Words

Have you ever heard of the phrase "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus"? Sometimes, when a man says something, the woman who hears it may hear something different, and vice versa.

For example, when the wife tells the husband, "Nothing." when the husband asks her what is wrong, be forewarned that it is in actual fact not "nothing". Something is brewing.

Similarly, when a female says "no", she sometimes doesn't mean "no". She's just being polite.

The same can happen between parents and their children. It is not easy bringing up children. There is tremendous stress for the parent, especially when the child is of school-going age. It has been years since the parent is in school and as such, sometimes the parent does not understand the stress that the child is going through in school. Herein lies the problem. The child is stressed out from school whereas the parent is stressed out from making ends meet and raising the child. Invariably, there may be occasions when tempers fly and words are said that end up hurting the other party where the person saying those words may not mean it in the way that the recipient hears it.

For example, when a parent says to the child in frustration, "I do not understand how I could have given birth to you.", the child interprets it as the parent regretting the birth of the child. However, it could be a case where the parent is frustrated at something that the child has done wrong and is merely venting his frustration.

Parents have to learn to be more mindful about the sensitivities of the child and remember that the child may interpret what the parents say in a different manner from what the parent intended to say.

Children, on the other hand, should understand the difficulties that parents go through raising the children in a fast-paced society which places a lot of emphasis on paper chase and also struggling to make ends meet in a country where inflation is continually on the rise but salaries do not seem to increase in tandem.

Enough of insights for one day....

LSD has just given me some tips on formatting of my posts. Thanks, girl.

Hi Eddy,

(a) I have a feedback regarding your blog. When you type your post, please click on the button that says "Justify Full". That way, your text will not be centralised. For a sample of what a "Justify Full" post will look like, please see today's post of mine (as compared to yesterday's post).

(b) I understand that you logged onto msn after I logged out last night. Such a pity because I was hoping to chat with you. I hope that we will have the opportunity to chat via msn tonight. However, please remember that school comes first, so please finish your homework before you ask your Mummy for permission to log onto msn.