Parenthood Challenge #1

It has been more than 4 years since I had a long break from work. After all those years of focusing on work and building up my career, it is kind of weird to suddenly pull the brakes and realign my priorities on family. It is then when you realise that your children are all so grown up and you wonder why you haven’t noticed the changes?

When they are in their infant to toddler stage, the focus is always on making sure that their basic physical needs are met. When they pass out of their terrible twos and threes, the focus is turned towards ensuring that they are being sufficiently stimulated in the areas of physical, emotional, mental and social development mostly through play. The issue of discipline also seeps in as your children learn to say no to you, refuse to clean up their mess, and insist in between wails that you buy them that that shiny new toy.

Discipline is a tricky issue but with clear boundaries of what can or cannot be condoned, parents can easily navigate through what deserves a whack, what is a strict no, what is permissible and what can be encouraged.

And then with school going children, a totally new set of challenge emerge. One that I am just coming to grapple with only recently. It is not an issue about physical needs, stimulation or discipline. It is about values and dealing with other people. You can certainly discipline your own children but with decisions that involve third parties, it becomes messy.

First and most obviously, you cannot control other people’s children. Second and more trickily, different family upbringing result in children with varying values and behaviours. So how do you teach your children to respect these differences yet stand firm in their own principles and not get into a fight or compromise in between that? Something that even adults need help with.

Let me present you with one recent scenario that I had to deal with.

Joel loves to show off his toy collection. I don’t know if it’s because he has an impressive arsenal of them (thanks to his parents), because he wants to gain favour from his friends by appearing to be cool or because he is just wants to be accepted.

So anyway one of his latest craze is Pokémon, something which his mother only recently got acquainted with but very quickly got mesmerised by. I know I know, those pocket monsters have been around for almost two decades and I only just got to know about them. See, I totally was not like Joel, not chasing fads at least.

At a recent toy sale, I found some Pokémon figurines that Joel was very keen to have so I bought it for him. As they were rare, I told him to keep them at home and never to bring it to school. From previous experiences, I know that his classmates and schoolmates at the student care tend to take his possessions away, by choice, coercion or theft, I have no conclusive evidence.

But this one fateful day, he brought them to school without my permission and ended up losing one of them to an older boy through a trade. Joel got three Pokémon figurine in return but he was very unhappy with the trade. He didn’t dare tell me about this until I got to know of it from my helper. I confronted Joel and then he reluctantly told me the truth.

He told me that he had not agreed to the trade but the older boy had simply taken his toy when he was not looking and gave him the other three in return. He had asked for his toy to be given back but the boy insisted that a trade was a trade and there was no refunding. His testimony already sounds fishy to me.

At this point, he had already flouted two rules – one he disobeyed us and brought the toys to school. Two – he chose to hide the truth from us until confronted.

Obviously Joel wanted his original figurine back. (I wanted it back myself as the trade wasn’t quite fair). I thought through the whole scenario and came up with the following possible solutions:

a. Live with the trade and learn from this lesson

b. Confront the boy and get him to return Joel his figurine

c. Get Joel to speak to the older boy again and insist on him returning his figurine

What would you have done?