ROUTINE - A NECESSITY

I have always been a person who associates the word 'routine' with monotony. I would purposefully do something out of the everyday routine to just break it, like I'd skip bathing for a day if nothing else is working out. So, hearing from me about routines for children, can be a complete shocker or stupid or essential. I mean come on, if I can now relate routine with harmony rather than monotony, the story is worth going through, right!

Okay, you don't have to go through everything to learn a lesson. It's not necessary to take the harder way always, I chose an easy one here. If I say my parenting began before I had a baby, then it won't be wrong. I am this, analyzing, judging and ruminating over facts kind of person. So, before conceiving I observed all the kids around me, asked their mothers about their day to day activities and much more. I have seen that, those babies who had no regular bedtimes became the preschoolers who gave their parents tough times in the morning when schools began, those toddlers who did not have proper eating habits became the teenagers who bent towards junk food more often, those who were never taught proper communicating etiquette became adults who were annoying in the public scenes. I came to a conclusion that if I have a baby, I will have to turn upside down to retain my sanity in future. No matter what it takes, who says what (giving that the Indian family routines are bizarre), I will have to stick to proper routines.

I mean, everyone is born with a concept of time even if they can or cannot read a clock. Look at my first babe, Limo loves sleeping and sleeps late in the evening on the sofa but exactly by quarter to eight, he wakes up, stretches out and by dot eight he is right in front of me, nose to nose, just an inch away, starring into my eyes and saying "it's dinner time mommy, get your lazy butt to kitchen and warm up my meal". So, if a dog can sense time then a human baby is expected much more of - routine.

No one loves routine, neither a baby nor a toddler and never a teenager. But at every stage in life, routine plays a different role. When a baby goes through same routine for meals and bedtime each day, he knows what to expect and what is expected of him. He might fuss in the beginning but a few days down the line, he is habituated. When he turns to a toddler, a few things that would excite him are to be added to keep him aligned to the plan but the routine remains constant. Even if he hates it, he himself reminds you if you skip a step between. And what happens when they turn teenagers? The routine by then is memorized by their body and it is easy to trick the mind but not the body.

You can endlessly argue over why you are not able to set a routine with your child but the winner will always be a - routine. A good routine or a bad routine, set by purpose or unintentionally, it will have a domino effect on the coming years of the child and you'll see that. Observe

THE BOOKS WE LOVE

Like every other sincere parent around, even I want my son to grow up with books, loving them and wanting them. But whenever I go out to buy some for him, all I see around are the navneet books of ABC, 123, names of animals, fruits and things. Ugh..... To hell with the ABC, man. A two year old is least bothered about the facts and lessons plated out to them in a very straight manner. Then there are nursery rhymes books of baba black sheep, humpty dumpty and what not, not relatable either. And the panchtantra stories...!! Yes I get it, they are all moral loaded but still not age appropriate for a toddler and then those classic stories like Cinderella and pinocchio, seriously but they have so much text that needs patience which no two year old exhibits. So is it an open and shut case? Should I just postpone my book indulgence fantasy for a later age?

I would have but thanks to Amazon.com, I found many books and authors who really understand the toddler brain and their learning ways. And once you buy a few from Amazon, it just keeps suggesting more and more similar books. Ah, I love Amazon for this and I am sure Amazon too would love me for buying hysterically.

But, trust me once you see what amazing magnetic qualities these books have and how creatively they impart knowledge to the kids, you'd prefer signing your will to Amazon than breaking your head teaching your child from textbooks. So, let me list a few of my favorites with description and many more with just the titles.

1. THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR by ERIC CARLE -

Ergonomically, the book is perfect for a tiny toddler hand and sturdy for his explosive ideas. This hardcover book, not just shows the child the life cycle of a Caterpillar but also teaches the names of the days of week, numbers 1 to 5 and the power of eating greens. Boom...!! So much in a pint sized book...!!

2. YOU, ME AND EMPATHY by JAYNEEN SANDERS -

This one as the name suggests, teaches empathy. It has rhyming text and descriptive pictures that work best for a 2-3 year old. A has definitely learned to empathize with me to begin with and I am grateful for that.

3. DON'T LET THEM DISAPPEAR by CHELSEA CLINTON -

This book has a collection of 10 animals that are close to extinction. Not a storybook but a book that describe each animal, their daily routines, food they eat and fun facts . Ok, this one is going to cost us a fortune as A wants to visit these animals in their natural habitat places. But anyways, we had pledged not to introduce him to the caged animals and lock in his mind the prevailing myth that human race is the only significant specie on earth.

4. THE TINY SEED by ERIC CARLE -

This one teaches about different seasons and all the conditions that are essential for the germination of seed and growth of a plant. Amazing concept and story line.

5. THE BAD TEMPERED LADYBUG by ERIC CARLE -

Along with the repercussions of being bad tempered, this book teaches about the concept of time. The book has pages, graphics and story sequenced so beautifully that you see the movement of sun throughout the day and also learn reading clocks. Eric Carle is a genius..!

