Bella's suggestion and my question for you

Hi guys, I am going to talk about a topic that has been on my mind for a while and it isn't an easy topic. I think that a lot of people would condemn and hate me for even daring to talk about it, but given that I have just preached in my last post that ignoring a problem isn't going to make it go away - well, let's start with the photo that brought this issue home to me. On Christmas eve, my sister shared a photo with me on Facebook that showed a family gathering and she noted that my parents and one of our aunts are the last surviving members of that generation. The others have died (well one is one life support, clinging on to life after a stroke), including some of my parents' younger siblings. Actually to be fair, we are not at all in touch with my dad's family at all since they live in Malaysia and speak Hakka (like they speak Mandarin too - but they hate us for not being able to speak Hakka), whilst my sisters have always made a genuine effort to keep in touch with the cousins from my mother's side. But the photo is clear: my parents have managed to outlive a lot of their peers.

Maybe there is another way.

I suppose on one hand you can say oh great your parents are blessed with longevity, but on the other hand, I suppose I have to deal with the inevitable one day, when they do pass on. Whilst I have a great relationship with both my wonderful sisters, I am not going to pretend that I have any form of relationship with my parents. When I Skype my sister who lives at home with my parents, I can see my father walk right past the screen - no, he's not at all interested in talking to his son and would rather sit down to watch some crap on TV. My mother dutifully sits down and listens to me speak to my sister, but I don't even know how to begin to build a relationship with her because she is so autistic. Where do I begin with my mother - she is totally unable to see things from another person's point of view but wait it gets worse: even when she gets things wrong, she refuses to let others correct her. That's what makes any kind of conversation even on normal issues frustrating because she is so incredibly stupid (I am terribly sorry, there's no other word to describe her) that she cannot figure out basic concepts but she absolutely refuses to admit that she is wrong because in her culture, that would mean losing face. So she would rather insist that everyone else is wrong whilst she is right - yeah, crazy but true.

Allow me to demonstrate how impossible it gets: a few weeks ago, I mentioned to my sister that I am dealing with clients in Los Angeles. My sister asked me what the time difference was between London and LA to which I replied, currently it is 8 hours. My sister than noted that the time difference between London and Singapore is also 8 hours (which is correct), but of course Singapore is 8 hours ahead of London whilst LA is 8 hours behind London, making LA 16 hours behind Singapore. This is pretty elementary maths which I think most 6 year olds can figure out really, unfortunately, is way too difficult for my mother. She then said, "oh that means Singapore and LA are in the same time zone lah!" I nearly burst out laughing - but the next part was as tragic as it was funny: my sister then tried explaining why my mother is wrong and my mother just steadfastly refused to admit she was wrong as she went into auto-pilot: when someone tells you that you're in the wrong, deny it to your dying breath or you will lose face. I was like, I don't expect you to be an expect with time zones or anything, but I do expect you to behave like a reasonable adult when someone tells you that Singapore is not in the same time zone as Los Angeles. Now do you begin to understand the double whammy I have to deal with: her stupidity + her stubbornness? My sister dealt with it the same way she always does, she decided to leave it and give my mother her 'face' - whereas I just held my head in my hands and thought, "holy crap, like, is she for real?"

You see, at work, I spend my days with people who are extremely talented and intelligent - to the point where I can feel somewhat intimidated in their presence. My spouse has a PhD and several patents to his name and when I rarely ever cross paths with anyone who isn't of that kind of calibre.  The people whom I work with and choose to socialize with tend to be from the London well-educated, metropolitan elite. In short, I have never had to deal with anyone like my parents before (well not since my NS days): it has become just too unfamiliar. If my parents were truly senile, like if they were indeed suffering from senile dementia, then that would make things a lot easier for me as I would totally lower my expectations of any kind of social interaction I may have with them. However, they to all intents and purposes not senile - they're just cranky and old. And here's the most difficult part: my parents will always insist that they are right even when they are wrong because they simply refuse to consider another person's point of view - such as insisting that Singapore is in the same time zone as Los Angeles The way my sisters deal with it is just to shrug their shoulders, smile and let it pass, knowing that my parents simply 乱讲话 all the time - they are so used to my parents spouting utter and total bullshit everyday that they don't even bat an eyelid. As long as it isn't libelous, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, they just smile and let it go. Whereas since I have not lived with my parents for over 20 years, I still feel the need to correct them and teach them every time they spout bullshit. I guess I have a lot to learn from my sisters - my parents just aren't educated at all and are both severely autistic, so it is quite unreasonable of me to expect them to speak like normal people.

