The Blame Game – Who wins: Kids or Parents

The Blame game starts with child labour

While we are living in an era of accusations and the blame game, I have also come under one such major one at home. It’s called child labour! My kids have always complained that I take unnecessary advantage of them. Some of the very serious allegations are that whenever they enter my room, I entrust them with the job of either switching off the bedroom light or increasing the speed of the fan or fetching a glass of water or getting the blanket. They say that they lose precious time in doing such mundane jobs which they could have better utilised it in finishing of one new episode on Netflix.

On the other hand I and my wife have also accused them of giving excuses so as to avoid a work assigned. This story of blame game carries on in every Indian household.

Giving instructions to kids can boomerang

My domestic help is on an annual pilgrimage to his home town. In his absence, even my wife has also come under the radar. There are times when she asks my daughter to lay out the table and hell breaks loose! I don’t blame my daughter much as the law firm in which she works drains her out in a 10-hour shift. And when the temperature on the dining table starts rising, I serve the food on my plate quietly avoiding any controversy and even clean the plate in the washbasin (Meeky mouse). Hope Kailash Satyarthi who won the Noble prize for child labour is not reading my post.

So why this non-cooperation movement? I had heard about one led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 but not a one in 2019. I decided to explore!

The Domestic bank

The first thing I decided to observe was what works with kids especially if you have to get work done from them. I told my wife that this time I will not transfer their monthly expense till the time they ask for it. But kids are much smarter and know how to make their way. For every outing, they would borrow money from my wife or my mother saying that they will return it once Dad transfers the money in their account. On the other hand, this was a win-win situation for them. While the wife never hesitated in giving money to my son or daughter, my mother was the more magnanimous one. So, if my son will ask for Rs 500, she will give him Rs 1000 with very liberal repayment terms. In fact,most of the time it becomes a bad debt for her which is not recoverable

Granting Permissions

Therefore, I discovered that money works only till a limited time with kids.  What works with them is granting permission. So, if you want that kids should listen to your instructions just practice a barter system with them. Give with one hand and take away with the other! What are these permissions which kids actually want? And what can you bargain from them? There, are many but I would like to state only a few:

The trade-off to avoid getting into the blame game

1.Going out with friends for a movie – Not much bargaining power. You can probably ask your son to go and pick the suit from the dry cleaner after the movie in lieu of the permission.

2.Late night parties – Good bargaining power. You give your permission only if your son promises to take grandmother to the optometrist for her new spectacle or to a nearby temple the next day.

3.Late night parties with booze – You normally deny the permission here but if there is too much social pressure (wife, mother, and daughter) then you get a leeway to bargain better. You can ask your son for a non-alcoholic clause. Apart from that, he has to fill-up his Engineering entrance exam or the GRE form.

4.Daughter is bringing friends home for a night stay – One of the best situations for parents, especially wife. She grants permission only if the daughter cleans up her bedroom and also organise the wardrobe.

5.Daughter wants to go to Goa with her college friends – Great bargaining power. You can ask your daughter to join you for a family lunch hosted by your sister-in-law.

6.Son wants to throw a party for his friends at a nearby pub on his birthday – You deny permission, not for the alcohol reason alone but because it is an expensive affair. You bargain for something hard like he will spend less time on Netflix and more on studies. Or take the dog out, at least once in a day, for his walk.

In this give and take blame game driven purely by the power of love, most of the times its kids who emerge as winners. But it is also a game where you still keep smiling even after losing the fight.

Read more such fun and humour stories by clicking on following links:

The Broom Maid

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