6. GANESHA'S SWEET TOOTH by SANJAY PATEL -

Looking at the mind blowing graphics of this book, I thought I bought a wrong one for his age but watching him decipher the complexity of graphics to understand the characters sketched in the book, I think it was totally worth the buy. And ofcourse Ganesha is the God all kids love, may be because of the sweets...

7. RHYMES FOR ANNIE ROSE by SHIRLEY HUGHES -

Okay, it's not A but me who hates the typical nursery rhymes and honestly, there is no rule that without knowing them you cannot move further in life. So, I bought this one for A. The pictures are very realistic in this one but what I loved the most is that all the rhymes are grown around the character Annie Rose and her everyday life and activities. Very relatable and imaginative.

8. ONCE UPON AN ALPHABET by OLIVER JEFFERS -

Like I said, learning ABC from the navneet books is very cliche and uncreative. So we got more graphical and interesting ones, out of which I really liked this one. So, every letter has got a story which has characters and events that start with the same letter and hence the lessons of letters and phonics happen together. Isn't it wonderful...!?

9. THE MONKEY WITH A BRIGHT BLUE BOTTOM and THE VERY GREEDY BEE by STEVE SMALLMAN -

These were the very first ones I bought for A, from a bookstore! The stories are fun and the pictures are really descriptive. A loves them so much that they have withered within two years of buying them.

Now, I am not an expert or a critic to review books. But the fact that I love books (and now children's books), encourages me to buy more. I have loved all the books that I bought for him but him, I tell you, these little experts can be cruel critics. He listens carefully and then observes the images on the page and if they don't relate much, that book is touched rarely and only when forced, like this one we bought called "Farmer Falgu goes to the market" and then he has his own sense of graphics and if the book does not have catchy pictures or interesting lines than that too goes in the back of the shelf like this one we have called "The ant thief". But there are many more that we love like "Here we are, notes for living on planet earth", "Clouds", "Energy - makes things happen", "Forces - make things move", "The mixed up Chameleon" and almost all by Eric Carle.

Sure, these books will cost you five to ten times that of the navneet books but what they have to offer, is priceless. These books by great creative artists and writers, brings so much art in these little people and art is enticing, irrespective of age. To grab a child's attention the book has to be appealing in every sense. You feed your eyes before you feed your other sense organs, does not just stand true for the food we eat but also for the food we feed our brains. Feed good, reap even better.
P.S. Check my upcoming Instagram story feed for future book purchases. 

THE BOY WHO WEARS A BINDI

Last night we were playing dress up with A. We made him wear my scarf as a saree and took my mom's bindi to put on his forehead. Awe, he looked like a pretty little girl and we all teased him and had fun. After sometime when we wanted to pack up, he came up and said "I want to wear the saree and bindi, I like it very much". My dad's jovial voice turned serious and he said "now don't ever dress him like a girl". This got me thinking.

Saree and bindi are not gender specific, are they? Look at our past, our ancestors wore dhoti and angvastram irrespective of their gender. And some communities still have their males wearing tilaks which are bindis in a way. Then why does a boy's liking for saree and bindi become alarming to us? Why do we buy kitchen sets for girls and doctor's set and mechanics set for boys? Oh wait, yes, we evolved. Now we get doctor's and mechanics set for girls too. But still no rolling pins and whiskers for boys. Do you see how we are creating imbalance in the society?

As described in yoga, within every human body is the ida and the pingala. These are energy channels or nadi which represent the basic duality of existence. Ida and pingala stand for feminine and masculine, intuition and logic, respectively. That means both the energies reside in every body! But nowadays, we don't look beyond bodies. We have confused characteristics with sex. Anything that is punished or rewarded when done by one sex but not by the other is gendered behavior, either masculine or feminine depending on which sex the behavior is "allowed" in.


No one is perfectly masculine or feminine—that is, no one tends to do only the things their culture defines as appropriate to just their sex. If I talk about us, between me and my husband, he is the one who takes more time shopping and he is the one who is better at housekeeping; on the other hand, I am the one who is least bothered about my looks and my attire and it's me again who cannot multitask when its worldwide proven that women are better at multitasking. Does that make me or him anything less of our respective sex? No. In fact, we are perfect yin and yang together but the ideologies that have been fitted in our heads since the very initial years about gender specific characteristics make us doubt ourselves and criticize other person's shortcomings.

There is a section of society that celebrates the men who enter the kitchen and women who step out for earning a living and then there is the other half of the society that mocks at these same people. But, ideally they shouldn't be treated any differently. When a man and a woman come together to set up a household, there are a set of responsibilities that are to be dealt with and who picks what should not be anyone else's business. As an individual, a person should learn to exist and evolve, for which he needs to learn to earn and to cook (and much more) but when two individuals come together they share the duties. And the future generation observes when duties are been taken care of. They are wired to replicate until they grow their own brains and till then what they have perceived so far solidifies as universal rules or habits. And thus, the cycle of imbalance continues.

We need to stop this cycle. We need to stop genderizing every activity, every characteristic and every attribute and let every individual bloom into his own person. Putting a bindi, helping me in kitchen or grooving with all hip circles on music will not turn my son into a gay or preventing him from all this will not protect him from being one if he is meant to be. My job is not to restrict his ideology and identity but to ensure that he gets an environment where he can boldly and respectfully be the best of whatever he chooses to be.