I suppose I can't get over the fact that my parents took virtually no interest in me when I was growing up and in hindsight, I can't really blame them. In their generation, there was no consideration whether or not you were fit to be a parent or not - you were simply expected to get married and reproduce until you get a son (because according to their fucked up Asian culture, girls are worthless). I don't think my mother ever questioned her role as a wife, to bear a son - but once she had the child there was a sense of, okay now what? I have to be a mother? Gee, where do I even begin? My father was equally hopeless as a parent and I was virtually brought up by my two older sisters. Why do people bother having children if they don't want to be a part of their children's lives then? Heck - I have no intention of having children and at my age, I neither have the financial burden of having to bring up children nor do I have to bother making the sacrifices of a parent. Perhaps my parents would have been happier as a couple who didn't bother having children at all, then they could have had a lot more time and money to dedicate to themselves and their hobbies. A lot of people would now attack me saying, "would you rather you weren't born at all you ungrateful swine?" To which I would reply, "if that would have meant giving my parents a happier and more fulfilling life, then yes - because clearly having me didn't bring them any joy at all. In fact, they totally lost interest in me around the time I turned 13 - yes that's how little joy I brought to their lives."

Would you enjoy being a parent?

Let me give you an analogy: baby chicks are sometimes sold in market places (well hardly ever in Singapore but it happens in other countries) as pets because they are small, tame, cute and fluffy. You can easily keep it in a small box with some hay and it makes a cute pet - well, for a few weeks at least. By the time they are ten weeks old, they would have grown into a chicken and have lost a lot of the cute factor - you can no longer cuddle the baby chick in your hands and the chicken will start making a lot of mess. Most chicken pets don't survive much beyond like 15 - 20 weeks before they get slaughtered and cooked (or released into the wild if they are lucky), because they have lost that cute factor. I'm afraid I've seen my parents go through that same process with my nephew - they fussed over him so much when he was a child, but now that he's a teenager (he's going to be 15 next year) they just don't know how to relate to him and the problems have arisen mostly because they have no desire to treat him like an adult - all they want is a cute and helpless baby chick they can cuddle in their hands. You see, my dad claims to have done so much for my nephew, but when I talked about something really important that happened to my nephew this year - my dad had absolutely no clue what I was talking about. My dad would never admit it but he has stopped taking much interest in my nephew (he just focuses on the memories from when my nephew was like 5). I am sorely disappointed that their idea of being grandparents is so restricted to that of being grandparents to a young child when surely being grandparents to a teenager or even adults can be an even more complex and rewarding experience. It does require more advanced social skills to handle a relationship with an adult like that and well, with my severely autistic parents, unfortunately those skills are simply absent.

Perhaps it is because continuing to take an interest in my nephew's life would involve them being taken out of their comfort zone to learn about the modern world like Instagram and coding and they just don't want to know that. They are retired primary school teachers and whilst that may seem like an ideal job for autistic adults, it does limit what they needed to know about the world around them and anything beyond the PSLE syllabus is just way too complex for them to comprehend I'm afraid. I know what you're going to say, I somehow got lucky with the genetic lottery and got a superior brain, thus I should be gracious, right? I know, there is a point to that, if I may be blunt about it. But is it too much to ask for the interaction to be two-way? Most of my conversations with my parents follow a certain pattern which always leads no where. I try tell them something important, they ignore me and talk about something else (usually some mundane shit that isn't interesting) and I think, fine, is this going anywhere? Then I try to raise the topic I wanted to address one more time and they react my changing the topic to something else even more mundane: by which point, I get the message. Either they plain don't want to talk about issues that matter to me, or (and I suspect the latter is more likely the case), they are so severely autistic that they don't even listen to a word of anything anyone ever says to them and thus are incapable of even the most basic human interactions that the rest of us normal people take for granted.

