CHENNAI: Dealing with a snotty-nosed brat who thinks he or she knows everything can be exasperating. When it’s your own brat, just 13, who’s telling you he “can’t be controlled” because “he’s making money” and is “independent”, the urge to give the kid a good dose of reality can be a temptation not many can resist.
That is exactly what one mother who calls herself ‘Estelle Havisham’ did, and what’s more, she posted the letter online. The post went viral, gaining more than 87,000 likes and 160,000 shares and a mountain of both approval and criticism from fellow parents.
Some of India’s own shared with Express what kind of aggravation their own hellions have put them through and what they did to solve them.
But first, the post. Estelle Havisham (name changed as she’s a domestic abuse survivor) went online with the note she wrote to her 13-year-old adolescent — recently rebellious and who had lied to her about his homework. When confronted, he argued he couldn’t be “controlled” because he was now “making money” (a teeny tiny bit from a few YouTube videos).
Estelle’s note started off by saying she was going to give him a lesson in independence and listed out his share of the family’s expenses, which he would now be expected to pay — rent, electricity, Internet, food… He could also buy back all the things she had bought him because he was earning now and pay a ‘maid fee’ for any cleaning she had to do for him. She signed off by saying, “If you decide you would rather be my CHILD again instead of my roommate, we can renegotiate terms.”
A common thread among the responses Estelle received was that kids, uniformly and worldwide, can be monsters. Take India’s own. Some like Uma Jayaram from Kochi, mother of a nine-year-old and a school teacher to boot says that the note is funny.
“But we should also think of the stress parents go through while raising a child, and if the kid is a brazen brat like the one in the note then it is all the more difficult,” she says.
“I am quite liberal and patient with my kid, but at times I run out of patience and forced to take strict action like a time-out. It’s enough for him to understand that what he has done is unacceptable and shouldn’t be repeated. But now, perhaps, I too will write a note for him to remind him of his duties, not as a punishment but more as a new way to keep him on his toes,” says Uma Jayaram.
“But we should also think of the stress parents go through while raising a child, and if the kid is a brazen brat like the one in the story then it is all the more difficult. I am quite liberal and patient with my kid, but at times I run out of patience and forced to take strict action like a time-out. It’s enough for him to understand that what he has done is unacceptable and shouldn’t be repeated. But now, perhaps, I too will write a note for him to remind him of his duties, not as a punishment but more as a new way to keep him on his toes,” she says.
Shruti A R from Bengaluru, a mother of two, feels that the letter written by Estelle to her son is completely warranted. “A parent only expects that their child shows the right attitude towards them and their emotional needs as well. When we go out of the way to satisfy their needs, the only thing we expect in return is that they extend minimum courtesy to us - that of understanding what we want from them as well,” she told Express. “There are so many things parents worry about when their kids are concerned. These thoughts are consistent at least till a child grows older and attains independence. When the child does not care about the little expectations that we have, our world comes crashing down,” she adds.
Some parents, like Sumati Rangarajan of Chennai, feel that while the letter is an admirable way to get a child to see reality, whether it would work everytime is doubtful. “Sometimes, children get very rebellious and a direct approach like this might well backfire. I’ve always found that my sons reacted better to subtle approaches when they were very young. Direct approaches started working only when they grew up,” she points out.
Parvathi T, an actor and mother of a 21-year-old son from Kerala, is dismissive of whether such a letter would even be written in India. “We were born and brought up in a very different culture compared to other societies and I do not think we have become a materialist one yet,” Parvathi says. “Definitely, you may take some measures to make your children more responsible, but something like the letter would be crossing a line,” she adds.
Child and family counsellors are unconvinced whether such a letter would really work with a 13-year-old. “A child that age is generally rebellious and is testing limits. A direct confrontation like this would tend to provoke that rebelliousness. Subtle approaches work better. But we can only know how effective the approach is when the child grows into adulthood,” says Dr Sangeetha Makesh, consultant and counselling psychologist.