TRACK AND TRACE METHOD

Keeping your toddler busy while giving his brain right kind of stimulation to increase the brain power and physical agility is challenging but quite an interesting project to take on.

After deciphering our language learning path, I figured out that me teaching him or someone else teaching him will be forced learning at any point in his life but if he has the urge to learn, to know then he will find the source of learning and do it all willingly. And just then, I stumbled upon the term called child led learning. There are ways to make child led learning happen without forcing them to sit, concentrate or leave their play in between. Forcing them to learn something just because their peers have already learnt it, will either turn them into submissive or rebellious beings. But, if we just bring things to their notice and then wait for them to naturally build their curiosity about it, then neither we'll have to force them into learning nor worry if they are learning enough. Hence we need to understand that lessons can be weaved around their plays and plays can be created to direct learning.

I know, we are so grained into the mundane that coming up with new ways of initiating learning seems difficult and doubting that the system can be flawed is impossible as we've been conditioned to follow the usual, blindfoldedly. Okay, I am not inventing something up or doing something extraordinary out of quest to promote organic learning ways. There are methods established that can give us ideas on how to integrate play with work and also bring to our notice what are the most foundational lessons for learning and how those lessons can be imbibed in a child to the earliest so that he can reap its benefits sooner in life. These methods of learning, like Unit method, Charlotte Mason method, Montessori method, Waldorf method, Unschooling method and Radical Unschooling method have been built on different concepts of raising learners for life. Each one is different in its approach but their concern over treating a child as a data feeding computer is the same.

No, I am not saying we all need to follow them to their written points or that we need to do courses in the respective method to be able to bring them into our homes. Thanks to Google, we can access their ideologies and tips and bring in whatever we find suitable and necessary for our house and child.

Ever since I figured this out, I have fixed a way to bring new learnings into his notice. I plant them around him and let him approach them when he feels interested. Here's our step by step recipe to learning derived from intensive Google research and own experience-

1. Firstly, I erased all the benchmarks I had put together in my mind watching other kids, like ABC by 1.5 years, 1000 words by 2.5 years and early schooling.

2. I then started observing A and his efforts throughout the day. He is always upto something and if I pay attention, I learn what the ultimate goal he is trying to accomplish like may be learning to jump or trying to understand the arrangement of batteries in his car or light and shadow.

3. Then, I go ahead and acknowledge his efforts and try to motivate him for sticking to it and not giving up if he cannot crack down what he is trying to learn. Sometimes though, he wants to be left alone. And I do so even if I know he is heading the wrong way.
 
4. Ignition. When the first three steps are taken care of, I am in a position to know what is it that he is ready for but is foraging in the wrong direction or what is it that he is ready to take on as a next learning step. Here, I know I should intervene in the subtlest way. I put an idea or method in front of him (mostly in the form of a book, as it's our chosen way of learning about things but also sometimes by practical examples) and let him decide if he wants to take it. If you know the toddler brain, they would never accept help and so does A. But once he figures out he needs to take it for further exploration, he accepts it and comes to me for further queries regarding the same if need be.

So basically, INTRODUCE - WITHDRAW - WAIT - JUMP IN (ONLY IF INVITED) that is my game plan. So, he learns through his own queries at his own pace and on his own track, not through a predetermined path and I trace the subtlest of his development and guide him. We are still in a dilemma of schooling or unschooling but till we decide, we'll continue with this track and trace method of learning. 

THE MAGIC OF STORYTELLING

We belong to the culture that has thrived on stories. Everything from customs to science to code of conduct was transmitted generation after generation, through stories. Sadly though, we got invaded and turned to "education" for wisdom instead. But somewhere in everyone of us, there are still those genes that pull us towards stories.

What do we call as stories? Everything, I would say. Even the events that occurred in front of us are scrutinized by us, before we pass them on and hence are more like stories than facts. We all are storytellers in a way. We want to tell others about something that we experienced in a very interesting way and when the audience seems to be pleased or amused by our story, we gather more confidence in our ways of communicating, perceiving things and experiencing everything. Around the age of three, the world of imagination lightens up and pretend plays begin. We can see the child talking to himself, to his toys as if they are alive and coming over to share the awe of his experiences.

Where does this vanish off in the later stage? It doesn't and it cannot. We are storytelling species and cannot live without it but it does get muted with time, if it's not fed with listening. Even though everyone can tell a story, not everyone can pull the audience. But it is also the other way. Those who get the audience, turn into better storytellers. As a parent, we are the first audiences to the budding storytellers in the house. Just a little more ears to their experiences, their derivations from the experience and occasional brooding over their stories together can boost so much confidence in them. Listening would also encourage them to become better listeners and better listeners are always better learners, aren't they?

Now, how do we turn listeners to learners? Listening, in a broad perspective also includes observation. Once they have developed the love for stories, they naturally intend to find more stories around them which brings in better observation and better listening. We need to use these skills and present more mediums of stories to enable learning. Oral way of storytelling is the most ancient and preferred way but the contemporary ways are endless, though sometimes needless. Richest form, still are the books that enhance the vocabulary but propped stories, documentaries and plays are also amazing mediums, if introduced gradually.

