A few months after my little boy turned three, we went to stay with Phuphee for a few weeks. He loved playing in her garden and we would go on all sorts of adventures in the apple orchard that sprawled behind the house. It was a wonderful time, or so it seemed until he would have a tantrum.
It would start with something insignificant like him dropping a ball, and from there on it would snowball into hours of crying and screaming. What frustrated me most about the situation was that no matter what I tried, nothing would help or soothe him. Sometimes after hours of trying to distract him, I would begin to get frustrated with myself and end up scolding him. At times, it worked, and while I was grateful that it did, something about the way it ended didn’t feel right. But, I knew of no other way to console him and dealing with that failure on my part was probably harder than dealing with his emotions.
We had been at Phuphee’s for about a week and a half, when one morning a young woman with a child around the same age as my little one walked in. We were having breakfast. Phuphee had made malai tchot (malai roti), which my little boy loved. She asked the woman to sit down and join us, and then asked what she could do for her.
‘Yemis maeynyis bachas haz chu jinn tchaamut, shaayad ches nazar. Amyis deetav taeveez, ye gatchihaa theek [this little boy of mine has been possessed by a jinn, or maybe someone has given him the evil eye. Please give him a taveez so he can get better],’ she said.
Phuphee asked what exactly the matter was. The woman explained that he never listened, got angry about the smallest of things, and generally behaved like a rogue dictator. Phuphee smiled at her and asked her to come into the orchard, where I could see her talking to the woman and picking apples at the same time. After about half an hour or so, the mother and son duo left with a dozen red apples.
When Phuphee returned, I asked her what taveez (spiritual prescription) she had given them because I felt that I could probably do with one, too.
‘I told her to try making malai without boiling the milk,’ Phuphee replied.
I looked at her, confused. My little one was sitting in the corner playing with the dishes and pretending to make breakfast. Phuphee sat with her box of cigarettes, playing with them, taking them out, but not lighting them.
‘You still haven’t figured it out, have you?’ she asked.
‘The greatest responsibility you will perhaps have as a parent is to hold space for the difficult emotions your child will have. It is easy to accept your child when they are happy or even sad, but what brings real discomfort to a parent is when their child shows anger and frustration. Do you understand what I am saying?’
I thought about it and wondered if my son’s anger made me uncomfortable, and she was right. I had navigated a range of emotions with him, but it was always his anger and frustration that defeated me. And no matter what I tried, I didn’t know how to deal with it.
‘Myoan gaash [light of my eyes], anger is not the same as disrespect, remember that. Anger is simply anger. Frustration is simply frustration. You cannot stop your children from having either, but you can teach them how to deal with them.’
I sat there looking at Phuphee, and my son, and thinking about how she had dealt with my anger when I was little. I remembered her dropping down to her knees to look me in the eyes, whispering, when I too was shouting like a rogue dictator. At the time, I hadn’t understood what she was trying to do, but I knew my anger had dissipated. It was only now, sitting with her here, that I understood that she never tried to distract me from my anger. On the contrary, she let me feel it, but then helped me work my way out of it.
‘You know when I had my first child and she got to the stage of throwing tantrums I too felt frustrated. I tried disciplining her in all the usual ways, but all it did was make her afraid of me. I knew that there had to be a different way. I went back to Mitrigam [her maternal village] and spoke to Aapa. She said, ‘Taahira, in exactly the moments you want to yell is when you should lower your voice. You are the shore against whom the waves of all their emotions must break sometimes, so that they may know the strength of their own emotions and ultimately learn how to tame them. The gentler you are with them now, the gentler they will be with themselves and the world tomorrow.’
I sat there trying to gather everything she had just said and what Aapa had said to her. When we returned home, I put Phuphee’s advice into practice and often imagined myself as a never ending coastal shore and my son’s tantrums as waves breaking against me. There are still times when I fail but those are far and few in between, and as I have learned to navigate his difficult emotions, it has turned out exactly as Phuphee said it would. He too is learning how to deal with his emotions.
Saba Mahjoor, a Kashmiri living in England, spends her scant free time contemplating life’s vagaries.
Published – April 23, 2025 05:57 pm IST
