Surely God is a man?!!

When Shreyas first started displaying destructive and violent tendencies, I reassured myself that all toddlers go through that phase. They are just discovering the world by stretching the boundaries of acceptability. He just wants to find out when amma will suddenly switch from being a doting, caring mother to a raving lunatic who frequently bangs her head against the wall. All kids do that, right?

And then my cousin came visiting with her daughter. Shreyas happily picked up every single DVD on my brother’s bookshelf and flung it down with great vengeance with me hissing “no throwing!”, “no bang bang!”, “gentle!”, “pick it up!” with increasing volume and decreasing poise. Each DVD that my son sent crashing down, Manthra picked up and started stacking. I waited patiently for this behaviour to change. On either side! God knows I would’ve been relieved if Manthra started throwing stuff around too. But no. And she is the same age as Shreyas. So I have run out of all excuses. Except one. Shreyas is a boy and Manthra is a girl.

But surely he will grow out of this with careful parenting, right? He will grow up to be a calm, patient, helpful boy because we are such amazing parents right?! I mean, naughty is fine – but not an over-energized, screaming, stubborn meteorite!

We attended a friend’s baby’s birthday party today. And the news isn’t reassuring. The invitees included kids of various ages. The 5 yr old boys rushed around the party hall, shouting, loudly crashing into immovable objects which were quite obviously in their paths and couldn’t have been missed, taking a break only to grab yet another cupcake and rushing back, adding streaks of chocolate to the decor of the party hall. Meanwhile, in a totally different world, a different species, the 5 yr old girls, helped arrange the cutlery, assisted their moms in feeding their baby brothers and cleared away trash. Believe me, I tried very hard to not generalize. I tried even harder to not get depressed.

If the males of the human species can get away with throwing their weight around, besides throwing cutlery, books, furniture and eventually bullets and bombs, I mean, surely God must be a man?!!! Q.E.D

kanch

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