A co-parent recently voiced out his frustration to me about his younger son’s apparent unwillingness to listen whenever he tries to give coaching advice on sports. He said that they always end up arguing. He complained that if it’s the boy’s kuya (older brother) who gives him the very same advice, the younger one listens. In exasperation, he said that he now just uses his older son as the messenger lest he end up giving his younger son hell (“Baka makatikim pa sa akin yan!”).
I’m pretty sure that a lot of us parents have had similar experiences. And what is true in the court or field is often also the case inside some households. Forget about the kids’ unwillingness to respond to parental sporting instructions. How many times do some parents have to repeat simple instructions like “turn off the television set” or “come down to dinner,” or even “brush your teeth” before they actually follow? I myself sometimes wonder whether my children might have a hearing disorder or if I’m unconsciously speaking in an incomprehensible foreign language whenever I try to ask them to do something.
When I think back to my boyhood years, I realize that my parents never really reminded me to do things. It was either I did them or I didn’t and lived with the consequences either way. Fortunately, I seemingly had enough sense to turn out okay anyway (well at least sort of). Other older generation parents, on the other hand, made sure their kids toed the line by whacking them into submission. The so-called modern parent, however, is a totally different animal. Instead of leaving the future of their kids to the fates or to the rod, parents today try their best to rig the deck in their children’s favor. And so we do our best to share with our kids all of our hard-earned wisdom and sage advice every opportunity we get; try to be as “nurturing” as we can; and allow them to have a lot more decision-making options than we ever had. There’s just one problem. They don’t seem to be listening! Of course, there’s an underlying condition to that statement. They don’t listen only when they don’t want to follow what we’re asking. If it’s affirming something that they want to do, then their ears are as big as Dumbo’s. In this regard, our kids are very much like their lolos and lolas (grandparents). They prefer to do only what they want to do. Everything else is a “nuisance.” As one mother wrote, “Parents are all about homework, eating dinner, cleaning up, brushing teeth, bedtime, and other necessary but un-fun activities. Kids would listen a whole lot better if parents asked them to come collect their cash and candy!”
And so the daily battle of getting our kids to listen to us continues. Many mothers and fathers are driven near-crazy by the mindless repetition and the constant arguments that it all entails. Some observers might point out that the modern parent should just simply declare Martial Law. Yet many of us are not overly lenient. We may bribe, beg, and plead, but we also give out consequences and even the occasional dagger look. We reason. We try out a hundred other suggestions from the experts. Some seem to work better than others. Yet the hard truth is that many of us are really at a loss on what to do and are resigned to just look forward to the day we’ll get our revenge when we witness our kids struggle to raise their own children.
Maybe it will only be when our children become parents themselves that they’ll finally listen to us. Perhaps it will only be then that they’ll finally understand what language we’ve been talking to them all along. In the same vein, however, maybe the reason why parents have problems getting their kids to listen is that we really do talk in a foreign tongue to them. And that the only way we can communicate better is to try to learn our children’s language.
Know any other expert who can translate for us apart from their kuya?
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