Tuesday, September 29, 2015

To compare or not…

How many of us like to be compared?

 Through experience, as a mother and as a counselor, I’ve learnt this extremely significant truth – More often than not, comparison erodes our self-esteem. It does not spare children either. When the going gets tough the trick is to take it bit by bit and just keep moving. When things go swimmingly, compare one’s present with one’s past in the relevant area.

Here goes a real story of how years back comparison was about to spoil it all when good sense prevailed over a mother.


My eight-year-old rushed down the steps in his swimming costume, a mass of energy and enthusiasm, my husband in tow. After an hour, the father returned, looking happy and satisfied. In three days the smile vanished! Within a week my son began coming home with a glum face. What was going wrong?!
“You’re not following Sir’s instructions properly,” the father grumbled to which Dev said meekly, “But I am.”
“He is not concentrating during the class,” my husband complained the very moment I opened the door to the duo next day. My little daughter Vini had been keeping me busy and so I didn’t really know what was going on in the pool. Forever patient with his children, I had no reason to doubt my husband was wrong in judging Dev’s efforts to learn the art of swimming. I didn’t take it very seriously though, and said some words of encouragement. But I thought he didn’t really need that because he was most likely not focusing enough but would be compelled to do so by the trainer soon. There wasn’t any significant change in the next few classes though. Time was running out, because there were to be around twenty classes in this session. Now I felt I had to be a little firm.

“Why aren’t you observing Sir’s movements? Why don’t you be a little sincere sometimes at least?” I asked, peeved. This was because he indeed was a playful boy and his school report card often mentioned that along with his good qualities. “If you aren’t interested, you can pull out,” I said almost angrily, for what was so tough about learning how to swim at this tender age (when the learning curve is at a high in almost anything), that too when a professional was there to teach? He is just not being sincere enough, both of us concurred. Dev’s scowl disappeared as he said “OK, I’ll pull out”. Now that was not something I had seen coming because it was he who had got fascinated
watching his friends swim. I became quiet, hoping he didn’t actually mean to stop midway through his training. 

 Nevertheless the comparisons began.

“Riju has learnt quite a number of tricks, why don’t you?” Understandably, the father was frustrated because he was the outdoor games kind of man who had a good sports record during his college days. Dev winced at the comparison.
THAT WAS IT.
At this time or in this case, this comparison won’t help, it’s only making
matters worse, I felt. He was no longer looking forward to the swimming
classes and worse, his confidence in himself was dipping. (Was it a mother’s
sixth sense?) And I could not watch this silently.
The rest is in my book Rays and Rains (e-book available at a much lower price).



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Monday, September 7, 2015

Only if he had got paternity leave

My friend’s mom had told me how decades back her husband had participated in the caregiving of their infant daughters that was a blessing considering that she had no parents or in-laws near her to bank on. (It was possible because of her husband's job profile and the unbiased mind he owned). The scenario, strangely, is not like what it was in her case even today in India, particularly when the husband is working in the IT. Paternity leave (for a reasonable period of time) is still a new concept!

Gender equality as a topic of debate has been there for quite long by now, like feminism. Without going into all that, doesn’t it sound right when we hear of a new father doting on and caring for his new-born as much as the new mother is?

My husband was the pillar after my son’s arrival to the world. Suffering from colic, my first-born routinely cried and screamed, turning red, as I clenched my fingers and thought hard if there was anything we could do to alleviate his pain, tormenting me every time his face was racked with pain. It was my husband who began taking us out in the car, baby and me, driving round and round the neighbourhood during those times (colic pains visited our son mostly after sundown) and miraculously the crying would stop, providing the much-needed relief to my frayed nerves! All thanks to Internet where he had searched to come up with such novel ways of handling colic attacks. And when within a week, our little Dev was found to have dust allergy with even the cotton mattress inducing severe cough, it was the father again who sat sealing the mattress inside a plastic cover with stitches all along the border, till the wee hours of the morning, I supplying with only little help, intermittently.
The new father, delirious with happiness, would definitely have loved to lend a hand in the regular baby-care matters like feeding and preparing his feeds (Dev could not suck properly initially and often ended up being half-fed by me), only if he had got paternity leave. My husband made up though by religiously dedicating the evenings to baby-sitting no matter how tired he was after the long drive from his office through traffic-congested roads.
When my daughter was born, the born-again father was now a much busier man, but managed to give me enough support at the hospital and once again, after a gap of six years, devote the evenings to the new baby with the same, familiar dedication. And this time he even played a mother to our son (who felt more left out than thrilled with the arrival of a sibling, a girl to his dismay) by taking him out and treating him to zoo visits and restaurant food just the way I used to before I got heavily pregnant with our little Vini. Well, that was definitely a big leap from the times of my mother-in-law whose husband visited her at the hospital two days after their first child was born, lest he earned the label of ‘a too-doting father’ from their neighbours!

When a baby arrives, a father is needed as much as a mother is – not only for the baby but also for the new mom who too needs to adjust to her new life as much as the baby needs, in fact even faster.
The rest is in my book Rays and Rains (e-book available at a much lower price).


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Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Success of course, but what else along with that?


Today, most of us are obsessed with success. We are motivating the kids (as teachers/tutors/parents) to put in their best and succeed. We are delighted when they bring in the shining scores, and secretly, but briefly, feel guilty when we see them regularly sacrificing their play-hours for tuition classes. We hope that delivering to the best of their abilities becomes a habit for them. 

How do we teach them now to put in their best, but without being exploited, when they would be working as executives some years later?

The story of two brothers!
“I told Ron to erase his ‘e’s for they resembled ‘i’s. He refused after two unsuccessful attempts,” Minnie, my neighbor said resignedly, adding after a short silence, “Paul would rub his letters even ten times whenever I told him to.” Ron and Paul are her two sons, five years separating them.
Ron is a happy-go-lucky, bold six-year-old who comes across as a precocious boy, speaking his mind and not hesitating to shout at his closest pals whenever they don’t see eye to eye or whenever his tank’s tap of patience (quite tiny) runs dry or whenever his opponent in a game, the two are playing, is slow. Bright that he is, his age is too less to help him understand that he is gifted and most are not.
His brother, Paul, eleven years old, has always been the industrious, quieter kind of boy who is happy with his school books and outdoor sports. Overly sensitive about praise and criticism, he goes all out of his way to please his parents, keeping his calendar blocked for five different hobby classes for the five week-days, if his mother thinks it necessary. He doesn’t seem to mind the grind he goes through and the free time he is denied, things his peers and friends are unfamiliar with, all because he knows very well how all this makes his mother happy. He is not the one to break her heart in the smallest way.
What do you call this? Is it obedience? Respect for parents? Or is it that he doesn’t have a mind of his own? Or is it a desire to be better than he can be? Or is it a great desire to stay in his mother’s good books? Ron’s only drawback is – his over-confidence. Paul’s is – his hypersensitivity. Ron believes he is always the best. Paul believes he is not doing enough if he is not excelling in whatever he does and mopes about when his performance doesn’t keep him in the top bracket. Ron doesn’t care about stress. He is never stressed-out. Paul is often stressed-out – he takes too many things in his plate and tries to juggle them all with panache.

It’s a little too early to predict what future holds for each of them if the two brothers continue to be what they are. Certainly, childhood is moving a bit fast for Paul. But how does that translate to real life? How do you think he’ll handle expectations of people around him?

The rest is in my book Rays and Rains (e-book available at a much lower price).


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