my little competitive restless daughter
First let me create the background and ambience!!!!
With jiya we/I have always tried not to follow the herd. However tempting the path may seem, we always try to teach Jiya to follow her heart and ignore the crowd. What I believe is that you should do something only if you enjoy doing it and not merely because all others are doing it.
Just to exemplify, I have observed that in Mumbai, there is a great craze for extra classes/ coachings like phonics, art of reading, general awareness, personality grooming, specified dances (like ballet, jive and so on..) and that too for kids as small as three four years old.
The fetish is to such an extent that at one point I started doubting my own philosophy. I was almost prepared to call myself a kanjoos who in order to save money which people pay as hefty charges for these classes, is depriving an otherwise an active child to learn further skills.
But the support from another superlative kanjoos( read my husband) kept me strong. I did not enroll her for any of the summer camps, neither did I send her for the crafts/cookery classes nor to the phonics class. Instead what we- the mother daughter duo did during the summer and swine flu holidays was the following:-
1. We together watched meaningful TV like backyard science, art attack, MAD, Mister maker etc.
2. We actually used the ideas given on the above shows to create things ourselves.
3. We baked cakes, bread loafs, made jellies, cheese cakes, etc. and then actually ate some of them too (rest we gave to our bai….what she did with them I don’t know)
4. I tried to introduce books reading to her (Though I realized it was very frustrating and postponed it for later…..which reminds me that ‘that later’ has transmogrified itself into present now….)
5. Rest of the time we spent in making bubbles, identifying cloud shapes and jumping on beds (actually…. only she jumped)
But she did not go to any summer camp.
She did go to her swimming class (where she did not learn much). The second session of her drawing class is in continuation and I have recently started with her dance class. I will not tell you the charges for any of them for the fear of the income tax authorities…..
Regarding her skating class, I secretly repent for not starting in time….now her skating set is at school where she is not learning much and I don’t want to buy two sets now…so I will have to wait for her other holidays.
So, in the end for this subset I would like to conclude that we both try to encourage her to enjoy an activity, rather than worry about coming first in it.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...
Few months back, we started putting Jiya to sleep in her separate own room. The transition went on smoothly initially, and so even the pari awarded her for her efforts aptly.
But recently, she developed a habit of waking up in the mid-night and calling either of us to come and put her to sleep. So, daily one of us would end up waking in her small bed with complains of back aches and disturbed sleep.
So, I told her that pari is not happy with his and asking for her gifts to be returned as they were an award for being brave and sleeping alone which she is not doing nowadays.
The tactic worked and she was sleeping peacefully for the last three four days....except yesterday.....
Yesterday night she started crying in her sleeps. Alarmed I went to her to find out the reason. She said, ‘mummy meri sab friends ne bana liya, main nahin bana pa rahi’.
Now at 2 a.m how do you console/encourage in such situations, when you too have not recovered from your own dream lingering in your eyes and mind. Even the king’s cunning spy gave himself away in his sleeps.....
So, I told her not to cry and ask mamma for help in her dreams and ‘I will come and help you there’. Saying this I went to the bathroom and on coming back I went to check on her. She was still trying to sleep so I asked her ‘ab apne bana liya’. To this she replied ‘abhi tak sapna ana shuru hi nahin hua hai’.
So, after making her comfortable and determined not to sleep with her, I came back to my bed.
Sometime later, I can not quantify how much, because I drifted back to sleep as soon as I hit the bed, we heard her crying again. I went back to her again. This time she got up from bed and crying said’ Mamma earth hil rahi hai’. This time I had no option but to carry her in my arms and bring her to our room where she slept peacefully for the rest of the night.
This time I took time sleeping as I was wondering about two things. Firstly, despite our efforts, we could not spare our daughter from the competition bug!!!!
And secondly, that it was good that we did not take her along to the movie 2012 !!!!
Well, eventually I did sleep in my bed but got up in hers.....because her wandering restless spirit kept her roaming on the bed and sometime in my dreams I must have decided that its better to sleep on a small bed than to try to squeeze into geometrical spaces on a bigger one!!!!!