What is the significance of storytelling, anyways? I am not trying to say we need to turn everyone into excellent storytellers but what I want to underline here are the amazing qualities it brings out. Observation, perception, imagination are given qualities but there is much more to it than meets the eye. Every story has labyrinths of smaller stories hidden within and what you read depends on the eyes that you have grown over the years of reading stories. Eventually, the way you perceive the story increases manifolds. You are able to put yourself in every character's place and understand their part and can derive from the cumulative impact of various similar characters in different stories and different situations. These qualities trickle down into our life making us more sensitive towards others. This, I think is essential for growth.

To sum up, storytellers are not always charmers or brainy or presentable but they are always and always good humans.

LEARNING LANGUAGES

Learning was the most lucrative part of motherhood. I had a deal with my husband before planning a child, that he handles the medicine department and I handle the education department. I was and am, plain curious about how learning happens and concerned about how it should happen. And the first step to any learning is language.

So to start it early, I had borrowed some small and big words' flash cards from a friend who had attended a seminar where they told that introducing children with these, when they are as young as two months, makes them better learners. I don't exactly remember the way she had put it across to me, but I had completely bought it. Being a highly enthusiastic self proclaimed educator, I followed the advice but within a few days I found it unrewarding and eventually pointless. My two month old was more into wetting bed and lifting his head than learning the spellings, like obviously. Later, when A started babbling I thought, words written randomly in big letters is ideally not the way learning should start neither by focusing on going the A, B, C way. I shouldn't bother about how many words or letters of the alphabets he can remember before his second or third birthday and focus on talking to him like I am talking to someone who knows and understands free flowing sentences.

What followed was interesting. A did not speak a word till he was two. All he knew was the most essential word "mamma" and sign language to convey himself across. And as you know how the competitive world can influence you, I was aghast by other kids younger than him use quite a lot of words and ended up with people suggesting me speech therapists and more talking than I was doing. I reasoned that he is just plain lazy and comfortable with sign language but secretly I assumed that there was a fundamental difference in the way we progressed than did the others and so things are going to move differently for us.

Although, in the background this guy was putting together in his mind not only words but correct grammar and expressions to form sentences and within a week of commencing to talk (that was after turning two), he was making whole big 4-5 word sentences with correct grammar. We all were taken by surprise and amazed by what a human mind is capable of. I wonder how mind unpuzzles the complex concept of speech without making notes or asking for revisions.

When a child is exposed to more than one language the delay in speech is obvious and nothing to worry about. But, exposing A to many languages was a task, because for me, family means marathi, friends means hindi and acquaintances means English. I had that sorted and compartmentalized in my brain rigidly. So, we had to figure out some other way. When I was growing up, knowing languages was hardly a concern to my parents and I learned my languages from the surrounding in a very organic way. So, then why should I bother putting A for language and phonetic classes. I did try to force myself to talk to him every day for an hour in hindi and an hour in English, like we were forced in school. Honestly, it never worked then and did not even this time around. I remember, I tried to learn Tamil from a book that promised me just four weeks to a fluent Tamil. I was bored sooner than I thought. But given that the first five years learning happens faster than ever, we had to try it but in a healthy and effective manner. I mean, not through television or videos on phone or just plain words books but something that imparts foundational lessons.

And so, we brought the languages in, in the form of books (as that was also something I wished to bring in sooner than later). Story books in English and poetry in Hindi, is what we tried. Until A got quite fluent with the mother tongue, he never sat still for other languages but once he was settled with Marathi, he had no problem with other languages! He could sit longer periods for the story books. We built our capacity from one liners to lengthy paragraph books. Eventually, he started asking me about equivalent words for his Marathi words in other languages. I took it as a cue to start short conversations in different languages but he didn't seem much interested, nor is he now (His way is "all at once" or "nothing at all" way, I assume). But I got taken aback when one day suddenly he understood my conversations with other people, in not just Hindi and English but also Gujarati. Boom.....

Human mind.....!!!
Talking about language, I got speechless...!!

BUILDING THE SUBCONSCIOUS

I have brutally denied people from gifting my son chocolates, even if it has broken their heart and made them curse me under their lips. I choose my son's health over pleasing people. Shamelessly guilty, that I am. Agreed.

But yesterday a friend of mine asked me "what in the world are you going to achieve by not allowing him chocolates, biscuits and stuff, once he is off to school making friends and attending birthdays, he will eat them anyways? Don't try to control him so much." And I instantaneously replied "I know I sound like a control freak and when he has friends, he will get influenced but I am trying to be his subconscious mind." Later that day I was seriously in the awe of my own statement and even tried to think whether I made any sense or just wanted to shoot an impressive sentence and win the argument. For a few days I tried to figure out how subconscious mind worked and even googled if it can be manipulated.
I believe, that if we put something to practice everyday for a month, then it develops into a habit and when you ardently follow your habit then it trains your subconscious. And you know you feeded something to the subconscious when you naturally turn towards it rather than forcing yourself in that direction.

