Parenting pressures

 Parenting is a tight rope walk. There are no role models because very child is unique and every parent is different.

While there are hundreds of books about parenting and huge discussions both online and offline about styles of parenting, I sincerely belive there can be no rule book.

What worked for one parent and child may not necessarily work for another. 

It's the road unknown, though it has been travelled so often.

While we surely can draw from.yhe experiences of others and look upto how we were reared in our childhood, each parent will have to chart his or her own journey. 

So how does one parent a child for the unknown future using unknown techniques?

Parenting is a life long commitment. Once a parent, you cannot reverse the role! It's not a job that you can change nor is it a marriage where you can walk out.

Society keeps throwing models of parenting at us. We have our parents, neighborhood uncles and aunties who will give you free dose of parenting advice. There will be people at random corners dolling out what you need to do with your child or for your child. The markets are abuzz with schools and organisations who claim they are giving you the best for your child.

In all this chaos, how do you sift information and do what's needed for your child? 

Believe in your child. As soon as a child is born, we usually hear many of these statements- looks like the father, acts like the mother , just like uncle etc etc. While these are definitely expressed outvof love and affection for the child, begin your parenting journey with the fact that your child is not a replica of  the father , the mother or of any other relative. The child is an individual who deserves to grow into his or her own space.

Observe  your child. Recently I was telling my daughter , how she as a baby would refuse to be swaddled and tied up into a bundle (as is traditionally done with babies after their bath). She would fight her way out and sleep only once her arms and legs were free. She turned towards me and said,' Amma! I think I just knew nothing can tie me down.' Yes, even babies display their inherent personality of we care to see. 

Be aware of their ideas. As children grow up , they have their own dreams and ideas. Sometimes they follow norms. My daughter went through the Hannah Montana amd 'I love pink' phase. My son went through the ' I want to be an engine driver to a car designer phase'. At no point , belittle any of these. These ideas may or may not match your ideas for them. But know that they come into the world to live thier life, not yours.

Help them discover their strengths. Society and schools are framed to show what a huge failure you are. Winners are felicitated. Rankers are awarded. Teach your child that one needs to be a winner to one's conscience. They may or may not do well in school. The academic performance doesn't indicate their strengths. Learn to recognise their potential. As parents we usually focus so much on the academic part of schooling that we don't realise that may be that's not what the child wants.  Sports, music, dance , painting , coding, languages and so many other areas of learning may fascinate the child. Observe what the natural inclination of the child is. Strengthen this. Empower your child to make choices.

Encourage and empower. My son loves to read brochures and user manuals. He began this as a child of seven. No new equipment  could come into our home without him not having read up the manual. Our initial amusement turned into thankfulness when we realised that he is the only one at home who would immediately know what wrong in a machine when it stopped. Today this habit has helped him tremendously. He will not debate without facts. He will ensure he has the right information before taking a decision. He will not jump to conclusions.  Encourage your child to empower them to do the right things.

Be a learner. This means that one needs to be aware of more than rules and regulations. While we tend to follow rules , because it's either the done thing or its the best we know. A parent has to be a learner. Each day your child will teach you new things. New challemges will unfold everyday. Be mindful of what your children teach you. You do not have to do things just because the grandmother's of the world did it before you. While I don't deny the value of traditional wisdom, I would advise prudence while choosing to follow everything. 

 

The loss of a year

 The loss of a year.

The Covid 19 pandemic has hit the world real hard. The education field is no different.

Schools, colleges and educational institutes find themselves unprepared for it and are scrambling to find ways to keep organisations afloat online. They are experimenting with new methods and trying to use technology to reach to the students.

In all this a question that is constantly popping up from all sections of parents is how soon are educational organisations going to be fully functional. 'When is the board going to decide the exam dates? What about the competitive exams? What about regular schools? When will they teach and when will they do the assessments? When will preschools be fully functional? My child will lose one full year! Who will compensate?'

My child will lose one full year! Who will compensate ? 

When you hear a parent saying this, it gets me wondering what are they talking about. What do they mean by one full year?

Being an educator associated with the school sector,  I have always wonfered about the pressure parents, schools and children have put on themselves about losing a year. 

How does one lose one year in that, just by not being part of an organisational set up.

Education in India was highly skill based till the British took over and converted our self sufficient model into something that would develop educated clerks to run their offices.

The present model of schools has time and again come under severe criticism by many educational thinkers . Within school systems , there are many teachers who try to break the rigid models and help children blossom into wholesome adults. 

Why do we then  have this question? 

I have come across this question from young parents whose children are just two or three years of age and are looking for admission into the play schools. 

There are parents of students appesrnige for board exams who have the same question.

There are parents of students who have prepared for competitive exams asking the same thing.

There are parents of university final year graduates asking the same question.

This only brings about the total dependency of the human community on institutional eduaction. 

How does one lose a year? Its not a toy or a book to be lost. A year is 365 days of experience. A year is days and nights of learning with or without an institution behind it.

A year is days of reading books, singing songs , dancing, cooking, playing and living life.

Friendship : Changing perspectives

 So today is International friendship day. I always remember celebrating friendship day in August and many a time it coinciding with Rakshabandhan and the stale jokes of bhaiya saiyyan that went along with it.

