Parent's Love for their son

With my wife's profound blog on male and female, it made me recalled an incident when i was a teenage. Come to think of it, this is what can be termed as mental support.

Since young, i grew up in a family where praising was never a habit not matter how well you do. Instead, you will get reprimand for the bad that you performed. This behavior was craved deep inside my shadows never to expected anythings for the good deeds and never to make any mistakes and i can only envy my classmates getting rewards for doing well. All i got was a verbal acknowledge from my dad for scoring 90 marks for mathematics, nothing else was shown on his face not even a smile.

Year passed and i grown into a teenage not to mentioned bearing the burden along with me. There was once that i did badly for one of my tests and as usual, i got the "kaya and butter" session, it was then that i had my last straws. I blasts out at them spilling out all the resent that had built up in my brains all these years. "It isn't fair at all, no matter how well i did in the pass, i never get a single praise from you. And i just need to fail once and i will get a beating, what is this?" My parent replied "Son, you are still small, you will never understand our love for you". Yes, i don't understand at all at that point of time, to me it is just loads of rubbish.

Soon after the incident, i was never interested in studying again so much so that i ended up repeating my secondary 3. My dad was made to see the vice-president regarding this. Earlier that morning, he drove me to the school. It was silent in the car, no one talked and in my mind, i was wondering how am i going to die back at home later. Will it be belt, hanger, feather duster or cane? Things worsen when my classmate whom i meet outside the office told me that he is happy to see me next time and we will be in the same class. I don't dare to look at my dad keeping my head low. After the session, he never uttered any single word, he fetched me home and left. I can still vividly remembered the disappointed look on his face until today. My mum was equally disappointed, but since she make sure that i had enough to eat and my daily lift is well taken care of. Guilt filled my heart and mind from that day onwards and i swear that i will never let them be disappointed again.

For the repeated year, i cut all nonsense activities and studied hard and my hard work was pay off, i managed to achieve very good result in the class. Upon getting the result, i rushed home to show it to them and they were happier. At that time, even a simple verbal acknowledgment is more than enough for me, let alone a smile on their face. That was the turning point in my life. And slowly i get to learned that they were actually praising about me to the relative all the while, it is just my ignorance not to notice it. They were always proud of me no matter what i have done.

This is how i realized that not all things need to be measure, parent love for their son need not be determined by how many praise or gifts they get. It is the support and care that really matters. And if my parent were to ask me the same old question again "I can proudly reply them that i had understand how much they loved me and i am proud to be their son"