When A gets hungry, his mind projects to him the foods that he knows and has liked so far. He comes running to me asking for Poha, upma, chapati, jaggery, dahi or finds his dabba of Almonds and cashew nuts and goes munching around (this dabba of dryfruits, jaggery, roasted peanuts and dates is an inevitable part of our short and long trips also). We just put him, actually all of us for his sake, to practice good habits and he himself made them his second nature. And I am hopeful of many more practices that I find valuable and necessary and sow in his mind this time around, will flourish into a habit some day. So, I believe we do mold their subconscious either knowingly or unknowingly. What you want ingrained in your child should be your priority rather than assuming what is in trend will eventually influence them and let loose. At twos and threes they are more porous than any other ages and we should definitely make use of it in the right way.

ANYHOW...
This was the theory part of what I considered my achievement as a mother but I saw the practical example shortly after writing this article and so delayed sharing it to experiment every part of the theory.

A got serious stomach infection the next week I wrote my "theory". Leave alone my subconscious mind, even my common sense shuts down when he is unwell. I did all the things that I had sweared not to do ever after becoming a parent. From offering him the " no no noways food" to letting him sleep before the TV, I did everything that I consider bad. I just wanted to feed something to his frail body and make him sleep without burning his already meager calories. Though I feared he will demand all this even when he is in good health and will throw my two year long habit building efforts out of the window. But, after fasting for two long days as his appetite resumed, his habits did too.

I did not publish it yet and a few months later A caught viral infection. And this time around instead of pestering him to eat foods that I thought would help him and getting him medicated from the very first day of infection, I trusted his body and his senses and let him take the lead. He knew he was weak and needed to rest most of the day and asked for food that he felt would comfort him like warm milk, varan bhaat and pistachio all as substitutes for the main meals of the day and in very little quantities. I let him trust his body while I trusted him and things went well.

These incidents taught me much need lessons
1. The subconscious mind can be trained.
2. Like animals who have full knowledge of what went wrong in their systems and how can they cure it, we humans have it too in us and that too from a very young age. We have just eventually learned to not listen to our instincts and our bodies. And this draws my third learning.
3. I have to trust A's decisions and choices in times of sickness and otherwise, given the fact that I took care of the first learning very much successfully.

THE TRYING THREEs

Today after a long break I pulled myself to the desk to write a blog post. I kept fiddling with my pen and mulling over correct words, phrases and storyline to describe what was going on with my life but I couldn't. "Where the hell my creativity is lost? Why am I not able to describe metanoia that I am going through?" Then my son walked in declaring that he won't brush his teeth today. I rolled my eyes thinking that "chal yaar, big deal, I can spare him one day with unbrushed teeth and myself of all the drama that follows." But then suddenly the sincere mom in me yelled "you idiot, sparing him for a day will tell him that it's ok to skip brushing teeth sometimes and bathing and not being punctual and blah and blah. You are messing with his foundational habits." I rolled my eyes again and went to him with yet another story of what happens if we don't brush teeth and how fresh it feels after brushing and so on.

Him. He, on the other hand was just testing the water. He saw his mommy occupied with something really serious and meaningful to her and he wanted to check that will she put all aside and go for the rules or may be he was trying to find a hole in the loop which he can use in future for bigger things. Yes, I know you must be thinking how can I be so sure that this were his thoughts at that moment. BECAUSE after breaking my head over it, he easily gave in. No further retaliation...!! Just an eerie smile.

So I concluded that this is where all my creative juices these days are going. Persuasions, arguements, counterarguments and reasonings. And if, by chance any ounce of creativity is still breathing somewhere in my mind then that is shadowed by this overwhelming human I am raising.

If a one year and two year old is defiant then a three year old is also defiant but with a smirk on his face. 

TERRIFIC TWOS

Whoever said twos are terrible are seriously terrible people. They are boring, uncreative and pessimists. B E C A U S E... Two is the most hilariously fun age. Tiring to the bone but gosh... It's hell of a fun.

