Prologue: All guys masturbate. Not many admit it. All parents know this. Not many acknowledge this.

Teenagers are already under so much stress of dealing with their changing hormones that the last thing they want is a spying eye on their internet browsing history, a check on their magazine subscriptions and over-concerned parents sniffing their underpants. Unfortunately, Indian parents do all of the above.

Which is why when when we came across this post by an Indian parent on R eddit India , we were pleasantly surprised.

Here’s the text of the post for ease of perusal:

” My son has been putting up pictures of his favorite actress, Emma Roberts all over his room. He watches TV shows that she plays on and owns her movies. I see nothing wrong with this. His mother, however, recently walked into his room without knocking and found him masturbating with Emma pictures.

I tried telling her that she needs to calm down and that is normal. Now she wants “Emma” out of the house. I think she really embarrassed our son.

How do I get her to let go of something that shouldn’t even be an issue?

Wife really can’t accept that our son can do such things, although its a natural part of growing up.”

Now before we come to the point of the post, let’s make one thing very clear that this is a Reddit post and has no guaranteed news source or authenticity to it. However, since Reddit is a user discussion platform where people discuss stuff without giving out their identity, we see a solid reason to believe the content of the post.

Now, with that out of the way, the post has our curiosity with its headline itself:

My son’s doing grown up stuff and my wife is furious!

And it completely owns our attention when we come to know that the dad is actually pretty chilled out about it, and is worried about his wife overreacting to the whole situation.

Indian parents are infamous for being peeping toms in their children’s lives. While this over-protective nature of our parents is widely brushed aside as nothing more than parental concern, every individual desires and deserves a certain level of respect to his/her privacy. And as much as Indian parents hate to consider this, their children are separate individual entities as well.

The kid mentioned in the post is certainly going through his formative years where the hormones are kicking in and bringing natural changes to his psyche and body.

But do the parents need to overreact at such incidents? Or ride the tide with them and support them through it.

Th vital part of the post talks about how the mother embarrassed the son after she found him masturbating and now wants “Emma Roberts” out of the house! However, what needs to be understood is that what the teenager’s been doing is not being caused by any ‘ firang ‘ influence, but he is biologically wired to behave like this.

Parents have to stop living in denial and accept that masturbation is no taboo and completely normal.

Having said that, a lot of Reddit comments also suggested that the mother in question should turn a blind eye to the act and pretend to have not seen anything. Which is where the problem will escalate.

While we strongly advocate for respect to privacy, we also believe how a parent approaches the topic can be vital to a child’s development. And the best way to approach the matter is by acknowledging the changes in the kids, discussing it at length with them and comforting them with your support.

And as far as this post is concerned, we thank Mr Ozeeee for bringing this up in the open and being the right kind of support for your child. You certainly deserve a pat on the back!