What are we doing to our children?
What is the best gift you can give your child? Wealth, education, social status, An Australian passport or what? I am sure most of us would answer: Education. What they actually mean is a good educational qualification, such as a medical degree or an MBA.
I feel that for many generations we have been unduly influenced by the following message:
තුබූ තැනක සොර සතුරන් ගත නොහෙතා: Wherever you keep it a thief cannot steal it
එසැඩ මනා වත් වතුරෙන් වල නොහෙතා: Whatever floods wreak havoc, they cannot destroy it
කෝප වුවත් රජ මැතිදුන් ගත: However angered the King is, he cannot take it
උගතමනා ශිල්පයමයි මතු රැකෙනා What else it is, other than what you learnt, your protection
Well, it is nicely put by Aligiyawanna Mukaveti, but is it still applicable the same way? In today’s world, you can teach your child or yourself French in six months, well may be in twelve months if the teacher is not that good. You can even get a medical degree, provided that you can read and write clearly, maybe in under five years.
However I found another verse in Lokopakaraya, a work much less archaic than Subashithaya, which explains of another gift to be given to children. Actually the author, presumed to be Ven. Ranasgalle, claims that gift is invaluable – beyond our capacity to estimate its value!
දෙගුරුන් විසින් තම දරුවන්ට: The invaluable gift that parents
දෙන නොමඳ දන නම්: can give their children
වියතුන් සභා මැද: Is what is needed to be assertive
ඉන්ට ඉදිරිව සිල්ප දෙනු මැයි.: In the midst of a sophisticated gathering
What if your child becomes a professor, or a cardiologist, or an airbus pilot, but still has no backbone? Scared of his or her spouse? And in-laws? Or friends? Sometimes subordinates?
You can teach him or her how to pilot an airbus in five years, but you cannot give him or her a personality in even ten years, if you have already missed the bus.
So how can you make your child assertive enough, so one day she/ he can be unafraid even in the midst of a learned gathering? Not the pilot who takes dangerously short landing routines because he was afraid of the colleagues who would ridicule him for not getting the bonus for saving fuel!
Your child can one day grow up into a doctor or a lawyer. Well respected. And she goes on an official visit, driven by the official driver to Dehiattakandiya, let us say to conduct a special session. “Madam,” driver says “There are no decent places to have lunch in Dehiattakandiya. We need to be back at Polonnaruwa for lunch, madam, if you need to have a decent lunch.” And she quickly wraps up the session, just because she is under pressure to be back at Polonnaruwa for lunch, so the driver can visit his brother-in-law’s sister to give a little package in time.
A pity to say, but your doctor- or lawyer-daughter did not have enough guts to say “You go fly a kite if you want to have lunch at Polonnaruwa, I will continue the session till 12:30! I am coming all the way from Polonnaruwa to do this session for them!!”
“Madam, it is not about me, but how can you eat this shoddy food here?”
“Do you think all the doctors/ lawyers in Dehiattakandiya eat shoddy food?”
“Sorry, madam, I was only trying to help. Okay, we will do as you say.”
“Of course, you will do as I say. You are here to drive me to this important session for the sake of these poor people!”
And it is not rare to be driven by such drivers some times. We are so blind to manipulation, we think we cannot be manipulated. We are manipulated almost every time we are certain we are not. Although exaggerated, this is a good example of an attempt to manipulate and stern assertive resistance to that.
Now, do you honestly think, we are in the business of making adults, who would be assertive and independent, I mean real adults, out of our children? Adults who would be able to have their own feet firmly on this earth and carry on steadily with their lives as they wish? And not fooled by shoddy drivers and manipulative colleagues and intrusive in-laws?
How certain are you, that your son or daughter, one day will not be abused by his/ her wife/ husband? Especially after your death? Or when they live Down Under – with or without an Australian passport? How confident are you that your daughter is least likely to be pressurised by her boss, and for her to succumb to such pressure, to have sex with him just to keep her job? How assured are you that your son will one day stand up to the caustic workmate who coerces him to go for a drinking session the day he got a big bonus?
Assertiveness is simply the presence of a backbone. It is not aggression. The aggressive person gets what he or she wants using undue power, disempowering the other person/s. It may be the loud voice or muscle power. Or the power of official authority. Or just by mocking you.
Aggression does get you the job done in the short run. Although it makes other people hate you. It is not respect you command, it is fear. The moment you lose the power/ authority, you lose the fear from the other person/s, which is almost always replaced then by attack. Unfortunately many people in Sri Lanka believe aggression is the best way to get your way.
Passive person tries to please everybody around him/ her. She/ he is afraid of what others might say about her/ him. “If I go in the bus, what the society would say! I am an engineer!!” “If I cut my hair short, my mother will not approve of it. So I just can’t do it.” “I know your offer is the best for my future
career, but my boss would be unhappy if I leave now – he depends on me so much. Sorry, I can’t join you.”
Assertiveness is the skill of knowing what is best/ most appropriate for you and , also, what your wishes are, and then being able to make decisions, and expressing and executing them. For your sake (yes, there is a bit of selfishness here) but not for the sake of hurting others. However if the society is going to be taken by surprise when an engineer goes in a bus, or a mother is shocked by the new hairstyle of her daughter, and the boss seems unhappy to see the best worker leaving for a better paid job, let them be unhappy and surprised and shocked!
Despite this simple truth, we want our children to be passive. We want them to be obedient. We want them to be raised in fear. “They can be assertive and independent and all that nonsense when they are on their own. Now they are under us. So they do as we say!” And they become adults with engrained passiveness. For life. Even after the parents and teachers are dead and gone. Once passive, it is very difficult to become assertive again.
Almost all developed countries have realised, a couple of centuries after Ven. Ranasgalle, assertiveness is the most invaluable gift that they can bestow upon their next generation. And they work very hard to produce independent assertive children who can think for themselves.
However the British who developed our education and parenting system did not want us to realise that.
At least during colonial times. Well, they have been very successful. We are yet to make that realisation!
-Mahesh Rajasuriya
