Although many men today really don’t show it, most come ready fitted with a pair of testicles, while women usually have the same number of ovaries tucked safely inside them. A much safer place, you might be thinking… but that’s another story.
The main function of this peculiar paraphernalia is most naturally to reproduce, a process we have obviously kept up since the beginning of time, all culminating in this terrific moment, when I am writing this piece, somehow making it all worth while!
My point here is that reproduction, like eating and sleeping and breathing, is what we are meant to do. Like every single species in the animal kingdom, including amoebas, slugs and wildebeest, we must reproduce to survive and there are few other functions which come more naturally to us.
This is why, while I fully concur to the miracle-of-life and similar awestruck expressions of wonder, when you see the body of a fully formed baby coming forth from another, I normally disassociate myself from much of the awe and admiration today’s society enthusiastically bestows upon parenting at large. At times we exalt this most normal of functions to stratospheric and mystical levels, as if by some wondrous magic the miracle continues every day of our lives, making us parents well detached and superior to the uninitiated, to the ignorant, to the barren and wretched leper-like childless individuals who we never allow to hold our babies!
No! Move away! You childless monster you! For you have NO IDEA what it is like. Go! Go away you freak! we hisssss through our clenched teeth. Nobody, absolutely nobody without children of their own will ever even get close to ours.
So we spend many years feeling special and superior to everyone else. We are the chosen ones. We have been blessed with an extraordinary thing called a baby, which only 7.3 billion people of the current 7.3 billion world’s population once were themselves! So how special is that?
And if by this stage anyone is wondering about my own credentials on the matter, I can assure you that I am a mini celebrity on the subject. My previous wife and I have two – yes WE were pregnant twice! Although frankly I look much more pregnant now… My current wife has two, whom I also brought up myself from a very tender age. And now I also contribute enormously to the upbringing of my step grandson and godson. So I have had, and still have, my fair share of direct experience.
But in spite of this, and although I am often renowned for feeling rather special in so many amusing ways, having and raising children hasn’t particularly added to my specialness in any way. They are of course all very special individuals to me personally. The fact that I have my own biological offspring is one of the greatest joys in my life. The fact that I have also successfully brought up two other individuals of the person I love, is also extremely rewarding. And now that I am also a very big part of the first years of yet another one, fills my heart with great pleasure and elation.
But these are all personal and individual feelings. From a social, biological and anthropological perspective I have simply fulfilled one of the most basic, primitive and fundamental processes of any existing life form. I have never considered myself any more valid or relevant because my testicles work and because once they are there you sort of cannot ignore their existence all of the time.
To come to the actual daily motions of parenting, where many still seem to retain their mystical shroud of enigmatic importance, the contemporary fallacy continues. “My angel has now fallen asleep” – awe! “My prince has done a poo poo” – wow! “My princess is teething” – extraordinary! “My baby is running a temperature” – oh no the world has come to an end, let us all commit mass suicide!
And on it goes, we celebrate every tiny little poop and pee, the dark ones and the light ones, the soft ones and the hard ones, then every single individual tooth, like it was the most unexpected thing ever. A defecating child with teeth – now go fancy that! And we post zillions of pictures of them standing and sitting and lying down and crouching and walking and sleeping and each and every one of them somehow gets hundreds of likes and exactly the same comments each and every time. “Cute”, “sweetie”, “hanini”, and every other boring overused expletive, while in all probability what every man is thinking is “yes we know exactly what your dumb brat look like, now show us a bit of boob you hot milf” and what every woman is thinking “stop gloating you bitch the bastard wasn’t even planned”.
And so is modern life. We exalt mediocrity and we celebrate the most mundane. I am proud of my children’s real achievements and not of their bowel movements. I shower them in love and attention with equal doses of well aimed kicks up their lazy ass. I accept their imperfections but never condone them. And above all when they are wrong they are wrong. End of story! Laziness, mischievousness, bad decisions, stubbornness, arrogance, lying, theft and many other devious traits are present in kids too, so please STOP always blaming the parents! This is such a dumb trend, if ever there was one, never to condemn anything the child does, but always to shift the blame to the parents, the teachers, the friends and the entourage.
You can bring up two children in an identical fashion, surround them with an identical environment and still one will turn out an angel and the other a freak out of hell.
We can all see the marvelous job we are doing with our offspring. A visit to a restaurant, a public place or to the beach will quickly solve that one. You see a six year old kid swearing, spitting and hurling stones at his mother, who simply smiles and looks around to calmly tell others that he is hyperactive, poor little boy. Of course he’s hyperactive! Because you haven’t held his head for a few minutes under the water the first time he did that! He wouldn’t be hyperactive then believe me. He would be sitting wide eyed and ensuring that mummy is comfortable and having a good time. A little girl in a supermarket just stops in her tracks and screams at the very top of her voice, instantly smashing every glass window in the premises through sound waves alone, just because her mum didn’t agree to purchase her favourite flavour of crisps. Well of course she does, simply because the first time she did that you didn’t open the packet and hold it firmly over her head until she turned light blue. She would have been far too busy simply gasping for dear life to ever scream again! Probably go off crisps and dry snacks altogether….
Yes, yes of course I am being purposely cruel and terribly exaggerating – but it can be so therapeutic at times. My point here is obvious, without a bit of hard discipline we are bringing up spoilt, pampered, useless children. The saying goes that children need a lot of love and a lot of discipline and both are equally important. In the same way that you should never question your love towards them, you should never question who should get their own way. You’re older and wiser, remember, so how on earth can you let a six year old manipulate you each and every time.
Am I being a bit too hard? Well yes I suppose I am – hard on myself though. As each and every time, much as I would like to take a complacent attitude and let it be and give in to the screaming and the tantrums, I do not. Rather than taking the easy way out, I will give the matter the full attention it deserves and make the necessary effort to teach the child the best way forward. Yes it is admittedly hard. And in that restaurant when they are running around and screaming and bothering everyone around, rather than taking the easy road and totally ignoring this sad and unacceptable situation, I will again be very hard on myself and abandon my meal and company to sort out the situation fully.
In most cases we hide behind not being hard on the kids simply to be soft and weak and easy on ourselves. For disciplining kids is not always easy, without a doubt. And it does take an enormous effort to take the trouble of disciplining, teaching, instructing and guiding each and every time. That is the hard part – finding the will and the energy to do it yourself, being hard on yourself not hard on the kids!
We all think that our kids are special and they are in so many ways. Some are especially useless and annoying, as may also be the parents. So best to work on the real meaning of special, which is normally measured in real achievements such as noble character traits of kindness and generosity, ambition and determination, positiveness and honour.
Then and only then can you truly call your child special, while this only elevates you to being a normal parent.