Now that I have a vocabulary….

It’s funny when they say what goes around comes around and that’s been happening with me and Re. My mother always used to say that I talked too much for my own good and “you just wait till you have kids of your own,” etc, etc. Now Re is totally upstaging me in the vocabulary department with his comebacks and witticisms and the result is a series of wtf moments. Some nuggets:

Me: Here, drink this milkshake. You will be stronger.
Re: I can be stronger with water also.

***

Don’t shout mamma. Othewise I will cancel you.

***

What happened here, I point to a red bump on his skin.
Yesssturday when I was going in the snow no, a purple rabbit bit me here.
Hmmmm..

***

Me (at spa): I will have a pedicure.
Boy: And I will have nail polish.

***

I really don’t want to take a bath.
It’s holiday time.
I’m sorry.

***

I want to comewichu to office, boy said.
But you will distract me, I said.
No, I will not distruck you.

***

Boy and I went up a mall.
Boy hugged a mannequin.
Mannequin had a great fall.
Boy and I not going to mall again.

***

8 am. Morning play.
Me: what a mess!
Boy: don’t chubble me now. I’m just cleanupping everything.

***

Boy: I’m a good boy no?
Me: Yes. And I’m a good girl no?
Boy: No you are a good boy also.

***

Re: Mamma, boys don’t know. Ony girls know.
Me(saying): Of course not, you know too.

Me (thinking): That’s a great pick-up line.

 

 

Eco-friendly diapers, Baby-proofing workshop and Reading nooks for tots

It’s reading time!

Little Readers’ Nook is a Themed Parent-Child Reading Program for 2-6 year-olds in Mumbai designed to nurture a love for books at a young age.

They offer Themed Reading Sets that parents can enjoy at home with their child. Each set is based on a theme and has 4 Books, 1 Game or Puzzle and 3 Activity Ideas to reinforce the theme in a fun way. Also included are Reading Tips to help in reading with young children.

It functions similar to a library in the sense that parents exchange their Themed Reading Sets once a month or once a fortnight. They offer self pickup (at our Shivaji Park, Vile Parle, Bhandup or Thane centers) as well as doorstep delivery options across Mumbai.

To register or know more, check out:

www.littlereadersnook.com

***

For the first time: Baby-proofing services

Children are naturally curious and like to explore. Everyday household objects that pose little danger to adults can be extremely dangerous for children. Another benefit of baby-proofing is that it provides peace of mind to the child’s caretakers and reduces anxiety. Thus, a baby-proofed home can allow working parents to focus on their work while the child plays at home. Baby-proofing may be done using specialized equipment or everyday household objects.

Safe Baby is India’s first business focused on Child Safety and provides Babyproofing services. As experienced baby safety experts, Safe Baby is able to spot risks and through corrective measures, reduce them. They also help in preparing for emergencies so that you can take the correct decisions in an extremely stressful situation. The goal of Safe Baby is to prevent accidental injuries to children inside and outside the home.

Their services are ideal for expectant parents and parents with kids up to five years of age. In addition to customized audits, they also offer workshops about preventable accidents for parents, grandparents, nannies, teachers, schools and playgroups.

To know more, log onto (www.safebaby.in)

***

How eco-friendly is your diaper?

If you really calculate how many diapers get used in a baby cycle, it would be enough to give you a seizure. Not just that, imagine how much you have dumped on the environment. I had such a moment too, although Re is off diapers (except occasionally in the night). I found an eco-friendly friend in BumChum. These are Reusable Cloth Diapers, now retailing through all major channels, online and offline. The diapers come with a leak-proof outer cover, in bee, animal and other prints, and an inner pad that can be stuck on with Velcro, making your baby snug as a bug. Totally washable and reusable!

To view the range and sizes or to order, log on to:

www.bumchumdiapers.com

(To be featured on this page, write to mommygolightly@gmail.com)

Won’t stay-at-home mom: How I came full circle

I found a really shallow reason to go back to the workplace in my fourth year of stay-at-home mommyhood.  I wanted to dress up and go to work. I wanted to change footwear, earrings, wear hair-product, lipstick, nail-polish, perfume, cotton sarees and silver jewellery.

Fact is, I was tired of mommy dates. And pushing swings. And being told that I cannot take a nap when I thought I had earned it.  I was tired of the husband always whining that he had the most stressful job in the whole world.

On most days, I can see the humour in motherhood. I also think children are deep and there’s a lot to learn just by listening to them. I found myself laughing and crying in equal measure as I spent hour after hour with my son, just the two of us, and the ‘casulls’ we constructed, the mess we reveled in. I made plenty of “I quit my awesome job because I really wanted to be a stay-at-home-mother” mommy friends. I believed them. I began to say the same thing.  I believed it. It felt good. There is the power of the collective. Blogger mommies. Twitter mommies. Working-from-home mommies. School gate mommies. Facebook mommies. Desperately-social-networking mommies. It was important.

