The Monster is here!
Conrad Ho
Yu Sum has a brave heart in a small body. At the age of 1.5 years, he climbed up a rope ladder on his own to a platform 5 metres above ground unescorted. He could enjoy hanging onto a horizontal bar 2 metres above ground for over 30 seconds. Maybe due to these, we gradually forgot he was not even 2 years old. At the same time, we gradually believed that he could play with his four-year-old brother in the same games using the same tools. Perhaps parents are always too impatient about kids’ growth rate.
In early October 2003, I brought home a cartoon VCD for kids on the story of a little girl accidentally entering into the world of monsters. In the first scene, a kid was sleeping in bed while a shade faded in. It condensed into a monster as the sound effects pushed the heart to pump faster and faster. Sensing danger, the kid jumped out of bed with wide round eyes staring at the monster. Then, he in the film and Yu Sum out of the film started screaming at the same moment. It was hysterical. Yu Sum jumped in streaming tears, finger pointing at the TV. Apparently, he was horrified.
The monster in the cartoon was, in fact, harmless. It was even more frightened than the kid. It ran frantically, knocked over some furniture, got back to pacify the kid and felt sorry for frightening him. But all these did not matter to Yu Sum, who was no longer in mood for the cartoon. He was crying out loud, desperately holding onto his mother, and sinking his fingers deep into the flesh of her arms.
That night, Yu Sum went to bed as usual. When dawn came, he suddenly sat up and broke down into hysterical cries again. He probably just had some nightmares. Since then, whenever the background music of a film tensed up, he would climb up to a parent’s laps, with his eyes still on the screen. Gee! These are the so-called “childhood trauma”, taking shape gradually in a series of unintended “mistakes”. If the issue is not properly dealt with, he might not dare to sleep on his own in the next stage; or to go down to play in the open. When he grew older, he might associate the teacher with the monster and so refused to go to school. As a result, he might be labeled as a “bad” student, and so……
Two weeks were gone and Yu Sum was still restless in front of the TV. I decided that he had to face the cartoon scene again, in the big hug of the whole family, i.e. in the highest security possible. In my belief system, security breeds courage. A brave heart cannot be trained from repeated exposures to fear, which only give rise to insensitivity to fear; nor from avoidance of frightful events, which only produces ignorance of fear. It ferments naturally from a heart load of security, which in turn, sublimates drop by drop from companionship, support and care since childhood.