So, what's happening at two that amps up the fun quotient, you may ask? Many things but mostly, speech. That little bundle of joy that grew a pair of legs on his last birthday, will grow his tongue on this one and better it in the coming days. Like a speaking parrot, they will try to repeat every, mind you, every, ABSOLUTELY every word you utter. Of course they won't understand every single one of it or know in which sequence to put them to make a sensible sentence and that, that my friends is entertainment. Embarrassment, if they pick up what they shouldn't and humiliating, if they understand that those nasty words catch more audience and use them repeatedly at increasing decibels. I confess, I now understood why censorship came to existence in Media . Definitely for these two year old folks.
Since the tensions between India and Pakistan grew, we started watching television for the news. Hearing similar words for more than half a month, he one day pointed towards the TV and said to put on patitan (Pakistan). You know how heart breaking it can be for any Indian mother to know her son uttered Pakistan before Hindustan or India and when you swear to be a league apart patriotic, it seems severely embarrassing. I spent the next few hours of the day forcibly teaching him, Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Mataram (when I was completely against force learning) and needless to say, we watched news strictly during his nap hours. We started greeting each other in a patriotic way to make it his second nature. Relieved only after being sure he got capable enough to say Bharat Mata ki Jai in his sleep too.😂 Trust me, it sounds equally absurd and hilarious to me as it does to you. But I thought it to be the need of the hour. 🤓
Secondly, though they might not understand patriotism but they definitely are capable of exercising their brains to figure out everyday concepts. That also not always in the correct order but then that puts up a great comic show every time.
Like in the game of hide and seek, the rule is to hide completely and not just close your eyes in the middle of a cricket ground and assume you are invisible. Or like when you need to poop, it's not just your bum but your whole self that has to go to the potty seat. Amusing half learnt concepts!
EMOTIONS...! This is also the big milestone these tiny tots are trying to figure out. Constantly surged by big messy cocktail of emotions which they are not yet old enough to label or handle but capable of precisely and extensively expressing them.
How are you going to tell a tiger that you need to anesthetize him to check his wound?  It's the same if you try to tell a two year old that he might fall if he wears his t-shirt as his pants. He might get offended instead of being obliged for the help. And if you ask him to put all the peels of fruits lying around in a trash can, one at a time, he will be obliged instead of offensed of being worked around.
So, relax. No one goes to college without pants or sucks his thumb on his wedding day. They'll learn all the necessary concepts eventually. Of course, if you get anxious about their half learnt ideas and try to correct them, show them the right direction, basically help them then you will probably be wearied by this age but if you just let them be and enjoy the madness, even capture it, you will not just love this age but will also have ton of stories to tell them about their childhood or even use them to blackmail them. 😜😈

DOES CURIOSITY REALLY KILLS THE CAT?

What happens when you enter a pitch dark room that you have never went in before? You take every step vigilantly and the rest of your senses become more sensitive. Right! Now think if you enter that room with someone behind you to prompt you the details of the room. You would walk (act) confident and still bang your feet on furniture already intimidated about. Isn't it?

I think this is how we are raising our children. We are prompting them the details of life from behind, thinking that this might help them maneuver through smoothly. We just forget that the steps we trod would measure differently than what they will take, even if we tell them the exact numbers and direction.

Still pretty clueless of what I am talking about!

At the age of two, my son cannot tell name any color, nor can he say A for apple and B for ball. But day before yesterday when I asked him to try eating his rice with a smaller spoon, he asked me whether the spoon he was eating with was too big? Boom. He knew small and big are opposites. I did not teach him that. He does not even know what opposite means but he understood the concept. How? When we joined the mother-toddler class with the aim to get him to befriend same aged kids, I saw mothers teaching their children names of colors and alphabets, like literally explaining them everything present around. For a few days I thought I lagged behind as I was teaching A absolutely nothing. But then one day while playing with his bag full of cars, he sorted them in a row, headlights facing towards him. He can make out front and rear side of cars!! Even race cars!! (heck! He knows aerodynamics 😂) and categorized them material wise, all plastic ones together, metal ones together and he even distinguished hotwheels from the fake ones which looked exactly same to me. My jaw literally dropped watching that. His tiny brain functions at a mighty pace.
I wondered, if I would have been a little more responsible and "imparting knowledge" kind of mother, I might have ruined his brains ability.

A human mind functions tremendously when it's not overloaded with facts. Observation, curiosity and experimentation are the most important ingredients to ignite a human brain. And we as parents try to kill each one of these very attributes we so want our children to grow up with, by trying to make them catch up with their peers.

Observations - when you don't tell them this is pink and that is blue, they might call pink as blue and blue as pink, initially but they will without knowing put all pinks together and all blues together. And eventually would observe what words people around use to describe the objects and use them. But when you fill them in with facts even before they can differentiate between the things ( in this case, colors), the next time they come across those things, either they won't bring out what they have to share about the things or would just repeat what you taught them so that they can make you feel proud (seriously but it's their primary objective at this age) .

Curiosity - kids would not know that they should turn around and squat to sit on a chair, that the teeth of a comb and not the back are to be put in the hair for detangling or the correct grammar to make sentences but they give it a shot anyways. They don't even bother if they are laughed at, mostly they even take it proudly. But we as parents cannot see our kids make fool of themselves and teach them everything and instruct them a hundred times before letting them have a go at it themselves. We are kill their curiosity about new things. And before we know it, they start turning for help for absolutely everything they come across. And we love this dependency for a few years and hate it there after. But who is to blame?

Experimentation - killing the first two attributes is just enough for them to end this one themselves. And then we keep wondering why didn't our child turn out creative or may be it was never in our blood to be different. Bullshit.
In our race to mold our kids best, we kill their ability to mold themselves.

According to Patanjali in yogasutra 1.7, there are three ways for the acquisition of knowledge. First way is called Agama in which the knowledge or information is received from someone or somewhere you trust, your parents, your teachers or your school. Second way is called Anumana in which the knowledge comes from your logical self. And the third and most profound way is called Pratyaksha, in which the knowledge is acquired by personal experience.

