TIS the season. One of Malaysia’s best liked and most embraced traditions — by locals and foreigners alike — is upon us: the Hari Raya open house season is here.
We open our houses and gardens to friends, friends of friends, neighbours and even strangers. Nice!
But do we open our hearts, our minds to them also?
Madame Harum makes the best beef rendang ever, while the lemang at the Hassan open house is not to be missed. The ladies of the house smile in humble pride over these well-deserved compliments, yet coyly divert the conversation when asked about their secret recipes.
Like many traditions, this one is rooted in very old customs; customs that evolved out of necessities. Sharing food being the most basic human necessity, along with peaceful social interaction, Hari Raya open house celebrations represent the epitome of good resolutions for a new beginning, for a better year ahead.
As much as open houses are about celebrating food and friendship, their objective is equally about fostering harmony and better understanding among people. Sadly, as we prepare for these festivities of harmony and understanding, news of youth bullying and even killing their peers redouble in the daily headlines. How can these two extremes co-exist? Where do these feelings of rage and this utter lack of empathy towards others’ life choices originate?
Bullying, intimidation and forcing one’s ideologies on others is not a new phenomenon. Countless articles, research papers and educational programmes have tried to get to the bottom of it.
Are some children born evil? Is an ever-strong sense of competition at school responsible? Can we blame poor role models in international politics? Do our young fail to develop social skills due to their interaction through electronic media instead of face-to-face communication?
Certainly, these factors play an important role in teens’ irrational behaviour, but new studies on the subject show what we have known all along. Children take their cues from one source more than any other: their parents. This is not to say that parents are solely and forever responsible for their offspring’s iniquities.
It does show, however, that parents need to stay emotionally connected, to keep the communication channels open with their teenage children. Spending quality time with one’s children during Hari Raya presents a unique opportunity to do just that.
Adolescence represents a highly volatile decade. Young minds are taken over by raging hormones; the gap between social interaction and social skills seems abysmal at times.
Sensitivity to peer opinion, social and scholastic stress, anxiety and a near-constant feeling of inadequacy are met with almost non-existent coping strategies. A parent’s seemingly trivial comment can easily lead to tears, door-slamming or the dreaded silent treatment by progenies.
As recent studies led by researchers at Leiden University of the Netherlands show, the second half of this challenging decade is frequently fuelled by unreasonable risk-taking behaviour. Teens typically feel invincible. Warnings, by peers and parents alike, are blown into the wind all too often. A surge of dopamine and its ensuing feelings of pleasure and satisfaction become almost irresistible.
This explosive mixture of social pressure, anxiety and a hormon-induced high, paired with poor coping mechanisms and a lack of strong role models can easily lead to devastatingly wrong choices.
Haywire hormones and unbalanced brain development rooted in evolutionary needs can’t be helped. A lack of sound parenting and strong role modelling, on the other hand, can be. And where better to remedy this than in a mixed crowd at an open house invitation?
Inadequacy is not a teenager’s prerogative, however. Just when parents hope to be able to take a step back, to give their teens some space to find their own place in society, their guidance is, in fact, required more than ever.
Typically, parents of teenagers feel that they are preaching into empty space, that their children’s blank stare means that their efforts go unheard. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Just like toddlers imitate their elders’ speech patterns and demeanour, teenagers’ concepts of tolerance and empathy towards others, or their lack thereof, are also borrowed from their predominant role models.
While celebrities in show business, politics and sports captivate young minds and seem worthy of adoration and emulation, parents and teachers remain an adolescent’s first and foremost source of guidance.
These primary champions have the ability to mould young minds. It is therefore their duty and responsibility to exhibit sound coping skills, foster healthy decision-making and friendship skills such as apologising and compromising in order to raise tolerant and empathetic adolescents.
During this year’s open house season let us try to display more than just our best satay and kuih pelita. Let us endorse values such as tolerance and empathy. Let us save the world, one bullied teenager at a time.
The writer is a long-term expatriate, a restless traveller, an observer of the human condition, and unapologetically insubordinate