Which Parenting Tribe?

Having internal conversation on something for some periods until it transforms into a writing these days. The more I read, the merrier those talkings inside the head.

This topic has been on my head for quite long time. The last time I wrote on similar topic was almost three years ago in this post. Many things happened within these years. Many books read, more meetings with different kind of people, and it gives more insights and different perspectives.

When the doctor once said that I am an avid believer of French Parenting, only a little part of that is true. It is also totally understandable when I was raised french way too. Although I am abosulutely in for their three main items which are eat, sleep, and say bonjour, but, for certain parts, I think French mothers might deny me to be a part of their group if they see how I take lunch lightly or knowing that I breastfed my baby for more than 2 years.

When some close family considered me as a strict Tiger Mom who filled her child’s day with schedule, the real chinese or east asian tigress will laugh out loud. The schedule part might be yes, but what kind of tiger mom allow her child to play game everyday, allow sleepover, not pushing the child doing hours of drilling, yet allow so many hours for leisure reading about anything, but not sitting and studying doing worksheets. A big grumpy cat might be yes, but tiger? I can see they are smirking on that idea. No tiger mom is this ‘laid back’.

When I sometimes considered myself (or maybe dying to be part of) as a Scandinavian mom. But, the real ones would be too shocked if they see how different I interpret the word ‘relax’, how little hours I assign for outdoor, and how packed the schedule the little girl has daily or how early we start our day. They will ask me to omit everything I have done and replaced them with some real leisure and pleasure for children.

I can go on comparing few more but let’s stop here.

One thing that came to my thinking, the more books I read, more examples I see, I found that it’s totally hard to define an Indonesian parenting way. Those countries that has country parenting label have things that are clearly defined by the government, applied to everyone without exception, and persevered across generations.

Here, there’s no clear goal, let alone guidelines, no strong foundation, and what define us mostly in general, in my opinion is not a good character. We’re not famous for our strong work ethic, not for honesty, not for intelligence, not for the good habits like reading, not for good education and health service, at least not famous for important items needed to build a well-rounded adult.

Because there’s no clear goal, that’s why there’s no support system built. No proper pedestrian walk in a whole city to safely walk (even an area with pedestrian walk taken over by street food seller or motorcycle), public parks are getting better, but still not enough, free libraries are rare, inequalities in school services (and it’s crazy), there’s almost no single important thing that we could rely on. The absence of the country means a lot. But, since we (currently) have no choice but to live in an this absolute non-kids friendly city and country, we can’t do much about that.

I remembered when I went Hajj, one of the official said how different Malaysian and Indonesian pilgrims were. Different in terms of manner.

It was packed during hajj session, so finding a spot for salah quite tricky because I wanted to have a Ka’bah view. But, since it was only a petite me, it was actually easy to squeeze in. It was easy to recognize Indonesian pilgrims from their mukena and Indonesian also brought their huge praying mat, so I asked some space to share from them.

Few times did this, can you guess what happened? Almost none did. Instead of giving a little bit space for me, they spreaded their legs instead. At first, I was a bit flustered. But, after several times of rejections, I was getting used to it and moved on.

Then who were the one who called me, even from a far and asked me to join? The Malaysian pilgrims.

“Come here, there’s a lot of space here!”

(Insert flat smile)

It was more clearly shown also during Mina. Malaysian (and Singaporean) tents were placed on the main road, closed to the jumroh, and their tents were so cozy and comfy, while Indonesian tents (pilgrims who went with government service, it would be totally different with one who went with privat service, again, see the inequality?) were located on the top of the hill, small tents, extremely hot, and being in one area with other third world countries-whose cleanliness manner was, should I say scary?

You’ll surely see huge difference in manner between children (citizen) who were being taken care well by their parents (government) with those ones who didn’t receive the same level of care or close to being neglected.

You’ll only be able to share, be it love, money or everything, when you’re already filled with it first. Those who spreaded their legs, refused to share a bit of space,even inside the holy mosque, maybe that was what happened to them too. Sharing is not something they would do because maybe, they don’t feel (have) enough for themselves.

It also reminded me of when I visited one of the food bazaar event in London. I came with high expectation that I would finally meet bunch of people where I could have a chat in my language, but, not until an hour, I decided to go home.

The ambiance was so cold. Most of the food seller gave cold response when I asked about the food (of course in Bahasa), but, but, when a foreigner came to their stall, oh la la, so much warmth felt in the air.

No wonder we’re famous as friendly people by the foreigner.

Above is one of the pages from my current reading. It also applies here. What we value mostly here are material or something tangible. How much money one makes, how many cars or things you own, how big one house is, how much followers in social media, what position one is at work, and many more. Everything that is easily measured and judged by the paper.

We also rarely apply delay gratification here. Everyone wants to have or achieve everything in an instant. No wonder, no matter how often it happened in the past, the victim of fraud would always be available in this country.

In book stores, there are books for how to get rich quickly in many different perspectives, but none how to raise an honest kid, how to live right and enough.

Getting rich in an instant seems becoming the ultimate goal. No matter the way you take to get there. No matter how many rules you break to make it happen. As long as you end up with more money.

Why? Because that’s how you’re being valued here.

So, is it wrong to be rich? Bien sur que non. Even in Islam, it’s strongly recommended so you can contribute better. But, many times here, being rich means you have the permit to be asshole and playing power to abuse those who are less fortunate.

Fiuh. Another post that becomes another rant about being a frustrated parent in this country.

Back to parenting tribe.

When we look at certain local parenting tribe, I’ll surely stand with the chinese and bataknese. In 5 years, we have been working with two bataknese young adults, and I love working with them. Hard working, diligent, fast learner, resilience when dealing with complaints, problem solving-oriented (the one that I wrote here is about one of them), no quitting for cheap reason, and they say what they mean, no beating around the bush. Compared to those javanese ones, I prefer having non-javanese. Nothing about being racist here. Just point out what I have dealt in real life.

Reading these books doesn’t mean finding which one you belong to but more of knowing, or even better, applying, if there’s some practices from those parenting types could also work for you and suits your personality and family. Of course, it should be aligned with your goals.

From French, I took the sleep and eat properly part. From the tigers, I am totally in for the discipline part, no matter how many considered it is so tough. We can see how accomplished those tigress kids are academically. From Scandinavians, I took the play part, assigning outdoor hours, and taking care more of little important things.

What have been done are surely still far from ideal, yet all we could do is just trying our best in hoping the little girl could become the part of world citizen tribe, in spite of growing up in a non-ideal place for children.

Be as discplined as the chinese.

Eat well like french.

Living life to the fullest, simple and resilience like Scandinavian.

Be tough and mindful like Japanese.

Be smart and honest like German.

Maybe that way she could be a proud Indonesian.