‘The Family Man’ on Amazon Prime has taken the country by a storm and you can see a lot of people discussing and reading the reviews about this Amazon Prime video web series. This blog post is not another review of ‘The Family Man’. I am not going to talk about the storyline or the characters, but going to concentrate on the parenting tips that ‘The Family Man’ brings to our attention.
The entire series is worth binge-watching through the tightly knit story and good actors who assayed their roles with relative ease. The story is relatable to our everyday lives and one can easily associate themselves with the lead artists in the show.
Why Parenting tips from a Spy thriller like ‘The Family Man’?
One may ask how can a spy thriller give us parenting tips? But yes, this spy thriller is different. As the series name itself suggests, the lead protagonist “Manoj Bajpayee” tries to balance both his work and family. So in his struggles to balance the family, there are certain eye-openers for parents, which I am just trying to bring out to the forefront.
- Parenting is a shared journey: The very first episode of ‘The Family Man’ consists of the fighting scenes between hubby and wife as to who is responsible for the kids. The moment this fight starts, the expressions on the kids show how frustrated they are with these fights. Parenting is a shared journey and a single parent can’t shoulder this responsibility all the time.
- Parents need not have to show their frustration in front of kids: This is one rule which Manoj follows very ardently in the entire series. Even when he gets frustrated with the motorist hitting his car, he stops using cuss words at that person the moment he realizes that kids are there in the car along with him. Then he explains, to the kids, that even though he is frustrated, the reason why he doesn’t use those words is that they are bad.
- Kids blackmailing is a part of life: Kids are expert negotiators and they know when to beg or when to blackmail us. As parents, we have to be careful not to yield in those situations. Manoj clearly portrays the amount of frustration every parent faces when they have to yield to those negotiations/black mail. So this is an eye-opener for all the parents that we are not alone in this journey and every other parent also suffers the same. I wish we have some readymade tips available with us to easily navigate through those circumstances.
- Must have a direct connection with the kids: This is one aspect that comes out clearly in the entire series. Both mother and father don’t know what the daughter is doing all the time with the mobile. But the father tries to get into her phone to understand what is going with her, through his surveillance tools. This scene stresses the need for a more solid connection with our own kids so that they can disclose their thoughts with us.
Though these are mostly the well known and everyday tips in parenting, I liked the way, they were portrayed in ‘The Family Man’ series. I felt that this series is giving subtle reminders about the Parenting that's grounded and is based on the Indian Culture, which is my style too. And maybe, that’s the reason why I liked this series.
Please let me know your views about this series. I just hope that the lessons I observed in ‘The Family Man’ are not the way of the mark. Waiting to hear more of your comments.
Originally published at https://mommyshravmusings.com on October 11, 2019.
