The odd couple
To many parents, the baby monitor is probably one of the greatest inventions ever. It’s that gadget that parents can place in the room of their children to monitor them while they are in a different room or part of the house. I particularly love the voice-activated type that only turns on when a sound is made and turns off automatically when things quiet down. Although it’s really just a simple radio transmitter and receiver, it has given modern-day parents enormous freedom to do other things instead of standing guard inside or outside their children’s rooms all the time. It has also made it much easier to let the children sleep in another room and thus allow moms and dads some “quality time.”
As its name implies, the baby monitor is meant primarily to keep tabs on infants and toddlers. However, for one reason or another, we have continued to use them on our two children even though they are now older. My daughter is 10 while my son is eight and they have been roommates for close to seven years now. After bedtime prayers, it has become customary for them to go to our room only when they wake up in the morning. When they need something at night, they call us via the baby monitor. This has unexpectedly given me one of my fondest treasures as a father, and that is, to listen to the two of them on the baby monitor chattering endlessly before they finally go to sleep. Their discussions are sometimes so animated and their topics so varied, that it feels like I’m listening to Oprah and Jay Leno. At times, we literally have to go to their room and tell them to quit talking already and to call it a night.
The funny thing about it is that while they certainly enjoy talking to each other all the time, it would also not be too surprising to find them at each other’s throats. In fact, their personalities can be so different that they often remind me of the two lead characters in that famous play written by Neil Simon, The Odd Couple. The play, which later on also became a hit TV sitcom, was about two seemingly incompatible roommates. One was neat and uptight while the other one was sloppy and easygoing. Their very different personalities and lifestyles led to many conflicts yet they still somehow became the closest of friends. My son can be a model boy scout, but he does have a wild side. On the other hand, my daughter is moody and melancholic. And so it is that the relationship of my two children closely resembles the weather. One second, it’s all cloudless and sunny and the next second, it’s thunder and lightning. I remember my daughter in tears recently, complaining that her brother was driving her crazy. He would not stop singing to her the refrain of the 1966 hit song, Wild Thing by the English band The Troggs (“Wild thing! You make my heart sing!”). A week or so later, my daughter was in tears again as she could not find her flashlight. She said she needed it to read when she wakes up very early in the morning. We told her to just open the curtains a bit, but she gloomily replied that her brother would wake up and complain. Thus does she sometimes exact vengeance on her brother by just being herself. It was as if my wife and I were transported back to the glory days of radio drama as we listened to her go on and on in Shakespearean-like soliloquy from the baby monitor. Finally, in exasperation, we hear her brother interrupt her, desperately assuring her that she can open the curtain as wide and as early as she wants in the morning and so please, please, can they just both go to sleep already. My wife and I almost fell out of our bed laughing.
Of course, their spats do also sometimes get out of hand and turn into real cat-and-dog fights. We are pretty confident that we give them the same amount of attention and that we treat them fairly and equitably. So the fact that they still fight has sent me many a time into the Internet researching about sibling rivalry. If there is one sure way to get me to lose my temper, it is for them to fight with each other. Apparently, however, experts say that losing my cool is the last thing I should do on these occasions. The second is to not take (or not to even appear to take) sides. Even if one child is at fault, it may be better to rebuke that child when things cool down a bit and NOT in the presence of the other child. As hard as it may sometimes be and unless their argument becomes physical or deteriorates to really hurtful talk, parents should just let them be and let them resolve things by themselves. Given my parenting style, however, this is not easy for me to do. But at least I am reassured when nighttime comes and their arguments often magically disappear amid their chitchat. They may really be an odd couple, but I guess they already somehow know that family is forever; and that at the end of the day, blood is indeed thicker than water.
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