But here’s a simple truth: no one leaves a job that is perfect, that truly makes them happy. The same holds for SAHMhood

Just like no one gives up on a relationship when the sex is really good.

Here’s another confession: When I first quit my good-on-paper job to pursue motherhood four years ago, I had reached the point where I was sapped by the job, by its sameness, by its autopilotness, its rinse-repeatness. Motherhood at that time was like a sizzling affair; it was a start-up; I felt like an entrepreneur, I liked the fact that I could do it by trial and error, that there were no style-guides or briefs, that my baby was a brand I could totally make my own, that it didn’t come with excess baggage, that I had no boss! Plus Re was curly-haired, dimple-chinned and drop-dead-gorgeous.

When I was asked “When are you going back to work?”, it made me mad. I wrote angsty blogposts. I got hate-mail and love-mail in equal measure. I smiled and waved.

I had what many women dream of having. Unlimited credit. The husband said it was my reward for doing what I was doing. He was lavish with praise, gratitude, money; he fixed me the best drinks after particularly dreary mommy days, he massaged my calves, he always fed the cats, threw the garbage and made me tea. I flung and he picked up after me.  Sometimes there was a voucher for a dress, sometimes I had a cash-bonus thrown in, sometimes a ticket to Goa; he did his best to keep me incentivised. I had three years in which I could sit around, paint my nails, outsource babyness, buy clothes, go to spas and do pretty much anything for self indulgence, as long as HE was off baby duty.

I wasted it; I outsourced nothing. I took my job seriously.  I treated SAHM-hood like I would a new job. I was always trying to think out of the box, do things differently, wake up every morning and plan meals and things for the day, find ways of making every minute I spent with the boy fun and inspiring. I planned outings, library visits, beach dates, cookie dates, activities, park dates, pot-lucks with much gusto. When things got really intense between Re and me, I started the saga of play-dates and mommy dates. It was the beginning of the end. I met mommy after mommy, each time hoping that she would be THE ONE.

And one day, I got bored. Really bored. And tired. Really tired. I had decided though that the day I felt it was a drudgery, I would stop and try to get back to the work space. I didn’t want Re to be at the receiving end of this energy.

The problem with women like me who are awesome with domesticity is that you can begin to think it’s a career. I am great with food, baking, décor, lighting, furniture, clothes, PTA meetings, play-dates, money, you name it. I know places, I drive, I can create adventure out of nothing and I have lost count of the number of brunches I have hosted. Three  years later, I hated being a SAHM for the same reasons that I loved it in the first place. That it sucked me out. That it consumed me. That I was so emotionally invested in it that I thought it was me.

I am shallow enough to think motherhood is about logistics, after a point. I was done with plan Bs and Cs. Sometimes I wished I had half a dozen kids, so I could have said “fuck-you” to no-shows.The straw that broke the camel’s back was being dumped by a mommy on a play-date I had planned for our boys. A mommy I didn’t really give a rat’s ass about.

Meanwhile every Sandberg , Slaughter, Mayer and Bhagat were holding forth on women in the workplace, constantly making a case for or against SAHMs. It was like there was a conspiracy to shake women out of their complacency and get them back into the race. Mommies on twitter were constantly up in arms or really gushy about their words, depending on which side of the fence they sat on. Twitter was full of mommy angst, very cleverly camouflaged to fit a 140 character breeziness. Mommies instagrammed photos, they wrote micropoetry, they posted link after link (I still don’t how whether they actually read all that content). The ones who spoke about the motions and the mundane were termed whine-bags and dismissed. If you had to be cool on twitter, you had to rise above mommyness.  You had to be with-it.

But it still didn’t bother me. I was as happy as can be, I reasoned. I had a book deal, a blog, a column, I wrote for various newspapers and magazines, and I ran a well-oiled home. What more could I possibly do? On the face of it, I had it all. But it wasn’t enough. It was all too deep. I needed the shallow, the frivolous to feel real. And no, working in PJs is not as much fun as it’s made out to be.

I realised one thing: It’s okay to call your job a drag, but it was not okay to call motherhood a drag. And then I read something which truly explained the intensity of what I was feeling, and it’s the best thing I have read about the work-life balance. In the language of economics, the marginal utility of time with your kids—the happiness you get from the last hour you spend with them—declines as you spend more hours.

It motivated me enough to send out my resume, line up meetings, and announce that I was ‘ready’. In less than a month, I had a job.

