Tough love
Three days before the recent Eidul Azha holidays, my friend called me up in panic. His elder daughter had just announced she wanted to marry her boyfriend of six months. She had been extremely rude to her father and then screamed at her mother when asked gently about the boy and his family.
The poor father kept saying, “We’ve sent them both to the best school, bought them everything they want, tried to be their friend and be cool. How could this happen?” In order to learn more, I approached a renowned life coach and friend. Let’s call him Doc, to ask him for his take on how to turn a happy and healthy child into a happy and successful adult. Seemed like a simple question, as was the reply I got. But Doc’s answer was very difficult to practise.
According to Doc, the key to parental success is ‘tough love’. The secret of ‘tough love’ is to hold your ground when a child misbehaves or throws a tantrum. What happens normally is that a child pushes your buttons to a point where you react and lose control of the situation. What one has to do, instead, is to distance oneself from the child till such time that the child realises his or her mistake.
With the modern day parent one, major problem is the fact that children have forgotten the boundary between parent and child. We are so focused on being our child’s friend that we forget about being a parent. Just the other day, my son Hamza said something funny but rude. I kept a straight face, told him that just because I am his friend he shouldn’t forget that I am his mother. Disrespect is unacceptable whether I am his friend or Mama.
Doc’s son, Ahmed, is a PhD student who also works as a motivational speaker and industrial psychologist. He told me six months ago that he has to give his father half of all his earnings from his seminars. I thought that was rather odd and Ahmed explained that this was his father’s fee for the time he put in preparing material for Ahmed’s speeches and presentations.
I remember calling up Doc and asking him why he had charged his own son? He replied quite seriously that he was charging Ahmed for his services. The point that Doc made to me was that he didn’t need the money, but he did need Ahmed to understand that nothing in life is for free and that even his father’s time was worth money. Finally, Doc wanted to make sure Ahmed did not take him for granted.
The truth is that when anyone is handed something on a silver platter, they start taking it for granted. Tough love is tough, not just on children, but on the parent as well. We’ve all been conditioned that it is not possible to love our children too much. But if we want the best for our children, we have to stand firm — not just for their sakes but for our own too.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 13th, 2014.
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COMMENTS (8)
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Nice article..True!
@Naeem Khan: The author is referring to parents love for their child; the book you are referring to is dealing with love between a married couple. There is no such thing as Tough Love!!
Rex Minor
There is this book called " Love must be tough" by Dr. James C, Dobson, good read and perhaps helpful for some parents who spoil their kids with all the worldly goods and lack of parental discipline, You did not mention the age of the girl in question, is she a college student or still in high school. Is she is old and mature enough for getting married and it also depend on what country she is residing now. In Pakistan the young couple could wind up depending on their parents for financial support but in US or Europe they will struggle unless they got some professional education. It seems to me that her mother did not have good relationship with her daughter because the mother should have known the daughter's feeling even if it is "puppy love" and could have guided the daughter to an equitable solution. By the way this "work ethics" for young generation is more prevalent in Western Societies than Pakistan where parents and families stress that nothing is free and one has to work for it. I did.
You parents don't and will never know what your children are up to. When it comes to parents children can be very unforgiving. So, I'd recommend you just allow your child to grow into what eventually he/she will become. Teaching should be done in the most inadvertent a way as possible. Remember parents, intentionally or not, can come in the way of a child's sense of freedom. So the sooner a parent stops belittling his child and starts giving him authority, especially of his/her own life, the better.
Aaaaah !...........its so much easier being a grandparent. Always like what you write and have sent this to my daughter......who along with her husband is working hard at raising her.......no..... my granddaughters.
timely & very well written my parents never hit me but as mentioned by one reader their one look was more than enough. my mother even if we think she over-reacted, she would never care to talk to us unless we apologies to her. despite this i consider my parents the best and adore them completely. so just cos they are strict on "certain things" does not mean that child would develop hard feelings against them.
Read the article very well written and its so true even our parents and grandparents practices that too. My mom's one look is enough for us to understand what she is asking from us .... Parenting is an Art.
No more silver platters. They will be living off tin platters. No, make that paper plates and plastics.utensils.