The regular visitors!

These are four avian visitors I come across almost everyday on a nutmeg tree with dry twigs, in front of our cottage. They come one after the other between day break and sunrise. All the four are small birds probably less than ten centimetres in length. 

One feature that is common to them is their flight route. They fly between trees as if they have a flight map. They visit the same trees each morning. They have a habit of regularity. They are conditioned by an instinct.

I come across a struggle some parents face in their lives. They do not seem to succeed in enabling their children to have 'pattern' to their daily rhythm. Many parents would have liked their children to follow a rhythm of sequence of activities each day, so that their lives follow a structure and order.  

One couple who while talking about their nine year daughter said, that from waking her up in the morning to seeing her off in the school bus, they have to be after her. She spends her summer holiday with her maternal grandparents. While being with them, she acts as a responsible child needing no attention to structure her day. 

It seemed to me that the child is naturally habitual but something in her home environment makes her behave differently. This is one instance of how some children feel so controlled that they silently react to the pressure put on them by being negative. The more parents are insistent, the least complaint they are!

I feel that there is so much emphasis on parenting, that parents loose sight of the childhood aspirations or likes or dislikes. 

While talking to this child privately, she told me that, 'parents decide giving her no choice'. She illustrated this by telling me about her mother's compulsion to drink a cup of milk as soon as she gets up. She is not fond of milk, but she has no freedom but not drink.

I had a long bargaining to do with the parents to free her of having to drink milk in the morning. Three weeks alter, when they visited, the child and parents talked to me about the change in the morning rhythm, much to the delight of the child and her parents.   

We choose our habits. When a habit is imposed, it becomes a pressure or a burden. 

These four birds tell me a lot about freedom of choice and a rhythm to their daily living!   

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)