School and competition

Today was form morning at Chubbocks's school, where all the youngest kids were performing a circus. Before the act began, the director of the school came up on stage to address us, and his talk was really interesting and thought-provoking. He said that in Germany, Sweden, France etc, schooling doesn't begin until the age of six. It was only in the Uk, way back in Victorian England during the industrial revolution that people started to send their kids off to school early so that the kids would finish their education fast and be available as juvenile and therefore poorly paid workers for the factories...and since India inherited her education system from the UK, that's what we do, though possibly not with the same objectives today. He also said that a lot of research on the issue of early versus late schooling had not resulted in a win for either side, though earlier schooling was only considered helpful if it helped a child develop his or her natural abilities, without the stress of competition.

I'm a pretty laid-back parent in that sense, and can't be fussed about making sure my kids are meeting their milestones, except basic health-related ones. I remember once when Chubbocks was in playschool, he had to take part in some such performance but was too shy and lolled about on stage. Shortly thereafter, A had to leave for office and that made Chubbocks burst into tears. Immediately all the teachers and the principal of his playschool were on me like a pack of wolves, explaining that I shouldn't scold the child for not doing his part and that this was no age to submit the child to competitive pressure and so on. I was taken aback and eventually managed to tell them what was going on, but I don't know how many of them believed me. I was a little irritated at the time, but later I realised that I should be thankful that we had chosen such a nice playschool, whose focus was not on 'getting kids ready for the admission process' but on helping them discover themselves. That school was an amazing boon for Chubbocks and helped turn him from a shy child into a confident, articulate little communicator, so much so that he always gets kudos for his verbal skills.

At the start of today's program, the director also made the point that in case any of the kids didn't do what they were supposed to on stage or did their own thing, we were there to celebrate their spontaneity and creativity, and their confidence in just coming up on stage. Different kids learned at different ages because the neural connections grew at different paces. Reminded me of the message from TZP all over again, and I was again grateful that we had decided to put Chubbocks into this school.

BTW, Chubbocks was a mighty lion in the circus - and a darn cute one too. he wanted to bring his ears and mane home but his 'ma'am didn't let him!

The Circle of Life

I was never one of the mums who wanted to have her baby co-sleep with her. A, my husband, is an extremely heavy sleeper, and whenever he is stressed out, he starts having nightmares about me being in some dangerous situation that needs rescuing from ( falling off a cliff etc). Of course, I'm not entirely sure they're nightmares and not Freudian slips :) So in his sleepy comatose state, he starts trying to rescue me by yanking at whichever part of me he can reach - my upper arm, my fingers, my hair - and his rescue attempts are usually painful - I still have some bruises on my upperarm from six months ago. Last thing I wanted was a baby lying close to him. Plus I like my space, being a complete insomniac. I need to be able to stretch out and have a good half of a king-sized bed to myself.

When Chubbocks was born, we put him into the jolige, which is a family tradition. A Jolige is a cradle - a sling made out of durable yet really soft cloth - mom's old cotton sarees or dad's old dhotis, for instance. It's slung onto a hook from the ceiling and the baby sleeps in the middle. Because the cloth accomodatingly tightens itself around the baby, the baby feels as snug as if still in the womb and sleeps well. It also keeps the baby clear of draughts and dust. So Chubbocks, and later Puddi, slang from this for the first 3-4 months in our bedroom so I could be at hand for feeding or other problems.

Chubbocks thereafter was shifted to his own cot which was still in our room, and even later, when he had scared the life out of us by jumping out of his cot, to a mattress on the floor, surrounded by the playpen cage so he couldn't roll under our wrought iron bed and hurt himself. I was keen to move him to his own room when he turned around 1 and a half, but A kept feeling it was too soon. When Puddi was about to come along, I put my foot down and said there was no way both kids were going to be co-sleeping with us. So we did up the adjacent bedroom in a jungle theme and got a baby monitor and finally moved Chubbocks out a couple of months before Puddi arrived. She moved into that room and her cot as soon as I got home from my parents' place post delivery.

Last week, however, after all the worry of the hospitalisation, we found that the baby monitor had stopped working, and felt too anxious to want to leave Puddi in a room on her own. Chubbocks had also had a worrying time, with Puddi being hooked up to a drip and me being away, so we told him that as a treat, for a few days he could sleep in our bed. His face lit up, as this is a really rare occurrence, reserved for when he is ill.

