what do you choose to remember?

A fortnight ago when it was Mother's Day in this part of the world, a WhatsApp group I'm part of got into a discussion about being part of a 'slipper raised generation'.

This was a term coined impromptu to refer to adult children of parents, usually mothers, who would throw a slipper or a remote control or a rolling pin at them to shush them into obedience.

On the face of it, this sounds barbarous. I don't think I've ever had a slipper flung at me, although I've had my fair share of slaps and beatings, but the discussion in that group was one of levity and laughter, with references to children who'd duck from the flying objects with thrill and delight as though it were a mere game of dodgeball.

What is it that makes one person look back at a situation with humour while another turns back to the same or a similar situation in the past with hurt and trauma?

understanding the negativity bias in parenting

Studies that show that the human brain tends to retain negative incidents five times more than it does positive incidents.

In the context of parenting, experts have interpreted this to mean that if we inflict a negative incident upon our child — by yelling or shouting or being unkind in some way — we should try and follow that up with five positive incidents/acts of connection to erase or minimize the impact of that negative interaction.

the significant yet tiny role of parents in influencing their children

For a long time, especially when D was younger, I lived in eternal fear of screwing things up.

I'd feel guilty about small things like not taking him for outdoor play on a beautiful day even though my reason for doing so was that I was feeling tired and overwhelmed and needed rest.

As someone who scored the equivalent of straight As in every exam I took, it was only natural that I'd approach parenting and everything else in life with the same focus on high standards of excellence.

Except, no one told me a few blunt truths:

1. Parenting is only one aspect of influence on a child. Friends, school, society, culture become ever increasingly dominant influences as our children grow up.
2. There is no way to measure how good or bad our parenting was. We could completely screw it up and our children might grow up to be emotionally healthy and have a great relationship with us. Or vice versa.
3. We can only parent for this moment. Any illusion that our actions today will have a predetermined effect on our child's future is simply that — an illusion.

There are far too many factors at play here for us, as parents, to take the entire credit or shoulder all the blame for whatever transpires in our children's lives as they grow up.

That's not to say we should just throw our hands up in the air and not care for our children at all. Nor do we have to run ourselves to the ground in the impossible attempt of providing a perfect childhood for the little ones who've come into our lives.

The significant role that parents play as caregivers, especially in the early years of a child's life, is undeniable. But sometimes the stakes feel so high that we're unable to see past the few mistakes we make.

Given those statistics of the 1:5 ratio of negative:positive imprints, we worry that our worst moments would be the ones that our children will hold deep in their hearts and subconscious. That our moments of failure will be the ones that will go on to define their adult lives.

allowing room for parenting mistakes with self-compassion

It didn't help that a few years ago, when I was struggling with looking after a really young child, cancel culture came into vogue.

I'm referring to cancel culture in the context in which many young adults were taking to social media and reddit to talk about how they've completely cut off all ties with their parents, having learnt from therapy or otherwise that a less-than-stellar upbringing is the reason they are so messed up right now.

I'm not here to deny any abuse and toxicity that exists in relationships. But I started to worry that the slightest slip on my part could one day cause my own child to turn against me. After all, I have witnessed estrangement in my own family and seen firsthand the effect it has had on my parents for the past two decades.

That's the thing about having a child. Being a parent puts us in the unique position of being able to hold both a child's and a parent's experience with great empathy and understanding, if we allow ourselves to.

While I understand the need for those young adults to set healthy boundaries, likely overcompensating for the fact that they never had a chance to do so in their childhood, I also feel for the parents who are sitting there, flummoxed, wondering how they got it all so wrong.

For they were merely doing what society and culture in their times had deemed was the best thing to do. How could they have known any 'different'? How could they have done any 'better'?

We have unlimited resources and access to insights and information today. These were not available to our parents a generation ago.

I remember a couple of years ago, we were at a birthday party. Pointing to the teetering pile of presents in a corner of the party room, D's classmate's mom made a wry observation that a few generations ago, six-year-olds had to earn their keep.

looking at the past with understanding to allow grace in the present

When I look back at my childhood, I can choose to harp on the memory that my mum held up my Grade 1 report card and her focus narrowed on the barely passing mark I got in 'handwriting' even though I had practically aced every other subject.

Or I can think about how she'd set aside a portion of veggies for me every mealtime before mixing shredded coconut to the remaining portion. I hated coconut in my food.

I can choose to think of the time when she scolded me for something. Or I can choose to remember the time when I'd had a bad day at school and I came back home and went straight to bed, draping a saree of hers over myself. And she immediately sensed something was wrong and came to inquire about it.

When we can dig into our own past and understand that our parents were not perfect, they were not meant to be perfect, that they too were learning how to be parents for the first time, guided or misguided by the norms that were prevalent in society and culture at the time, we can allow our hearts to soften a little.

And in this space of softening, we can show ourselves some grace too. It is inevitable that we will hurt our children in some way or the other. A harsh response. A refusal. A momentary inability to hear them out patiently.

Being a parent is to be in constant learning mode. D will turn 9 years old next month. I've never been a mother to a 9-year-old before. I'm bound to make mistakes. I'm bound to try and fail and try and fail and try and perhaps succeed and try and fail again. I don't need guilt self-talk making my task harder.

And perhaps our own attempts to forgive ourselves, treat ourselves with great self-compassion, heal our childhood memories with empathy, will help us role model these very qualities to our children.

If this reflection struck a chord with you, you'd find resonance and understanding about parental guilt in my fantasy short story, Memory Games. It's available for free this week (May 25—29) as part of a promotion run by the International Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors. Memory Games is also part of a collection of six short stories on motherhood, Your Mother's Nightmares, which you can grab for 99c only this week!