First published in Parenting magazine on April 19,1994. Magazine no longer being published.
Moments of joy are a continuous experience with a growing child. The variety and freshness of experiences builds a trail of memorabilia, and the laughter that accompanied those moments, echoes in one’s ears, way beyond the barriers of time. Not that all of it is provided by one’s child alone. In part, at least, we build up on their activities to finally create a treasure.
For example when Joy, our son turned up his lips a bit at the corners, one fine morning, and we decided he was smiling. Or, when he first began babbling and I decided what he had said was ‘Papa’ only to be confronted by Mita, my wife, insisting that it was ‘Mama’. Such anecdotes keep piling up as the child grows, but also alongside are the wide array of disturbing experiences at least that is how they appeared then, that go along, too.
When Joy was a couple of months old, one activity that he seemed to be avidly fond of was sucking his thumb. We weren’t too bothered about it. In fact it was quite a help. It kept him happily occupied. He would roll off to sleep with his thumb stuck safely in his mouth. It remained his best pacifier.
As he grew, there were exciting changes over the years and fulfilling moments for us. However the position of his thumb, safely tucked in his mouth, remained the same.
Sometime past his third birthday, we shifted to a flat in a multi storied building. Mita was getting a little upset about his thumb sucking and I was trying to play it cool. Our neighbours, however, were another story. One of the prettier mothers convinced Mita, in one devastating torrent of a lecture, about every resultant evil that could possibly be in store: his thumb growing thin – like a reed; the teeth projecting out (like fangs!); bad stomach upsets on account of sucking a dirty thumb; blah, blah…
Confronted by Mita the same evening, by all that is there to chose between the devil and the deep blue sea, I recited, rather interpreted entire paragraphs from child care books: thumb sucking is normal; up to the age of three it helps the child feel more confident. Beyond the books, I argued, it was his own thumb after all and he had a fundamental right to suck it.
Obviously, we didn’t get anywhere joy’s foggy brains detected instinctively, the likely initiation of an aggression, on his priorities in life. After all, I am sure he couldn’t be bothered less whether he was going to sport a thumb or a reed, tomorrow… As for fangs instead of teeth, it didn’t appear to make any sense to him. He took to sucking his thumb a little more vigorously, hiding it behind him when we, I am afraid, admonished him.
We weren’t too bothered about it, in fact it was quite a help, it kep him happily occupied. He would rolloff to sleep with his thumb stuck safely in his mouth.
In a multi-storied of flats there is hardly a chance of avoiding a pretty neighbour. The worst experienced as far as I am concerned is getting caught while taking the lift together. Our pretty neighbour was very fond of Joy and made it a point to enquire after him in detail during any such mishaps. The effect on Mita was predictable. Very soon joy’ s thumb sucking because the bane of our lives.
I tried to restore normalcy in a situation that had become rather tenuous by now. Mita’s new friends in the colony included some more mothers who pitched into the fray. Each mother, in any case, had a different story to tell. But, none of them came out with a story that had the child sucking his thumb well past three years of age.
My attempts at justifying Joy’s thumb sucking, by quoting child care books, met their Waterloo when pitted against the collective wise dom of practical experience. And to top if all when Mita informed her friends that joy was still going strong with his feeding bottle, all hell broke loose.
“Really, you can’t afford to be so careless was the unanimous admonishment, the more vocal mothers delivered; a unanimity garnered by grading the less aggressive ones into agreement, no doubt.
That night after Joy had been put to bed and Mita had gently pulled out his thumb from his mouth, we talked of nothing else but thumb sucking. An answer had to be found, not withstanding the fact that most thumb sucking children are very happy children, or that dentists deny the possibility of thumb sucking having any effect, on a child’s permanent teeth. Of course, the decision not to use mitts or silly pastes on his fingers was one we stuck to, yet Joy had to be denied his fond pastime. Mita was quite depressed.
I can’t imagine, when is so satisfying about thumb sucking; she said plaintively. It was getting late, I was getting quite bored as I turned on my side and offered, “I guess the proof of the pudding lies in eating”.
Not one to give up easily, Mita now decided to involve Joy in the decision making process. Detailing the pros and cons of thumb sucking to him, she pointed out that there were better games to play; that the skin on his thumb was inevitably tender and at times even bled; that good boys were boys who were not into thumb sucking, and so on and so forth. Such laudable lectures about such explicit truths became routine, without the end of the road anywhere in sight. The two of us,
in any case, had been firmly put in the dock by the mother’s lobby, by now.
I thought the pain would never end till one morning when Mita whispered conspiratorially, I leaned forward with eager anticipation; may be a digression from the prevailing lassitude, I hoped!
“Don’t look at him now. But his thumb is out. Unstuck,” she whispered.
To cut a long story short, his thumb was out, and unbelievably for keeps. Our life style changed. The pretty mother avoided us now, thanks to, I suspect, Mita cornering her once too often. Life was suddenly gay, wanton and what have you.
But when I met the mother’s lobby in strength next, they were certainly more surefooted than our last encounter.
“But for us…… blah, blah……….
“Agreed, I nodded.
- SK Chatterji
Comments