For the last week or so, all four of us have been snugly ensconced into one bedroom, Chubbocks between A and me, Puddi at the foot of our bed in her cot, the oil heater making the room cosy and the dark drapes and door shut against the outside world. It's not the most comfortable bed to sleep in - Chubbocks has a habit of throwing the bedclothes off which means I wake up goose-bumpy all of a sudden, and he tends to sleep at diagonal position or even move up onto the pillows, so I have the doubtful felicity of sleeping with his feet on my face, while his head rests on A's.

But despite the inconvenience, there is something so elementally binding, so reassuring about all four of us being huddled together against the bitterly cold world outside, that I wish we could sleep this way forever. Though I'm sure my lower back would have something to say about that. the fact of all four of us being together through the night links us into a tight, loving unit, and I love being able to see my son's peaceful face when I turn over or gaze at Puddi's piquant face finally in repose when i get up in the morning...

Fear

Becoming a parent gives you lots of things - the gift that keeps on giving, as they say. It gives you...a sense of wonder every day...a reason to laugh...a magnetic attraction to wherever the kids are...but most of all it gives you stark, cold fear. ShahRukh Khan who's extremely articulate, once said that having kids is like letting little pieces of your heart run around free in the world, and I couldn't think of a more apt description. So given how much you protect your heart, how much more crazily protective would you be of these delicate little pieces?

I was remembering my childhood days and how free and easy they were. When we lived in Pandara Road, I used to walk down to the Mother Dairy about a kilometer away to fetch milk from the time I was seven. Mom used to send me on errands to Pandara Market and every so often down to Khan Market, which involved crossing Humayun Road, all by myself. When we travelled to the South by train, we'd make friends with other kids sitting nearby and the entire gang would roam up and down the length of the train to amuse ourselves. I used to travel to school by public transport when we lived abroad in a country whose language I couldn't speak, and when I was 14, dad used to send me downtown to send off telexes for him.

When I even think about doing things like that with my kids, my blood turns cold. I don't know whether it's an outcome of being an overprotective mom. I don't think I am and usually teach my kids to laugh when they fall down and encourage them to climb trees or swing on gates. But the thought of letting them go off alone and unprotected anywhere is quite daunting. Maybe it's the world we live in today?

You can't open a newspaper without seeing some horrible article about a child being molested, or beaten up, or, in Gurgaon, shot. Young children are being kidnapped by their parents' employees for ransom. Perverts are running about raping babies as young as a few days or a few months old. Not just perverts but even boys and girls in the peer group of the victims are up to all kinds of things, whether it's stealing a car and running away to Goa or luring a classmate to a suburb to kill him for money.

I worry about how to keep them safe and I worry about how to make sure they get a realistic picture of life. I worry about protecting them and about not over-protecting them to the extent that they can't be normal, healthy human beans. Someone said, in a schmaltzy movie once that God created mothers because he couldn't be everywhere himself. My question is why he didn't clone dozens of me which, while destructive for the planet, may be my only way to keep'em safe.

Why this Blog?

First off, I have to confess, I'm not a very maternal person. When I was in college and later, I rarely went gooey eyed over other people's kids, even if they were cute. I liked chatting with them when they were a little older - say 3 or 4 - but just for a bit. I never imagines I'd be so ga-ga over my kids that I'd blog about them in two places!

Life really changed when my son, little A was born. I wasn't ready to have kids when we conceived. like the majority of first born kids, he was an accident and then since we were older first time parents ( for India anyway), we went through with it.

My husband A on the other hand has always loved kids. Even when we were dating, when he looked all goo-goo eyed over my shoulder I knew it wasn't a pretty girl but some baby he was staring at. He was thrilled by the prospect of becoming a dad and had been ready for it for ages.

I didn't instantly fall in love with my son when he was born, either. It took a while for me to understand him and relate to him as a person rather than as a baby, and I have blogged about it at my other blog and will probably post it in here one of these days.

However, over time, I don't know how but he and later his sister, little a, have crept into my heart and created such a huge space for themselves that it surprises me. Every day when I call and hear my son's voice on the phone, my heart melts a little. Each time my daughter sways her hips from side to side or manages to say 'mamma', I turn all mushy inside. It's almost impossible to explain to people who don't have or don't want kids, the immeasurable joy that they bring in along with their dirty diapers and crayonned walls. I mean, did you ever think you'd change stinky diapers as a matter of course? Anyone whose potty-filled diapers you change and still hug and kiss at the end of the exercise has got to be special, right?

I was trying to find a metaphor for life with versus sans kids and came up with it yesterday, which explains the title of this blog - life without kids is like half a rainbow - missing so many hues.