13 June 2008- When parenting 24/7 in not enough

I was checking my emails when I read an article on a Tokyo knifeman. Last Sunday, there was a stabbing rampage in Tokyo whereby a teenager drove a truck into Tokyo’s crowded district of Akihabara, the hub of Japan’s comic-book and video-game subculture. He swerved the vehicle into pedestrians, jumped out and started a stabbing spree with a survivor knife in one hand and a smaller knife in another. Five people died and twelve were wounded. He is currently in custody of prosecutors, who could press charges that lead to the death penalty.

Reporters interviewed his parents and his dad apologised and bowed deeply and repeatedly in front of national TV. His distraught mum cried and collapsed after the apology. On the eve of the rampage, the teenager posted in the internet that “I had been forced to play the good boy since I was little” His parents would sometimes complete his homework for him; “I was perfect in my studies as I got prizes for what a parent wrote or draw. As they wanted to brag about me to other people, they would finish everything up to make me look perfect”

Reading the article caused an unsettling stir in my heart. I could imagine how devastated his parents must have felt as it could be just another ordinary day and never in their wildest dreams would they have thought their son could be planning such a terrible activity. One step in the wrong direction seems to have changed their family lives overnight.

As parents, we will always want the best for our children. I can put myself in the parents’ shoes and visualise the image of a mother reprimanding a child when he misbehaves, telling him to be a good boy and not to do this, not to do that. In fact, I recalled the time in primary school where I was tasked to make a kite during art & craft and my dad completed the project for me as I had absolutely no idea how to. And yes, I got an A for that fabulous kite.

However, is wanting the best for our children wrong? How and when do we draw the fine line of leading them in the right path and not cause them to be over independent on us? How do we know how to GUIDE and not to INSTRUCT? How do we make them see that the best to us is also the best for them without them thinking we are simply too controlling and they can hardly breathe?

There is no easy answer to these questions but then again, there shouldn’t be.