the various motivational themes like ‘Don’t have a Plan B’- so
that Plan A succeeds since there is no choice.
I was reminded of the story of the great Maratha warrior, Tanaji
Malusare’s uncle, Suryaji from the stories of Shivaji, the great king. Tanaji
was a brave soldier who sacrificed his life trying to win back the fort of
Kondhana from the Mughals. So long as Tanaji was alive, it seemed that the numeric
odds of 5:1 (5 Mughals for every Maratha soldier) did not bother his troops. No
longer did the news of Tanaji’s death spread, than his troops started fleeing
and dropping weapons. It was at that very time that Suryaji (who was also
Tanaji’s no.2 man) stood up and announced that the path to retreat did not
exist – he had cut off the ropes which the Marathas had used to climb the Kondhana
fort in stealth. So the only way out was ‘death or by defeating the enemies’.
Faced with no choice, the Maratha army fought like tigers and defeated the
Mughals. Like my son said, “If you have no choice, you will have to do it. And
if you have to do it, you may as well enjoy it”!
No comments:
Post a Comment