Teenage boy problems and padi field memories
I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know my son any more. He sleeps late, his room is untidy and he goes to school when he feels like it. When I ask him to go to sleep he barks at me and almost bites my head off it seems.
I am a single mother. I have raised him until this age and this is the thanks I get. So not worth it. His life is so easy. He just reads his Doraemon comics and plays internet games.
When I was a child, I had no shoes to wear. I worked in the padi fields from five years old because I was the eldest. We would leave the long house at five in the mornings and come back at six in the evenings. I would fall asleep in the sampan on the way home. I was always so tired.
Padi was everything. We would harvest it together during the first round. Some padi would not be ready for harvesting. So we children do the second harvesting and sell at the grand price of 20 sen per gantang. I felt rich. I could buy pretty ribbons. Shoes were just too expensive.
At the age of seven, I was severely beaten because the rice was not properly cooked. The wood was too high for me to fetch. It all tumbled down and got wet. I told my sister i would not cook poorly cooked rice again. I have never cooked poorly cooked rice again.
We often just ate rice with sugar. Sugar was cheap then. At the age of thirteen, inai ( mum in Iban ) bought black sauce for the very first time. It was very expensive then for us. We enjoyed it so much and felt like royalty.
I also spent a lot of time catching snails for sale. It is very sweet and can be eaten with a needle. Have you tried it? Haven’t you heard of tekuyong? My mum didn’t mind us tramping the padi fields searching for snails as it brought back income for the family. The padi fields were our work place, our playground and our school of life.
Life was difficult. Life was hard. We survived and made efforts to improve ourselves. Inai would use the broom to hit us if we were slack. I don’t blame her. There were so many of us. She had nine children.
Now, I have this son. He plays truant. Feeds on my food, sleeps in a room in my house is taller and bigger than me. Did I work so hard to produce a person like this? I should not have left my long house and padi fields. In a town like Sibu, children can so easily mix with the wrong crowd 
Bengbeng | interesting characters
yes… this is the difference between the older generation and younger generation.
my mother also always compare me with her older days… she always say how lucky am i and the children now…
children now like don’t know how to appreciate… included me…
i knew how to appreciate them after they have gone
My dad always compare his time and ours and then our time with our children but my mum will tell him, “Last time and now are not the same. Things change, people move one.” My dad complains that our kids are very spoilt but what he doesn’t realise is he is one of the biggest culprit when it comes to spoiling his grandchildren.
I do empathise with what this mother is saying. I can also say my kids go to bed late, their room is a mess. Waste food and eat my cupboard bare and my kids also speak their mind. She is not the only facing the same problems.
The only thing I would be concern is as to why her son is not going to school when he should. Could it be perhaps he is not coping thus not enjoying school?
A very bright kid but he grew up too fast and too tall. doesnt belong among his frens in school i think
As I read this, I think of Elvis’ song “In the Ghetto”. The vicious circle goes round & round from one generation to the next, unless broken by one that gains a good education in between.
I grew up in a generation that was moulded by a school system that seriously looked into moral &/or religious education that went hand-in-hand with other basics. Save for a few die-hards, even those who dropped out after primary 6 had enough moral training in them to make good in life. I’m quite disappointed with our current system that has left out or poorly implemented this vital part of education. Even the emphasis of religious education has been very lopsided in favor of only one religion. At the risk of being controversial, I have to state that the rest of the population has to look for their own solutions, it seems.
Lian Chye, this comment of yours can be a post in its own right. very true.
I hope this is just an identity crisis and that he resolves it.
In the past, people more or less, by fashion and rod, have been more acceptable of what they are told and life was more structured and predictable.
This does not work anymore. Children are now thrown into this unstructured chaos to find their own way. There is another hell in having to define your own identity, your own meaning, your own passion.
For years, as I struggled with it, I gave my parents hell. The greater the rod and anger, the greater was my rebellion.
In the end, I was given a lot of space and time. Being alone allowed me to hear my own voice, my own peace.
I am certainly not saying what worked for me will work for your son. Who am I to give an “easy solution”?
This is just my attempt to show you another side by sharing my own experience. Insolence is not what it seems sometimes - and it’s hard to talk.
I can only pray he doesn’t lose his way. I hope he finds his own calling, and in the end, find his way back home, back to you.
Wow. Thanks. This is a heck of a comment. He has to find his own way. His bent is for the mechanical stuff like foxong engines. But he is so lazy. you wouldnt believe it. Btw he isnt my son.