{"id":4294,"date":"2016-04-20T12:42:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T07:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4294"},"modified":"2016-04-20T12:42:50","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T07:12:50","slug":"indian-mothers-model-children-unmonitored-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4294","title":{"rendered":"The Best Gift Today\u2019s Mothers Can Give their Children is Some Unmonitored \u201cMe Time\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

M<\/span><\/p><\/div>

others are dragons, they breathe fire at everything that comes in harm\u2019s way of their children. Because when you are fortunate enough to have put yourself through 36 hours of excruciating pain and screamed like a banshee to eject a slimy mini version of you, you want to protect the fruit of your labour from this unkind world at all costs. Especially a world that thinks <\/span>Bengalis<\/span><\/a> are pretentious pricks and sondesh is overrated.<\/span>\n\nYou want your Mommy Report Card to have only As. Like any diligent student you read up every book and article that was written on parenting in the history of humankind. You join mommy coaching centres, pore through ancient <\/span>texts<\/span><\/a> to decode every gurgle, burp, and bluish-green potty emitted by your frenetic fount of joy and giver of headaches. You nourish your baby with Spirulina drops collected at 3.45 am near a pond under a tree to purge her organs of any plans they might have had of giving up in the future. By the time she is 18 months old, you have already introduced her to Maya Angelou, made her watch the documentary on the evils of capitalism, and are about to acquaint her with BODMAS.<\/span>\n\nAnd then one day while you are running your fingers through your hair that you haven\u2019t combed in weeks, you are hit by the realisation that no matter how sleep-deprived you are, how much you worry. and how many <\/span>diets<\/span><\/a>, regimens, and early habits you adopt for your li\u2019l one, there\u2019ll be always someone chubbier, brighter, and better than your own baby.<\/span>\n\nOur neighbour’s toddler was a sterling example of everything my daughter wasn\u2019t. All I had to do was step out on the balcony and our neighbour\u2019s two-year old would start reciting the alphabet song with sickening accuracy. Two taps on the kid\u2019s back and he would start quoting from Shakespeare, and three taps were enough for him to launch into a take on quantum theory. It was as if his mom had made it her sole mission to dazzle me with her son\u2019s brilliance. My three-year-old daughter, unmindful of her mother\u2019s crippling feeling of inadequacy, would continue sweeping the floor with the pan she had just dragged from the kitchen<\/span>\n\nIt got worse when <\/span>Baby<\/span><\/a> Ray started school. This is where I got my first taste of new-age helicopter moms. This specimen was always found hovering near the teachers, could be spotted at all school events volunteering, and never missed a PTM in its life. Its offspring was half a dozen chapters ahead of the class. After school, these alpha kids were carted to their theatre, dancing, piano, painting, gymnastics, and math-for-genius classes. Summer holidays meant making a beeline for yet another set of workshops to excavate the remaining hidden talents of their prodigies-in-the-making. Like any hard-working antibacterial soap they wanted to be 99.9 per cent sure and didn\u2019t want to leave anything to chance.<\/span>\n\nSince I was now a C-grade <\/span>mother<\/span><\/a>, I mostly left my daughter alone after school to do her own thing. I even made the supreme sacrifice of listening to her \u201cI am so bored\u201d rants on a loop during the summer break. I wanted her to experience the lazy summers I had experienced as a young girl \u2013 staring at the ceiling, listening to the fan creaking reluctantly, sweat trickling down my back while I let my imagination work hard to conjure up fantastical stories with me as the heroine. I would write notes to myself in my secret diary and make awful drawings. There was a me that only I knew. She was my big secret.<\/span>\n\n

I know these are tough times where a kid scoring less than 98 per cent in exams is treated as a pariah with no future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nTrust me, an agenda-less weekend or holiday is not that bad and certainly not a blot on your <\/span>parenting<\/span><\/a> skills. It\u2019s okay if your kid\u2019s every spare moment is not optimised, maximised, and driven toward a goal. <\/span>\n\nWhen I was growing up, we were left on our own to figure out our teen angst, exam anxiety and <\/span>heartbreaks<\/span><\/a>. Most importantly, we had time we could call our own, when we were free to be just ourselves and dredge out our inner-self that was weird, baffling but most importantly unique.<\/span>\n\nWith the constant supervision to create a model kid, we are robbing children of solitude, a solitude that will overwhelm them with its stupefying monotony before getting them to move their ass to experiment in the <\/span>kitchen<\/span><\/a>, scribble Rupi Kaur-like poetry on their notepads, stare at the tree and perhaps discover the true meaning of life. Most importantly it will acquaint them with their inner self. <\/span>\n\nInner self is not some pretentious lifestyle brand that uses terms like \u201cholistic\u201d, \u201ckarmic\u201d, \u201chealing\u201d to sell overpriced stuff to the gullible. It is our true self that resides within all of us. Our true self is not just one person. It can be dark and deeply spiritual at the same time. It is a vast <\/span>ocean<\/span><\/a> of the unexplored. <\/span>\n\nInner self is not to be confused with self-realisation which is a lifelong process. It is what you discovered when you had long afternoons to yourself as a young <\/span>girl<\/span><\/a>. It is a sum total of our values, dreams, and inherent talents.<\/span>\n\nI know these are tough times where a kid scoring less than 98 per cent in exams is treated as a pariah with no future. Because children have access to smartphones, they are just a click away from the shadowy underbelly of the online world. It keeps parents on tenterhooks. What if he discovers YouPorn, some online dare that makes suicide an exciting task to accomplish or gets trapped by a sexual <\/span>predator<\/span><\/a> in his \u201cme time\u201d? As a mother you simply can\u2019t be a bystander. <\/span>\n\nBut then isn\u2019t taking over his offline and online life, and his passwords simply telling him you don\u2019t trust him enough to do the right things? Maybe he will make mistakes. But hey, haven\u2019t you shared enough motivational forwards that tell us it is from our mistakes that we learn the most? Allow your <\/span>child<\/span><\/a> the luxury of making one. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The constant supervision to create a model kid, robs children of solitude: A solitude that will overwhelm them with its monotony before getting them to move their ass to experiment in the kitchen, scribble Rupi Kaur-like poetry on their notepads, and perhaps discover the true meaning of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":4295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[439],"tags":[1390,1225,1003,7729,2633,7730,243,1726,22,6098,7731],"class_list":["post-4294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-modern-family","tag-baby","tag-childhood","tag-children","tag-helicopter-moms","tag-indian-parents","tag-model","tag-mothers","tag-parents","tag-relationships","tag-smartphones","tag-unmonitored"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Best Gift Today\u2019s Mothers Can Give their Children is Some Unmonitored \u201cMe 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