Bikram Vohra provides some parenting tips on World Father’s Day
You know your kids have grown up when:
@Their music and yours has nothing in common.
@ You find yourself telling your daughter she can’t possibly be serious about going out dressed like that!! You say, ‘No, sorry, you can’t, you are too young’ and that is a signal for a roaring argument.
@ You see a bunch of kids lounging about the supermarket, all shabby and slouchy and you wonder what today’s children are coming to and then you realise one of them is your boy.
@ You tease your son about his girl-friends and instead of being annoyed he likes it.
@ You say be back by ten and your kid says, whaaat!!, we aren’t leaving till half nine.
@ Your son thrashes you at tennis and you were really trying.
@ Your daughter asks you to please respect her privacy and also not check her mobile phone. And you feel so shut out.
@ They don’t want you to entertain their friends, please, please don’t make pleasant chitchat, just leave us alone.
@ You feel nostalgia looking through photo albums when the children were children.
@ You are sitting alone and it hits you that they are making a life of their own and you look at your wife and she and you share a tender little lump of bittersweet regret that the fledglings have learnt to fly.
@ When you find yourself disapproving of all their friends.
@ You wonder what they are teaching in schools these days.
@ The often used phrase is ‘You don’t understand’. That is followed by, ‘you won’t understand,’ and ‘why can’t you understand?’
@ You try to shield them from violence, vulgarity and other seamy things and you find they already know. You find your son is taller than you, and your daughter than her mother.
@ They don’t want to come to places you want to go to and meet people you want them to meet… Everything for them is either a drag or a bore.
@ Your son doesn’t want to be the best tennis player in the world and you have to accept he has a mind of his own. He does not want to be a surgeon either.
@ He pierces his earlobe. She buys a leather jacket. They gang up against you. You wait up for them late into the night and they don’t even notice. And you love them that much more. Except sometimes it is tough to figure out why.