With jiya we/I have always tried not to follow the herd. However tempting the path may seem, we always try to teach Jiya to follow her heart and ignore the crowd. What I believe is that you should do something only if you enjoy doing it and not merely because all others are doing it.
Just to exemplify, I have observed that in Mumbai, there is a great craze for extra classes/ coachings like phonics, art of reading, general awareness, personality grooming, specified dances (like ballet, jive and so on..) and that too for kids as small as three four years old.
The fetish is to such an extent that at one point I started doubting my own philosophy. I was almost prepared to call myself a kanjoos who in order to save money which people pay as hefty charges for these classes, is depriving an otherwise an active child to learn further skills.
But the support from another superlative kanjoos( read my husband) kept me strong. I did not enroll her for any of the summer camps, neither did I send her for the crafts/cookery classes nor to the phonics class. Instead what we- the mother daughter duo did during the summer and swine flu holidays was the following:-
1. We together watched meaningful TV like backyard science, art attack, MAD, Mister maker etc.
2. We actually used the ideas given on the above shows to create things ourselves.
3. We baked cakes, bread loafs, made jellies, cheese cakes, etc. and then actually ate some of them too (rest we gave to our bai….what she did with them I don’t know)
4. I tried to introduce books reading to her (Though I realized it was very frustrating and postponed it for later…..which reminds me that ‘that later’ has transmogrified itself into present now….)
5. Rest of the time we spent in making bubbles, identifying cloud shapes and jumping on beds (actually…. only she jumped)
But she did not go to any summer camp.
She did go to her swimming class (where she did not learn much). The second session of her drawing class is in continuation and I have recently started with her dance class. I will not tell you the charges for any of them for the fear of the income tax authorities…..
Regarding her skating class, I secretly repent for not starting in time….now her skating set is at school where she is not learning much and I don’t want to buy two sets now…so I will have to wait for her other holidays.
So, in the end for this subset I would like to conclude that we both try to encourage her to enjoy an activity, rather than worry about coming first in it.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...
Few months back, we started putting Jiya to sleep in her separate own room. The transition went on smoothly initially, and so even the pari awarded her for her efforts aptly.
But recently, she developed a habit of waking up in the mid-night and calling either of us to come and put her to sleep. So, daily one of us would end up waking in her small bed with complains of back aches and disturbed sleep.
So, I told her that pari is not happy with his and asking for her gifts to be returned as they were an award for being brave and sleeping alone which she is not doing nowadays.
The tactic worked and she was sleeping peacefully for the last three four days....except yesterday.....
Yesterday night she started crying in her sleeps. Alarmed I went to her to find out the reason. She said, ‘mummy meri sab friends ne bana liya, main nahin bana pa rahi’.
Now at 2 a.m how do you console/encourage in such situations, when you too have not recovered from your own dream lingering in your eyes and mind. Even the king’s cunning spy gave himself away in his sleeps.....
So, I told her not to cry and ask mamma for help in her dreams and ‘I will come and help you there’. Saying this I went to the bathroom and on coming back I went to check on her. She was still trying to sleep so I asked her ‘ab apne bana liya’. To this she replied ‘abhi tak sapna ana shuru hi nahin hua hai’.
So, after making her comfortable and determined not to sleep with her, I came back to my bed.
Sometime later, I can not quantify how much, because I drifted back to sleep as soon as I hit the bed, we heard her crying again. I went back to her again. This time she got up from bed and crying said’ Mamma earth hil rahi hai’. This time I had no option but to carry her in my arms and bring her to our room where she slept peacefully for the rest of the night.
This time I took time sleeping as I was wondering about two things. Firstly, despite our efforts, we could not spare our daughter from the competition bug!!!!
And secondly, that it was good that we did not take her along to the movie 2012 !!!!
Well, eventually I did sleep in my bed but got up in hers.....because her wandering restless spirit kept her roaming on the bed and sometime in my dreams I must have decided that its better to sleep on a small bed than to try to squeeze into geometrical spaces on a bigger one!!!!!
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