The strange combination of their severe autism and relatively low IQ does account for their ideas of parenting - when the child is in primary school, they feel in total control because they can scrutinize every aspect of the child's school work. That empowers them: they are in a position to help and that makes them feel secure - after all, having spent so many decades as primary school teachers, it is all very familiar for them. But the moment the child goes into secondary school, oh dear - that marks the moment when the cute little chick starts to become an adult chicken, they lose interest because we start doing things they don't understand. So even if it is very possible that my parents could pass away in the next few years, what should I do then? I'm afraid whatever I do now is just too late: we never ever had a relationship in the first place when I was growing up. Even as a highly intelligent adult, I cannot fix what went desperately wrong all those years ago - I cannot somehow change the past.  I just look back at how I was raised, what I went through and can only say, "woah, holy shit - how did I end up where I am today and not a drug addict, prostitute or in jail?" But that's not even a conversation I can have with them as they don't know to have conversations. They know how to tell me what they think, but they simply are unable to perform this simple task of listening to another person. I could get frustrated, but I just consider it a disability the same way a blind person cannot see or a deaf person cannot hear. I don't dare to set unrealistic targets, only to be disappointed in due course. In the meantime, I can go see my parents in Singapore whenever I want, but all I get is frustration each time they refuse to take any interest in my life or when I try to tell them something interesting about my work, they just don't want to listen. Oh I wish it was a more straightforward, "you're gay, you're immoral, I hate gays" situation - but they're actually quite okay with my sexuality you know so it is not even that.

Life often leaves me feeling conflicted.

My friend Bella who has a 6 year old daughter has put this to me, "I know this may seem like a strange suggestion but hear me out: why not treat your parents like the children you never had? Look I have built a relationship with my 6 year old daughter - she doesn't talk like an adult, she says a lot of stupid things all the time but you know what? It's okay, she's only 6 and I let it go. You can't talk to a young child the same way you speak to an adult and your expectations are very different, it is not like the conversations are dry and boring - my daughter and I have the most fascinating conversations. But I guess having brought her up, I have discovered the knack of how to reach her at just the right wavelength, what kind of language to use and what topics to avoid. I am thinking that you probably need a very similar kind of approach with your parents - you need to speak to them as if they are 6 year old children. You know, my daughter gets many things wrong, makes a lot of wrong assumptions but I don't put her down and tell her to shut up when she is wrong, I just use it as an opportunity to engage her and find out more about what she is thinking. So don't get too upset if your parents talk rubbish or bullshit with you, you should hear the amount of crap my daughter come up with sometimes - I just take it all in the right spirit and hope that she will become wiser with age. I care about my daughter, it's not an exam whereby she has to get all the answers right with me. I love my daughter, she is a part of who I am today."

"I see loads of similarities between your parents and my daughter and I am telling you that you can build up a meaningful relationship with a 6 year old child - I am extremely close to my daughter and whilst you cannot compare it to the kind of relationship I have with my adult peers, it is different but no less genuine and warm. I manage my expectations - there are some problems I have at work which I cannot share with my daughter as she will not be able to help or even understand, but there are other special times that we share which make us so close as mother and daughter. Obviously, you don't have children of your own so you don't understand what it is like to build up a meaningful relationship with someone like a 6 year old - but I am telling you, it can be done. I know your sister has a much better relationship with your parents and she is also a mother - now I think that's no coincidence at all, she probably won't admit to treating her parents like her children, but I can imagine she would apply a lot of the same principles in order to facilitate the relationship. I think you're setting yourself up for failure if you expect your parents to somehow get rid of their autism and develop the kind of social skills in order to offer you the kind of relationship you may have with one of those super intelligent people you work with - that's unrealistic. What I am saying is that there is something on offer: it may not be what you want but I don't want you to think that there's nothing you can get out of your parents even now. There is something but are you willing to be the parent instead of the child? Are you prepared to do what your sister has done?"