Friendship and me are actually not very friendly.

I am generally not the one to make friends easily. Its with great difficulties I let people in my inner circle.I think as a kid , I ended up with other kids who were staying in the same colony or with kids studying in the same school. I strongly remember my dad taking my friend and me to school daily. We would pass a paanwaala and we would very happily sing khaike paan banaras wala , the hit Amitabh number. 

Then we moved residence. From one colony to another and one school to another. Change is not easy for children and I remember very specifically my inabilty to make friends in the new colony. Though I went down everyday to play, the games were different,  the language was different and the people were different.  So i rarely participated in these games.

Once again we moved the very next year. My dad was transfered to the city of Trivandrum.

Once again change of residence and school.

This time round, we were in a bungalow and had to ourselves the company of other tenants in other bungalows. Thankfully there were two young girls just like my sister and me and a tiny little boy who used to live in the neighbouring homes. We used to be constantly in and out of each others homes and spent time making gun clubs, playing UNO , watching movies and other regular stuff that kids do. And as is probe to happen, we lost touch.Never did I make any attempt to connect either. 

At school I did develop some good friendships and mind you all were only girls, because our conservative school, though coeducational did not permit boys and girls to talk. 

To this particular school, I will be ever grateful for bringing into my life, my ever lasting friend, a girl with whom I have grown old now! 

As I moved on in life through senior secondary school and college, many people came and went.

Some made no impact, some impacted moderately, some I have fond memories of and some I would rather forget. 

College life is surely the golden time of life, when relationships are forged without care, when emotions rule roost and life looks magical. This part of life, especially when in a hostel is engulfed  by classmates,roommates and hostelmates who become your anchors. As you sashay through the years, you lean on someones shoulder, you lend yours to someone, you laugh and cry together, you party and bunk classes, you prepare for exams and have breakfast , lunch and dinner together. 

Real life hit me  outside the campus. 

It was no longer about the dizzy college friendship post that. It is always about bonding .

Marriage introduced me to a hearty group of friends. My husband had a very different trajectory with friendship. He grew up with his friends  and they go back to over five decades now. 

So his friends and their wives,  we form a motley group that has been together for almost 25 years now. I met many people at my workplaces. Some stayed on to remain strong pillars of support.

All these people are an integral part of my life and my go to people at times of trouble. They taught me that you dont need friendship bands and songs to prove your friendship. All you need is a call or a message that says, chal milte hain...plan bana. Or in today's time..zoom call karo! 

You dont need to feel the over rush of mushy cards and oaths of friendship. All you need is a message that says, kya hua..all good?

All you need is someone to whom you can say... I need to run away now. Help me. And you know that you can run away to a safe space for sometime to return to your daily fare.

While thanks to the internet, I happily reconnect with old friends,  we all know life has changed and taken us ahead. We are different people now.  While we cherish the past, we work on creating new memories. 

Friendship today for me, is not about being available exclusively to the people I consider special but knowing that there are people out there who consider me special enough to take time for me, to communicate with me, to reach out to me and to just be there for me! 

 

Fresh and Juicy

 The November of 1996. I was heading towards my 23rd birthday. Married for just two days, a few friends of my husband decided to host us a dinner. I was just a year old in Bombay( as it was called back then), having grown up in Trivandrum and Mysore.

So Hubby and me left home around eight p.m and I was led into a fancy restaurant called Chopsticks in Bandra. I was already sweating. I dont know how to use chopsticks I told Hubby. He reassured me that there will be other easy to use equipments like forks and spoons. Gulping my palpitation, I walked in. 

In came some of his friends and I was propped on  a seat near a wall.

The conversations didn't seem to stop. For almost twenty minutes, no one came to take any order. I was hungry. But the last thing on anyone's mind seem to be food. Why were we here, I was asking myself. I was almost dropping off to sleep. I cupped  my drooping cheeks into my palms and ensured the brittle nails of mine pinched me awake. I am sure the little finger nail.cracked that night!

Finally a waiter came and handed over the menu. The menu was incomprehensible. After all the places I ate out usually served pav bhaji, chaat , sandwiches and medu vada. Obviously Chopsticks didnt have all this on their menu.

As a student of English, I could read the menu. As a person who was uninitated into Chinese cuisine I stared at the words wondering if a menu in Chinese would have made any difference. 

I looked helplessly at Hubby who understood my predicament immediately and told me, Dont worry about the food. Just choose the drink!

So I decidedto do that. What was there to decide? This was easy, for sure.

 In three seconds i realised that if the food menu was Chinese, this was Latin.  There were sunrises and sunsets of different types. There were a few bombs, screwdrivers and axes. Was this a drink menu or  a tool box? 

I shut the menu. I looked up confidently at everyone at the table and announced 

FROOTI! Fresh and juicy, sang my mind..

I am sure hubby didnt know where to look and gingerly ordered a lemonade. 

 The mission of his life  when he stepped out of Chopsticks was to educate the girl he married on the nitty gritties of fine dine and wine!

P.S. Chopsticks no longer exists. I no longer order Frooti! 