I am liking it. I like swiping my card and hanging out with my team in the canteen. I like the quality time over the quantity time with my son. I like that I have outsourced the dreary bits. And I am no longer afraid to call them dreary. I like me more. I know there should be deeper reasons for going back to the workplace, but for now, this will do.

There have been good days and bad days. I have been late for pickups, I have snapped at the husband on the phone, I have run out of meetings like Cinderella, I have got on the wrong train and got so immersed in my book that I didn’t notice, I have started dreaming about work.

But it’s not bothering me. For now, I want to wake up every morning and GO TO WORK. For now I can pretend to be Rapunzel who has been rescued by the Prince from the tower.

P.S: Here’s a tip: If you do decide to be a SAHM, pretend you know nothing about food. Or pest-control. Or rent-agreements.  Or what does a driver cost. You’ll do just fine. And don’t go anywhere near the oven.

Absolute imperfect: Why I’m like dad

A few weeks ago, I was bitten by wanderlust, a disease I have inherited from my father, and duly passed on to the son. Just the words “choo choo train” or “let’s pack a suitcase” is enough to send Re into a frenzy. So we took off to a Himalayan village under the pretext of watching documentaries for three days. Two trains later, we were at Kathgodam, filing into private taxis that would take us on the three-hour ride to Sonapani, our destination. As the signs for Ranikhet, Nainital, Corbett, Bhimtal and Almora flashed past, I had a sense of dejavu. I had been on the exact same road with my father over three decades ago. And almost in the tradition of my father, I was abandoning the known for the unknown. My father never told us where we were going. “You will see,” he would tell us. We would end up at Ramnagar or Kausani or Dhanolti or some such and my mother would always ask why we never went to Kulu-Manali or Darjeeling or at least some place people had heard of. My father would say, “Everybody goes to Darjeeling!”

I feel grateful to my father. For a childhood full of journeys, never mind if some of them never made it to the destinations. Our means were limited, but our hearts were full and our lungs always had more oxygen than they could handle. My father got off platforms and missed trains, he had a tough time keeping track of three children, he forgot to confirm reservations, he showed up at Lucknow in winter at 1 am without a hotel booking and didn’t blink an eyelid when the porter suggested a dormitory, he made us ride back from Dhanolti to Dehradun on a truck laden with peas, as we missed the only bus for the day (we ate a lot of peas on that ride). He lent money to a co-traveller in Pondicherry who pretended to be robbed even as my mother was muttering through her breath that he was faking it. He ended up broke at the end of that journey, still optimistic that the man who duped him would show up. We went without food on that train-trip and ate Horlicks.

In our quest to be the perfect parent, we often realise that it’s the imperfect one who leaves a mark. I always wished my dad could somewhat fit in, be like my friend’s dad, ask the right questions, nod at the right places. But secretly, I was happy that he allowed me to be the person I was trying to be. My father never read us books or told stories or gave us advice on money or careers. He took us to markets, nurseries, made us work in the garden, taught us bridge and cricket, travelled and trekked with us, and helped facilitate my life-long affair with food. He was hardly around at annual day functions; he couldn’t deal with the sham of small talk with other parents. I never missed him. He encouraged me to bunk school so we could watch test matches together. I was allowed to buy him ciggies from the local paan shop, till the paanwala and my mother collectively conspired not to sell cigarettes to a ten year-old.

He is 74 and mostly on a farm somewhere in Belgaum, hoping his green thumb will make him a millionaire. He is a maverick, but he is the maverick I aspire to be. He is the parent who set me free.

The perfect parent messes you up. I am still trying to outdo my mother. I can never be as non-controversial as her, never reach a state where I am blessed by an absolute lack of cynicism like her, never do things with the same consistency of purpose as her. She woke up early, kept a good house, baked, cooked, sewed, knitted, worked, was hugely respected by her students and colleagues, managed finances, did family, friends and synchronised her life beautifully and is the mascot for “nice”.

The thing about having a child is that it makes you love everything about you and hate it in equal measure.  I looked at parenting as my chance to redeem myself. The childhood I wished I had. The mother and father I wished mine had been. It was unfair and stupid of me and it took its toll on my sanity. But I couldn’t have been half the parent I am if my childhood had been any different. We end up who we are because we are more than what our parents made us out to be. And no one gets points for a bad childhood.

As I pointed the snow-capped peaks to Re from our cottage in Sonapani, he stood in attention and started singing the national anthem. My father would have so laughed out loud, I could almost hear him reverberate in the mountains. I felt grateful again.

