Opinion - Terror ran through my body when I heard her scream my name. The voice was all too familiar and took me back to 27 years ago.
I turned around and there she stood in her signature stance as she called me over.
I smiled nervously and walked towards her, but instead she hugged me tightly and told me how proud she was of me.
Me? Proud? But this was the most powerful woman I had ever known.
She was the strictest and strongest woman I knew, one so filled with conviction and purpose.
As my school principal and in a time where women did not have the power they do now, she ran that school with an iron fist and I did not know a person who was not petrified when she walked in the room.
She commanded respect wherever she went.
She excitedly asked me to sit down and tell her about my life.
She wanted to know everything.
I obliged while my nerves still fought a war inside me when I suddenly noticed her shaking her head disapprovingly.
What did I do wrong? What did I say? Again the fear rose inside me. What was “mam” not happy about?
Hundreds of people rushed passed us in a mad frenzy with their children in tow.
All of them in hysterics at having to get everything ready for school to reopen.
She looked at them too and shook her head disapprovingly before looking at me squarely in the face.
“So when are you going to tell me about you?” she said.
I was confused. “But I just told you everything.”
“Tell me your list of priorities.”
I gave her my list, which in my mind I thought was the most admirable list.
“My children, my family, my home, my husband,” I said.
She chuckled as she tossed her head back but still shook her head critically.
“I am in my 70s my child. I have seen a lot more in life than you have through various eras but this one is by far the worst.
"Yes, you told me all about your son, your daughter and your husband but not once did you tell me about you.
"Every single one of your sentences started with ‘my son this, My daughter that or rarely my husband this’. Where does Tash fit in? And what’s more alarming is your husband was at the bottom of your list.”
She pointed to the various people walking past.
“Look at them. They are bowing to their children’s needs, over indulging their requests, trying so hard to just be better than the next person.
"They are bending over backwards to make sure their children have the best of everything and are better than everyone else. In school and in our community, I see parents allow their children to have the final say.
“I see parents who have lost the courage to even reprimand their children. I see parents who live in denial that their children are delinquent and are willing to lose all their self-respect for it.
“I see parents going to all lengths to cover up the mistakes their children make and camouflage their faults.
"I see parents come to school screaming at teachers for their children doing badly, complaining about the system, blaming everyone else and everything else for what and who their children are, which in all cases are angels.
"And society will say that’s how it should be. Our children should be our first priority, but is that right?
“How, my child, are we giving our children the best when our children now have lost all respect. They have no values, no morals, no idea of how to display common courtesy even to their own parents and no clue about survival. Why?
“You overindulge them. Everything is done for them. You disable them by putting them first and so they believe they are entitled to anything and everything. In the process of making these children number one on your list of priorities, what did you do?
"You lost yourself and in losing yourself you allowed them to create your life and identity.
“When we were young we had parents who struggled to make a living, to provide and sometimes even to survive. Their list of priorities was different. We had to fend for ourselves.
“We knew the difference between want and need and we learned to respect that. Getting a treat was a rare occurrence and happened only when we had achieved.
“Now I look at all of you, the amazing children who grew up in front of me and knew value, honour, respect, discipline and hard work and I see victims of a dictatorship with the dictators very confidently being your children.
"All of your lives revolve around them to a point where you don’t know where you start and where you end anymore because they have become the start and finish.”
I looked at her in astonishment. That’s exactly what I had become and exactly what my kids had become. Who was I really outside of being their mom and pandering to their every need? I had no idea.
I thought of my dad and what he always told me that I never quite understood. He said: “When you go on to a plane, they tell you in the case of an emergency you must put the oxygen mask on yourself first to save yourself before you put it on anyone else to save them.”
I argued with him that I would put it on my children first regardless, he said: “How can you save them if you can’t save yourself?”
I finally understood. Where did Tash fit in? Where and who was Tash? The answer: The person who over indulged my children in order to give them a life I dreamed of having growing up.
What did I do in the process? I enabled them to dictate, be entitled and completely take over.
I put them even above my husband and yet my husband is the one who would be with me when they are gone, going on with their own lives.
Are we by our “disguised as being amazing parents overindulgence”, of them creating monsters
What have we done?
You choose life.
* Tash Reddy is an entrepreneur, radio and film producer, motivationalspeaker and founder of Widowed South Africa