Parents are just a pair of fallible humans. They married young, like we have, as might our children some day if they so choose to. Though it might be hard to believe, parents also started off inexperienced and learnt things along the way, the same as everyone else, stumbling, falling and picking themselves up.

In addition, they are repositories of all sorts of human frailties: they get unreasonably angry, are sore losers, shout and scream when stressed or sometimes even when not because they can get away with it. They are unfair, make wrong decisions, fly into a rage, throw and break things, pretend they know a lot when they clearly don’t, are scared, act cowardly, palm off blame onto others, are partial to one of their children and hurtful and mean to another for no reason. They shame children, also guilt trip them by talking of their own supposedly harder times, don’t care for their own parents, stop speaking to other family members over silly, imagined slights. They are perfectly capable of being jealous, cunning, proud, lazy, devious, cruel, abusive, selfish, dominating. sloppy, insensitive, least bothered, vindictive, couldn’t care less, yada yada yada.

Don’t be shocked. I am not saying ALL parents are ALL of the above, but definitely that they are some of them, some of the time, a mixture of the positive and the negative in differing proportions, like we as parents are, like our children will be, unless the future holds some element of magic to turn things around for humans. Till such time as that, can we please put a sock in it, be real for a change and stop using  ‘parents’ as synonymous with ‘saints’?

©Shail Mohan 2015