The Upside Down Boy

 It was the year 2000. The month of January usually saw schools take their students for picnics. The school where I worked was no different. I was the class teacher of grade seven which had  A bunch of naughty boys and girls. 

We headed for Esselworld, an amusement park that was very popular among the youngsters of Mumbai. 

There was a new ride called the Thunder, in which the participants were suspended upside down for arpund two to three seconds.

There was a lit of discussion enroute Esselworld about who would do the ride.

Laughing, cracking jokes amd singing, we all reached Esselworld.

Even as I was monitoring my students,  one of the boys from my class came up with a few more in tow and said, " Maam , we want to ride the Thunder. Do you want to join us? You will not survive it! Challenge!"

What did these pithy kids think of me? I was a veteran at such rides. Whats a bit of it being upside down? And so I marched with them into the queue.  And rode the Thunder like a boss. 

( that I didnt sit in any other ride, post Thunder was soon forgotten by all).

Two days later,  I had a major bout of nausea and vomitting. As I was planning my second baby, I went in for a pregnancy test. The result was positive.

While the family was rejoicing,  I took my husband aside and told him,  Two days ago I rode the Thunder and was suspended in air upside down! I need to get to the gynaec immediately to know all is ok with the baby! Blood drained from hubby's face! He anyway hated such rides as he suffered from vertigo! 

We finally reached the gynaec who informed us all was ok and baby was a strong one. 

Five years later I realised that my son's favourite sitting position on the sofa was with his feet up on the backrest amd his head down! The Thunder had a thunderous impact on him, for sure! 

High Five

 

In the first  year of matrimony, Baby no: 1 was on the way. Rituals seemed the order of the day with the religious ones interspersing the hospital ones.  Appointments with the doctor became routine. I was meeting the doctor more than I was meeting the Hubby.

On my first wedding anniversary, I went into labour. Hubby and me were excited at the thought of sharing the date with our baby. But Baby had other plans. Baby ensured I got admitted and then went into snooze mode. The next two days I was sweeping the hospital floors as if it had never been cleaned for the last two decades. The more I swept, the better chances I have of a normal delivery , said the doctor. 

If I ever got tired and stopped sweeping, a nurse would come and make me push the wall as if it needed to move to the next two stations. The wall doesn't move, I told her. No, she declared, you idiot, it won't move. But the walls of your uterus will be strong to handle the delivery! 

Finally baby decided she needs to bless the world with her presence. All I remember is being scooped on a  stretcher. I hear an ambulance screeching and then I see the planets! Wow, here I am on the tour of space. There is a lovely Jupiter with the  moons and Saturn with the rings. I hear voices of people telling me ,push hard, the baby needs to come out , not go back in. But I am  happily gallivanting in space.

A few minutes later I hear a screechy cry. I find myself holding on to my husband who is weeping.Why was he crying when I was the one who went through the pain? People were congratulating each other as if they had won a race. Wasn't I the one who bore it and did it all? Well, I was stitched up , cleaned  and packaged back to the room. 

A few minutes later a nurse appeared with a bundle. She gave me the bundle. So baby was a bundle! 

See your daughter, she said. 

Bundle  stared at me with big grey eyes. 

I looked at her, wondering, ok what next? What am I supposed to do with this? I smile at the bundle. The bundle continues to stare back and then yawns, closes her eyes and goes  back to sleep.

The next few days are a blur. Feeding  burping, cleaning,  sleeping swallowed each day. I realise my home window has 24 grills and there are 14 yellow flowers on each curtain and 28 red squares. The design is awful, I concluded. Designs hardly mattered when I  soon realised that the only design that mattered was that Bundle  has three forms:

A two piece baby, when she is all wrapped up after a bath in a swaddle, the pieces being the head and the body.

A three piece baby, when she manages to free her arms from the swaddle

A five piece one when she refused to be swaddled , with a head, two hands amd two legs. 

Bundle definitely believed in slapping a high five !

Home grown Amitabh

 After a long days work, I return home and plonk myself on the sofa. Hubby dear brings me a hot cup of tea and settles down on the sofa too. Even as i snuggle into the sofa comfortably , sipping the hot adrak chai, hubby switches on the television. The surfing stops at Agneepath, the 1990 blockbuster.

I stared mindlessly at the screen , hoping that it would change in may be a fee minutes.

Suddenly I could hear the dialogues beside me and almost like a forward time lapse. 

Hubby was totally into the movie , mouthing not just the dialogues of his idol, AB, but of every character in the movie. Back ground music played twice! First on the sofa and then on the TV. 

Yeh humara family ka bachha hain , shouted Hubby! Haan I said..looking at my son...aur kiska hain.

Yeh humara family ka bachha hain, says  Mithuns character exactly three seconds later... Oh woh family and woh baccha.

The next hour was a roller coaster. Not because of the cinematic excellence of the movie, but due to the hilarious rendition of Agneepath, Agneepath, lathpath, lathpath...dialogue by dialogue ( with own ones for additional impact) by Hubby dearest.

Even as the movie ended, I wound up the day wondering if Mukul Anand amd his team would ever have imagined that this movie could make people laugh, even more than any Golmaal or Herapheri!