{"id":316,"date":"2009-12-29T09:04:47","date_gmt":"2009-12-29T04:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/uncategorized\/the-he-will-listen-if-you-tell-him-syndrome"},"modified":"2009-12-29T09:04:47","modified_gmt":"2009-12-29T04:04:47","slug":"the-he-will-listen-if-you-tell-him-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/uncategorized\/the-he-will-listen-if-you-tell-him-syndrome","title":{"rendered":"The “He will listen if you tell him” syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was triggered by this exchange between @netshrink<\/a> and @sarikaphatak<\/a> on twitter.<\/p>\n

@netshrink said: "Why does every woman want me (the doctor) to tell her husband to do things she wants him to do eg. exercise, not drink, come home on time"<\/p>\n

and @sarikaphatak replied: <\/span><\/span>"@netshrink<\/a> that's called 'Sonarane kaan tochane' \ud83d\ude42 you have much more cred than the so called 'nagging'. effectiveness needs to be studied"<\/span><\/span>

I have also been in a similar situation (i.e. situation similar to @netshrink's) often, except that instead of woman and husband, in my case it is typically mom and child.<\/span><\/span> It's either a school kid who's probably not studying as much as the mom wants him to, or a college student who is partying too much, or in some cases son\/daughter of marriageable age who is rejecting the parents' matrimonial suggestions.<\/p>\n

The mom ends up telling me: "He will listen if you tell him." <\/p>\n

You know what? Most probably, I'm not going to tell him.<\/p>\n

The reason your kid listens to me is because I don't nag him about every damn, trivial thing that you feel compelled to improve in your kid.<\/p>\n

The reason your kid listens to me is because of the 100 things that I feel like telling him, I only tell him 3, and keep the remaining 97 to myself. Because, frankly, (and this is true of everything in life), of the 100 things that you worry about, only 3 are really worth worrying about.<\/p>\n

No, I am not going to tell your kid to read "educational" books instead of the "trash" he reads. I think the "trash" he reads is fine. No, I'm not going to tell your kid to not play the obscene 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.' There's nothing we can really do about it, and might as well focus on ensuring that he grows up with the correct values, inspite of playing GTA: Vice City. No, I'm not going to convince your daughter that she should agree to marry that nice Software Engineer in New York, who makes a lot of money, but is not interested in movies, or books, or sports, or travel. The reason your daughter listens to me is because I don't give her stupid advice like this. <\/p>\n

Indian mythology has this interesting concept. Sadhu<\/i>s and rishi<\/i>s acquired great powers through penance, but their powers reduced every time the were used. Hence they had to be a little careful before using their powers and randomly cursing people. That, I find is a very useful piece of insight – your power increases when you don't use it, and decreases when you use it. ("No, I am not going to use my blog to promote your event, because if promoted every silly event, then people will stop reading my blog. I can only promote events that are really worthwhile.")<\/p>\n

Now, if I could only follow the above advice when parenting my own kids…. but damnit, it's too difficult to do on a 24×7 basis!<\/p>\n

Posted via email<\/a> from Navin’s posterous<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was triggered by this exchange between @netshrink and @sarikaphatak on twitter. @netshrink said: "Why does every woman want me (the doctor) to tell her husband to do things she wants him to do eg. exercise, not drink, come home on time" and @sarikaphatak replied: "@netshrink that's called 'Sonarane kaan tochane' \ud83d\ude42 you have … Continue reading The “He will listen if you tell him” syndrome<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smritiweb.com\/navin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}