But in our own quest of experimenting, we cannot keep our hands off our kids. I am not saying that we should produce them and leave them to their fate, just like that. But we need to sit back, take time and reflect on our ways of perceiving the growth. It's not like if they can't say A B C by the age of two or finish their degree by the age of twenty, they will end up on streets. Or if they don't dress a particular way or talk a specific language, they will be looked down upon by their peers. Every human being is born with survival instincts and ability to adapt to the surrounding, that should not be the cause of our worries. But what we should be taking care of is the nourishment of these bubbling personalities.

We should work on finding ways to help them believe in themselves, appreciate their bodies, their abilities, acknowledge their shortcomings, their weaknesses and develop enough strength to face them and work on them. After a lot of time invested in understanding and learning something new, everyone turns out for assistance. We should wait out until that point and make sure to help them when they seek us out. We are here to assist them through their way and not to carve out a way for them.

And by the way, a little healthy amount of curiosity keeps the cat alive. 😜

HYGIENE AND IMMUNITY

This topic has taken me for many guilt trips than any other topic ever. I have never liked hand sanitizers and so, had never put them between my infant and the relatives. He had caught an eye infection in the very first week of his life but that did not change me.

I was either lazy or tired and did not wash his toys daily. Sometimes he put Limo's (dog) toys in his mouth and many times the dusty ones. I tried hard putting up with cleaning but with me it's all in vain.
I have let him explore dirt (sometimes taste), tar roads and mossy walls happily, have washed him later though (not completely filthy mom 🙄). I have let him pick something that he had dropped on floor and eat and rejoiced when he'd dirty his pants in the garden or play areas allowing him to roll over in sand and mud, rub it all over his body and throw it over me. And never stopped him from showing affection towards any animal, be it street dog, cats, cows or the ants and moths in the garden. He's put his hands into the muddy lotus pond many a times to catch the fishes and I would be thrilled to see if he succeeded but never worried. And needless to say, I have let him try food at various joints in places we have been to and drink filtered local water too. 

I had guilt in the back of my mind as people would stare me down with glares of disgust but I used to justify myself saying I am building his immunity. Anyways our forefathers have also been this way. When did they have sanitizers, wet tissues and sterilizers? And they turned out healthier than we have. Still looking at adulteration in water, food and nature around these days, I did worry about my take on hygiene.

To my surprise I was not completely wrong! Recently, I read Rujuta Diwekar's book - 'Notes for healthy kids' and I am so relieved that the things I did as a lazy and dirt loving mom are actually approved by the nutritionist I follow wholeheartedly. Here's an excerpt from her book under the title 'hygiene hypothesis' -
'if we must build strong, resilient kids, then we must let them be African in habits. We must allow our little kids to be picked up by aunts, uncles, neighbours; we must let them pick up the piece of fruit that fell on the floor and eat it; we must encourage them to go into muddy parks and roll around. So basically let the desi kids be desi.'

The book also covers solutions to nutritional dilemma we carry about children's health and their food preferences and justifies their need to jump, play and speed around. She is trying to reconnect us with our culture and in the process relieves so much worry that we parents carry about children not eating, not being focused and responsible, etc etc. It's a book that should be read by every parent, grandparent and even older children who can read and understand. 

We need to undo the effects of globalization and step back towards tradition to bring health back into the future. 

Life is equally about unlearning as much it is about learning.

BIRTHDAYS...

Call me old fashioned, control freak, ridiculous or whatever the hell you want but I hate birthday parties and specially kids' birthday parties. I was skeptical about having kids with one of the reasons being the need to attend birthday parties and when last week I went to see play schools for A, I asked them what kind of B-day celebrations do they allow in their school. No kidding, that's my criteria for school selection. 

Before baby, my aversion to such parties was because I found them boring but after A, the aversion increased many folds drawing my attention to many different reasons.

• Reason to party; we host these parties for the joy of our little ones (actually really little ones, I am talking about) who seem to cry more that day than they did the day they were born! And if we are doing it to celebrate our parenthood, still those little ones are at lose. The crackers, overengaging crowd, screaming children, all that is quite unpleasant for them. 
• The cake; with the fondant, bright and unnatural colors and edible stickers..!! Why is that even legal!!
• The gifts; of course those are to be passed on to someone celebrating their birthdays in the coming months. And the return gifts as chocolates, chips and plastic toys..!! Can't these formalities be skipped for the sake of children's health and parent's sanity..!! 
• The menu; it is well thought of and "kid friendly" as they put it. Mostly white sauce pasta, sandwiches and fries. Seriously, is that kid friendly..!!?? 
• The games (which now a days is "entertainment" with anchors, who sometimes forget to filter their speeches considering the number of kids present) ; but mostly the balloons used for decorations are the star of such parties. All the kids, tiniest to tallest can be found playing with them. 

