Motherhood's Best Kept Secret....

One night,not so long ago....As mum was drifting off to sleep the phone rang....It was a 19 years old boy,who is studying at University in Utar,Kampar calling to say that he had too much of stress and he had been wandering around the city ever since,not knowing what to do...she told him back to home tomorrow....He arrived looking a wreck but after a good sleep and some home cooking,he began to feel his old self again....

The next afternoon he told me more n more n more....A moment arrived when she couldn't help asking herself..."should I be hearing of this?"....It wasn't that she was shocked....The boy reminded her of herself in her own student years,but with 1 important difference....She would never ever have confided in her parents this way....

Girls we knew then were fairly open with their mothers,but none of my male contemporaries would ever have admitted asking their mothers for advice...Despite all our talk about how important it was for a men to let down their defences and learn how to express their feelings, most of us still secretly felt that any man who depended on his mother too much was a bit of a mummy's boy....

However,mother can expect to be relied on almost indefinitely for the type of advice that call on her experience of the outside world...A generation ago,it was accepted that son would eventually leave their mothers to join the world of men and work....Mothers put their 18years in and then opened the door to allow their sons to move into jobs for life....

But things don't work that way anymore....In a world of short-term contract,downsizing and redundancy...Even the most promising and ambitious of our children will go through many career highs and lows during their twenties and whenever they hit those depths, many of them will return to the nest...A typical son will continue to be at least partly dependent on his mother well past the age of 18....

Many of her friends are surprised at this reluctance of their 20-something sons to break away....But always remember this "Mums have always been easier to talk to,they are more cuddly than their father and son realize early on that their mother are more accepting of human frailty.."

They are also better able to see through the mask of apparent self confidence...When the boy was growing up,mother always maintained a fairly invincible front...The boy early imaginary play involved sieges,ambushes and surprise attacks...She starting point,though was always a danger against which the boy needed to defend himself and yet the boy used the game to convince himself that "I could PREVAIL..."

When the boy got older and had to go to University with other teenager...All too often there were situation in which she didn't....Mother had to teach the boy how to put put new defences so that his rougher classmate would not see his weaknesses....

In the boy teens,his mum used many of these same tricks to keep him at a bay...If his mum drop him anywhere to meet his friends, the boy insisted her to drop him off out of sight of where they were waiting...But occasionally,a confidential mood would come over him and he would tell her whatever happened to be on his mind....

A friends told her too...Now a days sons will tell mum more than their fathers told their mother,because mother have brought us up to do so....Our norm has been to empathize with children when they tell parent about their actions or feelings, whereas the previous generation tended to be shocked...

And there is another important change...Most of mother took pains to reassure their son that it was okay for them to show physical affection or cry when they were upset...If the boy are not so anxious now about showing their emotion,mother efforts in this are have not been in vain...This seems to be backed up by research,which shows that boys call their mothers on their mobile phones more than anyone else....

But don't assume that girls are any tougher than boys....Daughter need their mothers too....Certainly I know how much my sister need my mother...But this continuing mother-daughter bond is something that I expected....

What mother didn't anticipate was for the same thing to happen to his son....She assumed she would lose him,just like all the experts said....It maybe that they were wrong all alone that the sons have always confided in their mothers and just made sure that no one else knew.....Have mother stumbled on motherhood's best kept secret?? Even if she have...It doesn't diminish her sense of wonder....It still like getting a present to her which never expected...

She= The Mother
Him= The boy
By:Terrance Tan