If there’s one person whose most abject forgiveness I crave, its my first-born.
Most parents make mistakes with the first child and learn from the experiment. But I took this to extreme levels of idiocy.
I was quite young when my first child was born, which I suppose is my excuse. I sometimes feel we grew up together. I certainly did grow up emotionally only after becoming a mother.
As I see it, the tragedy of the first-born is the inheritance — the load of expectations thrust upon him or her by ignorant parents. First-borns always seem quite big — especially when siblings come along. For instance, when my oldest was three, I’d say: “You’re three now, and a big boy, so behave like one!”
At six it went: “You’re six now, stop behaving like your three-year-old baby brother!”
There were other crimes, too. Those early morning rush hours during the disorganised days of young motherhood, when he’d be rudely woken up half an hour before school time, fed and packed off. I’ve scolded him in public, many more times than I would like to remember. Though I try to, I cannot forget the hurt look in his eyes, his nonchalant bravado given away by his trembling lips.
Shameful
When I look back to those moments, I can hardly recognise myself. It couldn’t have been me! This harridan who hurt her child so cruelly. But I did hurt him. Not knowing how to react to comments about my child, hoping to make him well behaved, I’ve lashed out at him, not intentionally perhaps, but thoughtlessly so. I can only hope that it hasn’t done any lasting damage, and that my love for him prevailed over my ignorance.
Well, I’ve been a mother for a good while now, and it did get easier over time. I’ve learned to manage things better. Now, when my children annoy me, I don’t fly into a rage, but try to control it, and speak to them in a cool voice, which incidentally is twice as effective as the banshee wail of days gone by. I’ve learned not to chide my sons in public, but to back them valiantly. I’ve learned to filter out earnest advice and accept it with dignity, and ignore the more malicious criticisms.
But all these lessons were learned at the expense of my eldest. Kids may learn at their mother’s knee, but mothers, too, learn lessons from their children. And I’ve learned most of mine with my older one. Cheerfulness, anger management, making the best of things, organisation — I’ve learned them all.
In my pre-motherhood days, I’d often felt that the Victorian laws ordaining that the estate and titles passed to the eldest child were rather unfair on the younger ones. But now I feel there’s something to it after all. Maybe it was just a bit of appreciation for the eldest child who’d put up with so much.
— The writer is a Dubai-based Gulf News reader
