A Flummoxed Parent
Parenting is an acquired skill. Parents have to be conscious about how they represent themselves in front of their children. This is because, most often, children try to find their first idols in their parents and mould themselves accordingly. A parent’s good habit is automatically passed on to the child without any deliberate effort. But then, it is not only the good habits but the bad habits as well that gets naturally passed on. It therefore, becomes extremely important to maintain a congenial environment in the house for the proper growth and upbringing of a child. I wonder, if this was the case in the older times as well. Ours was an extremely conservative, patriarchal family. My Maa would scare us and say “Wait, till your Baba comes” and this would be enough to quiet us. Before Baba came home from his teaching job, each one of us would be sitting with our books, hair braided and learning our lessons. The perfect child to be! But as time went by, it donned that the clearly d