Zen and art of parenting

“That was your best?” - I was shouting out of my stomach! I was furious and mad and could not get proper words in my mind. I was in the middle of our dinner preparation and looked at my son and went towards him.

My son was standing as if a deer is seeing a hungry lion right in front and have no way to run. Water was ready to gush out of his eyes any moment.

“You spent so much time in learning this, worked more than 2 hours in taking the test and almost an hour to verify, and after all you could score only 23 out of 30?” - I shouted and rushing towards him with my raised hand.

He let his tears flow out and was bracing for the next event.

“Let me tell you one thing! You are a dumb person and you have no brain to think and this is the best you can do!! I just can’t understand, what else is going into your mind other than concentrating on the test. After such bad work, If I were you, I would be ashamed of myself and won’t even eat for one full day!” - I continued as I raised my tone.

He was shocked, was in fear and was still bracing for the next event.

“You better redo the whole test and this time around I want everything to be written on a piece of paper properly and I do want to see that before you submit the answers on the computer.” - I issued my decree.

He immediately rushed to get paper and start writing the questions on it. I can see and feel that he was crying and his brain is not working at all. He was just doing out of fear of getting more yelling and that feeling in-turn was making him feel more miserable.

With all my anger, I went back to continue my cooking. I was kept on murmuring and occasionally yelling at him, my wife and my daughter for no reason. This chore continued for a while and I was  trying to get back to my stable and rational state. I dropped the knife, switched-off the stove, and walked out of the house. A gush of cold air hit my face. It felt as if it was still a mild winter day - even though we were in the middle of May. I started walking slowly in my driveway and that walk, cold breeze, the stars and the total darkness around me slowly calmed me down. Within ten minutes I was back to my normalcy and was able to think sensibly.

I started thinking and talking to me. Why exactly I yelled at my son? Seven mistakes out of 30 is not a bad deal and moreover what exactly the meaning of the right and the wrong? By yelling and making him feel miserable, what exactly I achieved? Does shouting and shaming really works?

“Yes! It does” - My alter personality argued. All kids are the same. They don’t want to work hard, don’t want to obey their parents. It is the parent’s right to bring them back to the discipline - by all means. Since they lack the peer competition that I faced, they always will lack the fire in them  to compete. I’ll revert to the ‘North Korean’ method of oppression and dictatorship to enforce my views and I’ll see that my commands are enforced.

I felt confused. One part of my brain was telling what I did was wrong and the other half was arguing that it was the right decision.

I went back and calmly told my son that we can work on the issues together. He was a bit encouraged by change in my tone and was ready to do so. I asked him “Who will go to the bathroom in the middle of a party?” 

He looked up at my eyes and said “What?”

“A Party Pooper” - I replied. My daughter faintly commented from my back aiming at me, “Then, it is you!”

My son started laughing. The situation become a bit loose. We started working and this time around I noticed that he indeed did six out of seven wrong answers worked out correctly on paper, but made the mistake in clicking the right answer in the screen. At the end of it he finished the test with all questions answered correctly. I felt very happy, vindicated and smiling and he felt relieved!

My alter ego came out again and smiled at me and said “Didn’t I tell you? - Shouting and punishment works!”; The other part immediately said “No! not that worked. It was the participative work propelled him to do things correctly. You need to be calm and encourage him positively - after all, seven mistakes out of thirty is not a bad thing.

I started realizing - The failure was not with my son, It was with me. I felt angry not because that he made mistakes, but because I was not a good teacher as I thought of myself. My feeling of my own failure turned out to be looking for someone else to be blamed. This feeling came out as angry expression at a wrong person.

At that night as I was lying next to him and trying to make him sleep, I hugged him and asked, “Were you upset with me?” without hesitation he said “Yes!” I felt really bad and whispered in his ears, “I’m very sorry the way I behaved and I promise you that this will not happen again”. 

“That’s ok” - he replied. There was an awkward silence after that. I wanted to break it.

“Do you want a story?”

He shook his head meaning yes and hugged me tightly in anticipation for a story. I wanted to narrate a story I read recently (thanks: Ram Ramanan) which might give a context to what happened earlier that day.

“Do you remember I used to go to Copenhagen?” - I started.

“Yes, you got me the viking doll when you went there for the first time” - he replied.

“That’s right! this story is about a kid like you who was doing his course in University of Copenhagen. That was his test day and  not of the test question was: "Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.” - I stopped for a bit and asked him,

“Do you know what a barometer is?”

“Yes! it is the thing used to measure the pressure. Hmm… I know the answer for this. You need to measure the pressure in two places and the difference might give you the height!” - his eyes were wide open and I could see its brightness in that dark room.

“Well! do you want the story or tell the answer?”

“Sorry! Continue!!” - he retracted, hugging me and came a bit closer to me.

“Ok, then keep quiet and listen to the whole story”. I continued, “ As an answer to that question, one student replied: "You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.”

My son was giggling, “That’s right too!”

I whispered in his ears, “Shhh…! Quite and listen” - and continued.

“This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer that showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to that time was up the student scribbled down some notes and turned it over to the arbiter.

This is what the paper said. "You could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But this would be bad luck for the barometer.”

“Was that equation right?” - My son interrupted.

“Well it looks like” - I continued

“The arbiter looked at the professor, shrugged his shoulders and said – “this is not the answer that you were expecting but it is a correct answer and it does demonstrate knowledge of physics.” The arbiter ruled that the student should be given a passing grade. After the professor left the room, the arbiter looked at the student and said , “You said you were thinking of several answers – what were they?”

“Well, if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper.”

"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =2 pi square root (l /g).”

"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up." "But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'." 

My son was giggling and said, “That was the best one!”. I continued the story.

“After the student had spouted off several of these the arbiter asked the student , “You do know the answer the professor wanted don’t you? ”

The student replied - “Of course I do, I just don’t like people telling me how to think.”

I concluded, “The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for Physics”.

My son hugged me and murmured, “You are the party pooper!” and slept!

Yes, he was wrong again and this time I wasn't angry. I was not just a  party pooper, a dumb party pooper!