Bojji Rap

Chubbocks one night at bedtime: Abba, I wish Bojji would stay a small baby forever, he's so cute.
Bojjandi, sleepily from his crib: I yam big boy!!!
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Bojjandi, speaking on his pretendphone: Hayo mamma, what aayu doing? I'm pyaying baybayade. ok bye

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Bojjandi is busy sorting and arranging his toycars and books on the sofa while A reads his paper quietly. I enter the room, and Bojjandi suddenly turns to me and says, "Abba dishturb my whole game. I am very upshet!"

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Bojjandi imperiously demands music: Abba, I wan Beayit ( Beat it, Michael Jackson) shong fulltime!

Bedtime Tales

Bedtimes at our house are getting increasingly complex, with three children of different ages and tastes to account for. It started out with Chubbocks getting three stories a night, followed by some singing. Chubbocks also has the same strange affliction I have - when he gets sleepy, his back starts itching and he has to have his back scratched for a bit.

Then along came Puddi, and we had to split the story-telling and back scratching/ patting between the two. And now we have Bojjandi, who's a pretty demanding little fellow. And we have sibling competitions on a nightly basis. Just to give you an idea of how a typical bedtime goes...

First we have a race up two flights of stairs to the bedroom floor. The first one to reach always has to proclaim "I win!", while the other two protest about cheating or how they had a stomach ache or had fallen down two weeks ago and were still nursing a stiff knee. Then, while A or I, or both, are turning back quilts and making the beds ready for the night, the three have a scrimmage at the bookshelf in their room, each picking out the book they want to be read from. Bojjandi, who has no concept of fairness, usually pulls out three or four books, while dropping half a dozen others on the floor, and insists that he wants to listen to them all, while we try to dissuade him.

Chubbocks and Puddi argue about whose bed the hapless parent will sit on that night to read the stories. Since this is supposed to happen on a rotational basis, one of the kids will always insist on having a convenient attack of amnesia about the previous night. Thankfully Bojji still sleeps in a crib, so he's not part of this competition. Then Chubbocks and Puddi will argue about whose story gets read first, while Bojjandi insistently yells out the name of his story, "Abba, yeed mine!( read mine)". I try to avoid this mess when it's my turn at bedtime by insisting that I choose all three stories or narrate them from memory/ imagination, and the strategy works some of the time.

Finally, somehow I settle on one of the beds, Bojjandi on my lap, while the other two try and squash in as close as possible, crib about how they can't see the pictures/ words and how it isn't fair. We try and read Bojjandi's story first, most nights, because that's the only way to shut him up while the other two stories are being read. Halfway through the story, Bojjandi tries to skip ahead and look at other pictures in the book, while we haul him back to what we're reading. We then read out the other two stories.

Once the stories are done and kids tucked in to their respective beds, Bojjandi starts his nightly queries about everyone on the house. "Where'sh abba?" "Where'sh ayoopa didi?". Then it comes to his playmates. "Where'sh miaow (his stuffed toy tiger)?" "Where'sh Gob the bildo ( Bob the builder)" He also answers many of the questions himself, which makes me wonder what the point is. "Gob'sh sh'eeping ( Bob is sleeping)". "Ayoopa didi'sh sh'eeping" and so on, till I issue a ultimatum about not singing until he keeps quiet.

Then come the song requests. Puddi usually wants 'a few of my favourite things'. She's also become fond of 'Wouldn't it be lovely' from My Fair Lady ( I think the phrase 'lots of chocolate for me to eat' had something to do with it!). Bojjandi used to ask for the Karadi song - 'The Bear went up the Mountain', which I sing in English and Kannada. The 'kookabayya' used to be another favourite earlier. Lately he's hooked on to 'Chim chimenee' from Mary Poppins, and keeps asking for repeats. If I start singing something he doesn't care for particularly, he's pretty direct about it, "Mamma, shwitch the shong off!" Chubbocks has no music requests and takes pretty much anything I sing in a sweet spirit. For instance, tonight I sang The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel and asked him if he liked the song. He said he didn't care for it because of the bit about boxing and 'cut him till he cried out' but generously stated that he liked the way I sang it. That's so much a part of his personality - not wanting to hurt the other person by any criticism...
After the concert, during which Bojjandi will talk continuously, along with requests to 'shcat my bat' - which he just says to copy his siblings, you could tapdance on his shoulder and he would think you were shcatting his bat, he will turn to his side and keep repeating your name over and over, a sure sign that he's sleepy. He's still pretty alert to any signs of wrongdoing, though - tonight, I started patting his forehead, hoping to make him nod off sooner, and he reprimanded me sternly, "Mamma, don't bang me!"