What kind of relationship can one build with a 6 year old child?

I thought that Bella certainly has a point - but I point out to her that at least in her case, her daughter is willing to be a part of that relationship and I'm not sure I can somehow reinvent my relationship with my parents on my own terms. And if I may be honest, I don't really understand what she meant by the kind of relationship she has with her 6 year old daughter as I have never ever been close to a child like that - yes I have a nephew, but we are 8 time zones apart and I can't even remember having spent much time with him when he was younger. I have no idea how the hell to be a parent to a child, never mind to my own parents. When I pointed this out to Bella, she smirked and said, "you're not stupid, you're a smart guy, if you can figure a language like Hindi out, then you can learn how to be a parent. Sounds like you're making an excuse. But if you really don't want bother then so be it - I don't have a relationship with my mother. You see, when I was a teenager, she was more interested in sleeping around and having loads of affairs than actually being my mother - it's not even contingent on whether I forgive her or not. Regardless,  I could have had a relationship with my mother but I chose not to. When she died I went to her funeral but I wasn't like crying or sad - I had let go of her a long time ago. Likewise, if you are just not close to your parents, then there are probably good reasons why and their imminent death wouldn't really change anything. My mother betrayed me in the most horrible way, at least your parents are just autistic."

I'm not quite sure where that leaves us - that's why I want to open this up to my readers especially those who have brought up children to help explain to me what Bella meant by having the kind of relationship she has with her 6 year old daughter. After all, unless the child is some kind of super prodigy like Tanmay Bakshi the 13 year old who was hired by Google or Sunisa Lee, the 14 year old American gymnast who has been taking Instagram by storm with her insane amount of difficulty in her uneven bars routine - well, usually I give children and even teenagers a wide berth, I steer well clear of them. I don't know how to relate to children, thus by that token, I am only able to relate to children who are effectively adults, who have grown up ahead of their time. My partner has a niece whom I barely talked to at Christmas gatherings because well, she was a child - what the hell do I say to a child? Then suddenly one year I turned up at Christmas and oh, she's just made it into Cambridge medical school and suddenly, we had loads to talk about. I'm just grateful that she didn't say, "yeah remember how you effectively ignored me every year at Christmas and suddenly you wanna talk just because I am at Cambridge?  Suddenly my opinions are interesting to you? I'm still the same person!"

Finally, if I may confess a fear: I fear that most people are going to think that I am a horrible monster when my parents finally pass away because I can tell you that I'm not going to react the same way most people react by like crying or being sad. I wouldn't know what to say when people condole me - look, my father cannot even be asked to talk to me on Skype and it is a slap in the face when he chooses to watch trashy Chinese TV instead of talk to me, then it feel pretty pointless to try to even bother doing anything if that's the way he feels. Heck, I have some friends in the gym whom I see occasionally and I'm so much closer to them than my own parents, because at least they take the time and effort to talk to me and take interest in what is going on in my life. My readers and my friends know me so much better than my parents, who seem to go out of their way to demonstrate that they couldn't give a shit what is going on in my life. Thus it is not that I'm scared that I won't cry or feel sad when they die, I'm just scared that nobody will understand how difficult they have been all these years and they will choose to blame me for being a monster who has turned his back on my parents - when really, it is my parents who have turned their back on me a long time ago. I think it is pretty awful of Asian society to always give parents the benefit of the doubt when loads of Asian parents fuck up and get it wrong all the time.

So over to my readers who are parents: what do you make of Bella's suggestion? Is there a way for me to redefine my role with my parents if I step up to the plate and become the parent or is this impossible without them still trying to be a parent? How do you build up a relationship with a 6 year old child? Let me know what you think, thanks for reading.