A Case of Ditelan Mati Emak, Diluah Mati Ayah

I wanted to write this post earlier but I was not in the mood to write, hence the delay. A few days ago I was so engrossed with FB that I forgot to pick up my son from school. No need to raise the alarm yet...I was only 20+ minutes late and he is a teenager. The latter fact is to justify that it’s not like I made a young child waited for 20 mins at school (did I justify myself enough?). Nonetheless, he was the last to leave school on that day, I think.

When I was a kid, I cycled to school every single day. Before I knew how to cycle, I walked to school – about 3km each way. I walked to school when I was in standard 1 with my heavy bag, alone. When you were only 7 years old, 3km felt like 30km. There was no one to send me to school. Right after school I walked again to madrasah to attend sekolah agama. I didn’t have the luxury of having my mom fetching me in a luxury car every day. Yet, I never complained...ever! I knew that it was my own responsibility to get to school every day, not anyone else’s. Oh, I even escaped a kidnap attempt on my way to school once (I’ll tell the story some other time yah).

These days, the role has reversed – we the parents are responsible to ensure the kids get to school safely every day. Not just to ensure they get there safely, but to ensure that they go to school every day too. When I was a kid, I was so scared to skip school that I attended school even when I was sick enough to be hospitalised. The goal was to have perfect attendance. If I ever forgot to do my homework, I got so scared that I was sick in the stomach and felt weak in the knees. I think I speak for most of us who grew up before the mid 80s and the 90s.

My kids on the other hand, if I didn’t ask them to do their homework, chances are they won’t do it. Study and revision? The two words don't even exist in their dictionary. And my kids are not exactly the slack type, they are amongst the performers. Yet, they behave in such a way – complacent. My hubby always said to my eldest son over and over again - don’t be complacent. But like it or not, they are.

Have we ever asked ourselves why? My bet is they are too pampered with too much luxury at hand that have caused them to think that their future is somehow secured. They think that they don't really need to work hard like we did, because their lives are already very comfortable, we had to because we wanted to have a better life.

Unlike us (I may not speak for everyone here), they have never once experience what not having everything they want feels like, what being SUSAH is like... They are spoiled to the point that even cycling 3km to school is hell to them, 20 minutes late is a huge inconvenience... I could provide a thousand other examples but I’m sure you get the not-so-pretty picture.

But, of course we are to be blamed for this. When I started to have my own family, I told myself that I will give my children what my parents couldn’t get me when I was a kid. I remember admiring Barbie dolls from afar. I didn’t have one because for my parents RM11 (I think that was the price tag then) was expensive for a toy, and buying toys were complete waste of money. So when I have my own daughter, I bought her Barbie dolls even when she was still too young to play with it and I bought my kids toys until I ran out of space to store them.

On top of it, parents often succumb to pressure too. For example, we buy Playstation because our friends have them at home, we buy PSP because we see other children have them...we don’t want our kids to feel inferior! So, how? I say this is a perfect example of ditelan mati emak, diluah mati ayah *sigh*.