It is your inner child that needs your attention the most

I AM a quiet person who talks a lot, I said to a friend last week when she rolled her eyes at the release of a new podcast in which I am speaking to the host, Amit Varma, for over five hours. I feel like I need to start this column with the same qualifying sentence.

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I have difficulty speaking up in groups, even small, safe groups of my own friends and family. I worry about mis-speaking and oversharing. I have yet to figure out timing and rhythm in discussions; I may speak too late or too soon, and, most of the time, I just keep quiet and listen intently, to save myself from the exhaustion of trying too hard to make conversations work. I do have a constant stream of thoughts, connections and opinions streaming through my head. This, I suppose, is what sets me up to be a writer and film-maker. I need other ways to communicate, since the seemingly simpler way makes me feel thwarted so often.

Texting is a medium that works for me. My life is much richer with new friends and soulmates ever since we began to text and send written messages, instead of calling each other. I speak with photographs and emojis and take my time typing the exact words I need to express myself.

A recent exchange of text messages with a friend ended up with him suggesting that I share our conversation with the readers of this column. I dutifully agreed.

“I have a unique problem,” wrote my friend. “My daughter is my first born and she is my favourite. She is delightful most of the time. Enraging, sometimes. My son, who is younger, is kinder, more patient and seems more mature. He doesn’t ask for much. He is so easy to handle that you can’t help but find it easy to spend time with him. I push my older one to be more perfect, more sparkling, more everything … And I fear my younger one is not throwing enough tantrums.”

I wasn’t sure if my friend was just airing his thoughts to understand his own patterns, or genuinely needed to hear someone else’s perspective. I read his message and decided to wait it out.

After a while, he sent me a question mark, as if to say, what are your thoughts?

“Stand still for a while. Stay out of your children’s way. They are not infants anymore,” I texted him back. “Children are wise and driven by their own inner maps. You can let them be, you don’t need to judge them or measure them against your own unstable expectations. You don’t have to react to what they do, whether it is them being brilliant or bored.”

“You are asking me to be contented?” he wrote. “I’m not sure, but that makes me feel uncomfortable.”

“Does the fog of dissatisfaction feel more secure? Something is bothering you enough for you to have written in to ask for help. It may not be your children; their presence has just pushed you out of your comfort zone.

“What will happen if you accept that everything is fine? Will you feel that you are failing in your role as a parent? Parents are often enraged by their children, not because of the child’s behaviour, but because of one’s own unrealistic expectations of them.”

“Hmmm,” he typed.

“Perhaps, this is not about the children at all. Just your own insecurities and fear of failing as a parent of young children. I know I battle with inadequacy as a parent,” I shared.

In some way, I was reassured listening to my friend. I have another friend, a father who routinely dismisses parental anxiety as a mother’s domain. “Fathers don’t feel these things,” he tells me. “When I leave home for work, I don’t think of family things anymore.”

I don’t agree with the generalisation about differences between mothers and fathers. We have different contexts. We have evolved our own personal coping mechanisms. I know that we often claim to be least bothered by the things that may actually be eating us up inside. For many of us, work is a comfort zone. The anxieties of our intimate spaces are harder to deal with.

“Do you feel liberated when you are away from your children?” I texted my friend.

“Damn, yes,” he said. “It makes me feel guilty too.”

“How are uncle and aunty?” I asked him. He replied quickly this time. “They are doing good. Despite their disappointment in me.” He added an emoji with a single tear on one cheek.

“Console your inner child,” I wrote. “Hold him, tell him, he is doing fine. That’s the child that needs your attention the most. Your restlessness and hurt emanates from there.”

Children make us happy in the most unexpected ways. We see flashes of brilliance in their words, drawings and analytical moments that take our breath away. Yet, children will also have bouts of being tired, sleepy, whiny, greedy, clingy and aggressive. We don’t always have the energy or patience to deal with their emotional spillages. Sometimes, even their basic needs overwhelm us.

This is not a failing. Just a sign that we need to reach out to a friend and make some time for our emotional needs.

— The writer is a filmmaker & author

natasha.badhwar@gmail.com