The other two wait patiently while their noisy and fussy junior gets to sleep, sometimes falling asleep themselves in the process. Then comes the argument about who gets their back scratched first and whose back gets patted first. Finally, when I think these two are sleepy enough to go off on their own, I tiptoe out of their room, wishing them, as per family joke and tradition, 'gooda nayatoo, sudarimasu. I love you cherry vammu...

Desi Mom

I just finished reading Amy Chua's book, and it was compulsive reading. Well written, fast-paced. At the end of it, I realised that I was made very uncomfortable by the WSJ article that came out and the book, because we share many of the same values when it comes to parenthood. I believe that kids shouldn't be raised to become praise-junkies. They should learn to take a fair amount of criticism. They shouldn't be given the option to opt out of any activity as and when it pleases them, because often they give up too easily at a young age. They need to be forced to practice various skills, because it's much more fun for them to play beyblades than do their casio routine. There are various skill areas or subjects in which rote learning lays a great foundation for life, e.g. maths, the scientific table. They need to be taught how to raise their own bars rather than having whatever level of performance they turn out being acceptable. They need to have a certain amount of their time structured. They do need to have and demonstrate respect for their parents, family. They need to know that family is one of the most important things in the world. I agree that parents, rather than looking for popularity with their kids, need to ensure they are doing the things that will equip kids better for the future, even if that means your kids hate you from time to time.

I started wondering if I was a Chinese mother underneath my ghunghat, but then I realised that there were a whole set of other values I believe in that Amy Chua doesn't seem to. I also have a fundamental disagreement with her methods - scolding a child or giving them negative feedback is a far cry from the kind of excoriation she seems to specialise in. It's kind of sado-masochistic, the way she humiliates her daughters in the name of helping them, and then talks about how bad it makes her feel. She's actually downright nasty in her conversations with her husband - surely parenting is meant to be a joint activity, rather than one where one parent takes control and runs everyone else down all the time. Judging purely from the book, I got the feeling that their household really is all about her - what she wants, how she feels. Even when she's speaking about getting her daughters ready to play at a concert, she says, "I had just a month and I was so tense", not "My daughters had a month to prepare and I was tense on their behalf". It's as if she is living vicariously through them, which is something I have a huge problem with. The other thing I have an issue with is how she feels that Chinese children 'owe' their parents their lives.

Coming from an Indian family, which up until my parents generation, used to be run on similar lines of thinking, I have seen the kind of havoc it can cause. Some of my friends have gone through those situations where a parent just decides to oppose a particular decision by their child, for reasons that have everything to do with the parents' happiness and nothing to do with the hild's happiness, and I feel it is just wrong. I'm much more of a believe in Kahlil Gibran's philosophy of how parents shouldn't make the kids feel they owe it to their parents to make them happy with their life choices(exact quote below, I paraphrase wildly!). First of all, making anyone but yourself responsible for your happiness or lack thereof is a lovely shirking of responsibility. Second of all, what a nasty burden to put on someone that you supposedly love!

I can understand parenting along similar lines as Chua is one if a first generation immigrant, struggling to survive or from a lower income background. I know that in such a case, the urge towards survival and the climb up the ladder of success would seem such a guarantee of stability, security and therefore happiness, that it would be the most important thing for the parent to push their child towards. But surely, those of us who are now in the privileged position of having become upper middle class or higher can have different dreams for our children.

Surely our dreams can move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs to look for self-actualization, rather than merely social esteem and success by society's standards. because if people don't evolve and move up to higher order needs, there will be no art, no social service, no community spirit, nothing apart from the kind of jockeying for success, status and more-self-important-than-thou spirit that one sees in Delhi and other Indian cities today. We ourselves will need to evolve and look for higher purpose and more spiritual satisfaction in life, once we achieve material security, so how could we deny our kids that?

They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday

Kahlil Gibran