I often look back at my childhood when I am faced with greatest challenges. I am not sure why, but I guess I look for an escape route to my current problems. Those days, problems were solved very easily. As a child, when a bully finished reconstructing my face, I just ran back home and straight into the arms of my mother. I can still smell her perfume, the gentleness of her touch and the softness of her voice. Her bosom was a tiny paradise that offered endless comfort. Now I realise nothing would ever match the love of a mother.
But it is very different for today’s generation for both mothers and children. The ‘bosom’ children run to is a small illuminated screen of their mobile phones. Why? Because their mothers find refuge in the same devices. The psychological bridge between mothers and children is not there anymore. It has been replaced by a barrier thick enough that children find it tough to go over it. The barrier prevents a stream of emotion flowing both sides alienating both mother and child.
I saw a mother throwing a band of plaster and a bandage when her seven-year-old son bruised his leg because she had not the time to do it for him. The poor boy’s face turned red. He picked up the stuff and did the plastering of the wound with his head hanging over his shoulder. Such an action does irreparable damage to the mother-son relations. No wonder, children grow up to distance themselves from parents because the foundation was shaky from the very beginning.
The void, and I am not exaggerating when I say, would stay in their children forever. I am not finding fault in the way young mothers raise their children these days, but the evidence of that is everywhere.
No mother needs a textbook to teach her how to do it. It is basic instinct. If cats pick up their litter by the scruff of their necks very gently and move them around lovingly, then young mothers need to watch and learn.
Animals abide by this natural instinct and they do not need to learn. I can only say mothers today suppress the motherhood instincts as they get busy with their own lives. They don’t stop to think that children grow up so fast and before they realise what went wrong, it is too late.
No wonder, children rebel by the time they reach the age of ten. It gets worse when they reach their teenage years. By the time they are in their early twenties, the bond is so thin and it starts to crack up. On the other hand, a mother then starts calling her children “ungrateful” forgetting her track record when they were growing up. I am not saying that children are faultless or there are not good mothers around. However, the umbilical cord mother and child share must last forever. And the effort must be asserted by the mother at the earliest stage.
Perhaps someone must do a research to look into the lives of history makers and the relation they had with their mothers when they were growing up. There has to be a link. It is the kind of stuff that must be taught in basic education. You cannot just put two words together or do the sums in a correct way and guarantee a successful life. There is more to it then academic success. It all starts to take shape well before a child passes the school’s doors for the first time.
By now you are wondering why I have not mentioned the father’s role in the raising of a child. I am convinced fathers play only a supporting role but not a critical one. The mother is key to the future success of any child.
Saleh Al-Shaibany
saleh_shaibany@yahoo.com
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
