Sunday, May 06, 2007 Cariño: Bogeyman By Linda Grace Cariño Paradigm shift
I HAD recent occasion to be made into a bogeyman. It happened when a mother told her child to behave or else Tita Linda would get angry and send said child away. The mother then looked at me and asked me to confirm this, in front of the child.
It is a sadly common parental/care-giving ploy to create a bogeyman and threaten a child with dire consequences to emanate from the bogeyman if the child does not do as told. I say sadly because the use of bogeymen to elicit desired behavior from a child is to my mind a terror tactic that has little place in the realm of good rearing practices. It is also a habit borne of either lazy or unenlightened parenting. Or both.
A parent/care-giver responsible for rearing a child has to, like it or hate it, teach his/her charge. Teach good behavior as against not, good language as against trash talk, quality ideas as against the unworthy, and good feelings as against uncontrolled emotions. This is old hat to some, news to others, and unthinkable to many. But slowly, the number who realizes that parenting has to be a skilled, deliberate act of teaching grows. In the incident earlier narrated, I simply had the misfortune to be with one who is both unenlightened and lazy about parenting.
When the mother in the incident asked me to confirm my bogeyman status, I told her, in the Tagalog vernacular she chooses to affect despite its alien-ness to her, to do her own work. I mean, please. Ladies and other co-parents, do let's take responsibility for what we input into our children's psyches. If you must use a bogeyman, at least have some integrity about it and make that bogeyman be yourself.
