Talking with your children

One of the great pleasures in life is talking with your children. Even when they don’t listen to you. Actually there are only two times in your lifetime that they actually do really listen to you – once when they are very young and then when you are very old!

When they are young, their world revolves around you. This is the time when dad knows everything and mom can fix anything. If there is a question needing an answer, they always go to the font of all wisdom – their dad- who is always – well not always- ready to share his infinite knowledge with them. The important thing, my uncle once told me, is to make sure that you answer all their questions even if you don’t know the answer! A wrong answer, he said, was better than no answer. When their mother protested that their general knowledge would be extremely defective, he said defensively that (a) that it kept them silent on long journeys and (b) they would forget all this anyway and the school would really earn their fees teaching them the right answers.

But as they move towards teenage, doubts in their voices begins to appear. And this uncertainty in their parent’s omniscient wisdom comes into full flower as they become teenagers. This phase is a painful one because now all your statements are questioned indeed opposed. And your wife does not fair any better. Most arguments tend to end with slamming doors or tears—and let me assure you not all the tears are of the teenager either.

The departure to college brings a respite to this off and on again rebellion in the household. The conversation now, alas, tend to become one sided and short. “ Are you eating enough?” “ Why don’t you call us oftener?” or “ When are you coming home?” The calls, when they do come, are usually to complain about lack of money buttressed invariably by how stressed they are with all the work. First is to let you know how hard they are working to reassure you that your savings for the college are being properly respected and the second a hint that perhaps you did not save enough! It is a lovely period that most empty nesters come finally to enjoy – they love having their children at home talking about their college days and they love the silences when they are gone again for the return home is also a return to their childhood days of tempers and tantrums as they revert back.

As they grow older and find their own mates and settle down, conversations tend to become more about the best menus, dealing with inlaws and wonderment about their mates and their habits. And of course about their unreasonable employers and know nothing bosses. While the father pontificates on all issues in the workplace and the world, the mother now becomes the font of all wisdom regarding the rest. Her knowledge, she claims, comes from her having to deal with their father. Almost any problem the child has in her life, the mother can top since she has lived through it all and survived. She is basically telling her children “ Look if I have lived with your father, then you can jolly well live with your new husband or wife- it cant be any worse. And sometimes it does get better”. But the best times are when your children have their own children. Then you can enjoy them and depart when the tantrums start with a chortle “ We wanted to see the day when your children gave you as much trouble as you gave us “.

Old age is the time that your children decide that the time has come to order their parents around. Somewhere in this period, which begins immediately after your retirement, they decide that you have lost most if not all your marbles, that there are few things you remember and none that you can manage too well. Your children are convinced that you are not aware that life has moved on and that “ things are different now than they were in your time” As if you lived in the past century. Progressively they convince themselves that you cannot really look after yourself anymore, that Alzheimer’s is not too far behind and that they need to make sure that you take your medicines in time and listen to the doctors. Daughters are the worse culprits – I wonder if sometimes they do not confuse their parents with their children. Even the voice changes from the loving and concerned to loving and hectoring. It is a period that I greatly enjoy – it is like being a child surrounded by love and having all your whims satisfied when they are there but knowing that when they leave you can revert to your normal adult self!