Do we really need such celebrations!?
"Oh shut up you nazist, kids love them and it's for them" people argue. No, kids love them because we introduced just that one way of celebration. I bet if given a chance to play in the dirt, roll all day with puppies or climb, jump, discover wonders nature has to offer ; none of the kids would opt for "party". It's not their concept of celebration anyways, it's their inheritance.
I am not saying that amendments should be passed in the constitution to ban the birthday parties. I am not a Hitler. All I want to say is that, if we cannot avoid having them (Indian family/social scenario), let's make them a little indigenous, sensible and sensitive rather than a business of show and pomp about who brought a better theme to the floor. Shall we?
Make cakes out of seasonal halwas or bake healthier earthen cakes at home involving the birthday girl/boy, milkshakes or serbets instead of coke floats and frootis, ladoos in place of cupcakes, pulao in place of pasta and open ground venues instead of marbled halls.
Had read somewhere that the number of children you invite for your child's birthday should be equal to their age. Such a brilliant thought! At two, A does not really like being with same aged kids but loves dancing and jumping around with his elder cousins. And the most active time of the day for him is the evening, so I made up plans to call over his cousins for an hour in the evening, put on the music and let him decide the rest. And as he grows to an age where he can marvel different experiences and remember them, we would change the way we celebrate his growth by offering him bountiful of experiences.
If we consider every moment as an opportunity to teach our child valuable lessons then this one is a big one to teach them modesty, genuinity and what and how to celebrate.

FILLING IN THE BIG BOOTS

A loves his grandfathers more than the grandmothers. So, yesterday I was thinking why is he being gender biased even when he does not know what gender means! The reason is evident.

The GFs are more hands on guardians; ready to brush his teeth, wash his butt (remember, kids think that it is a privilege they offer only to their favorites), become whatsoever animal he wants them to become. The GMs don't really get into these activities with him. So naturally he favors GF over GM.

No no no, don't run away. This is not another post on grandparenting. I want to analyze why this happens and what should we remember for this to not continue with the future generation. So, I find that the GMs were hands on mothers of their time, giving their most for the children and to the children whereas the GFs hardly knew which grade their children were in. So what does that imply!?

The fathers! Yes this one is about them. Those who think that just by having a small human running around in the house fulfills their role, those who think they are not wired or designed to handle a fragile little being, those who think that earning for their future is more important than spending time playing with them or those who think a collective time over a weekend can suffice for everyday lost time. Guys, you are going to be great GFs undoubtedly because till the time you realize that you are missing time with your children, it will be your time to have grandchildren. And so you may put in extra love in nurturing them.

Of course I am not saying, fathers don't love their children. And before you try to justify yourself or try to tell me the other side of the story, let me tell you there are exceptions.  Exceptions like my best buddy, who quit his job to be a full time dad (of course there must have been personal reasons and discussions over the decision but I want to focus on his willingness) and I have told him to get is gene pool investigated to crack his biological code. Ha ha kidding. It's not coding anyways, it's the conditioning.

So ladies (mothers), it's too late nagging your spouses to change. They need to realize it themselves. That case is not in your hands but what is in your hands is the conditioning of your boys.

• Encourage them for doll play. Don't force them though but if they have a stuffed toy that they like, ask them to feed it, tuck it in bed for sleep and take it out on their tricycles. 
• Have a pet and ask them to groom him, take him for walks and feed him. 
• Ask them to look after their younger kin and help them whenever they need. 
• Include them in household chores, especially cooking  (it's a basic survival need that everyone irrespective of gender should learn). 
• When they reach a reasoning and understanding age, ask them to respect girls around them. Best way is to find them a role model, preferably the father (hopefully they decide to change by then) to show them their share of responsibility in the household chores, discussing and sharing of important decisions and all other chivalrous activities. 

So before they step in to the big boots, we need to fill in the gaps. Enough raising our girls to be equals. We need a change in the mindset.
Raise your boys to be equals.

THE AGONY OF BEING THE FIRST CHILD

I had jumped with Joy when mom told me that I was going to get a little sister. Little did I know that the love and attention that I got till now was going to be divided. A hundred times I would have told my sister that we picked her up from dustbin and she did not belong to the family. 😈

I could express my resentment when my sister got more love than me. And so the parents made up for it, in some way or the other. But now that I am a parent with the first child of different species, I am experiencing the whole past again.

In the beginning of the parenting journey we had inkling of an idea that jealousy was ought to seep in and so we were ready with a plan. We decided that as the baby would need me more initially, the dad would prioritize the dog. The plan worked. The father - son duo came so close in that period that they even developed a secret sign language. I was relieved that my elder one was big enough, not to need me.

Initially, Limo understood that A needed more attention and care and he allowed me to care for A before him. But now as A is in his terrible twos with demands soaring sky, I notice changes in my fur child too. He demands too! And he won't settle for later.

He wants me to make his meals and won't sleep in grandparents room. We will sometimes even bury himself awkwardly in the tiny space between me and A, to snuggle up with me. He never loved long drives that much but now when A is ready with the car keys, Limo is already near the car ready to pounce in. When I play hide and seek with A, Limo will nudge me to play the same with him too. At the very same time! When I whip up a treat for A, Limo will want the same even if he had never bothered to sniff the same treat in the past.

He wants an equal share of me. He puts it loud and clear. Children young or old, two-legged or four-legged, they need their mothers. So now as we are tending to a toddler in his terrible two, we are also dealing with a demanding daschie.

P. S. That makes our park visits lot more fun.
For others, I mean.