Book review: How Eskimoes Keep Their Babies Warm

Author: Mei-Ling Hopgood

Publisher: Macmillan

Price: Rs 499

Pages: 292

It is good to read a book which articulates theories that you always internalised but seldom vocalised in a world of over-scheduled babies and over-zealous parenting. For instance, a lot of my initial parenting seemed to involve integrating our social life with that of the child, and wondering how all of us could have fun while still being together. I knew I had cracked it when, at age eight months, my son was dipping baguettes in tzatziki and making a meal of it, swaying to Black Eyed Peas, while we passed around margarita pitchers at a home brunch. It just felt so democratic.

The first chapter of Mei-Ling Hopgood’s book on parenting wisdom from around the world addresses just this. The case in point is the children in Buenos Aires (where the author lives with her husband and two children), who are allowed to stay up while their parents socialise till hours most of us would frown upon.

The book is an insightful, and often hilarious, account of how parents in different corners of the universe, from Argentina to Tanzania raise their children and there are plenty of ideas that are worth trying (although it’s too late for me to try the Chinese split-crotch trousers for potty-training). By studying ways in which children from different parts of the world eat, sleep, play, fight and work (yes!), Hopgood often makes you want to drop your guard in parenting and adopt tradition and culture as at times the more organic and least invasive way of raising a child.

Another nod moment was my utter scorn for baby food and the resulting empathy for babies who will spit it out because it is so yucky, which leads to my philosophy of “what looks good, tastes good,” a sentiment that resonated in her chapter on ‘How the French teach their children to eat healthy food.’

Apart from her researcher’s thoroughness about the cultures and traditions she has examined, Hopgood rings true because of her voice of self-deprecation and her non-judgemental stand. In her chapter ‘How Aka Pygmies are the best fathers in the world’, she examines stereotypes about where, when and how a father interacts with his children and how a lot of it has to do with biology and environment. She explains how in urban scenarios, very often, women leave very little for the father to do, because they believe they can do it the best. She writes, “From the day of Sofia’s birth, I commanded a slow and steady takeover of her life. I’d interact with the nanny daily, plan out the baby’s diet and do our daughter’s hair. It’s easier, I reasoned.”

Hopgood reveals these ideas through observation, interviews, and experience. And although frequently opposing, each of these child-rearing methods has something you wouldn’t mind trying at least once. Like the idea of four/five-year-old Mayan babies caring for their siblings (something that rang true, as I was an unsuspecting candidate at age four when I was handed twin siblings to look after).

Or how Polynesian children always play without adult involvement and how playing with children is not normal in most cultures. She writes, “I was surprised at the number of cultures in which mum and dad don’t play much — if at all — with their children.”

I found myself making several notes to self through the book. “Must try Japanese method of letting children fight and resolve their own conflicts.” Or “Must try the Mayan method of finding my son a chore that is uniquely his.”

In a world where one-size-fits-all parental advice is still fostered, although it doesn’t work, Hopgood’s analysis on cosmopolitan cultures at least gets you started on thinking out of the baby book box. Because far from the world of diapers and scheduling is another way to parent, which very often is worth trying.

Now to find my four-year-old a job. Mayan style.

 

(This review was first published in the Indian Express on 23rd March, 2013)

The curious case of daddydom

In a strange sequence of events, the man I married came up for scrutiny every single day after we made a baby together. He still does. It is a fact that has crept into my head in an insidious way particularly after I read one of his comments on Facebook which said something like “Interesting how most of marriage is spent plotting how not to get screamed at by the wife.”

This needs damage control, I thought. The husband believes that he has the unique power to annoy me even when he’s not in the room, and I think he may have a point. In my overwhelming pursuit of being a good mother, I had clearly lost out on being the good wife.

I married a man who doesn’t cook, walk or exercise. Someone who always thinks of vegetables as the dressing for something more succulent, preferably with legs. One who hates trains. One who wields an electric racket to kill mosquitoes (yes!). One who was gifted a Nintendo by his father at age 14. One who may skip a bath but never forget his hat. One who could easily declare someone he met three weeks ago as his best friend. One who doesn’t read or play any sport, unless it involves a controller. One who is still afraid to pull over a T-shirt around the boy’s head, thinking it might hurt him.

After a child, everything that a man used to do semi-okay is now wrong. Women feel that men were already stupid to start with, and after producing a child, the last brain cell also vanishes. And so we are often guilty of trying to fix our men through our children. ‘Re is so perfect, his father better match up,’ is what I am thinking most of the time.

As for the men, well, one day they are the sperm, and the next day they are the parent who knows zilch about parenting. At least, women have the hormones that make motherhood a little more organic than it’s purported to be.

Some men beatifically fake the holding of the baby in the first few weeks and change a total of six diapers before they realise that this is not really their calling. And there begins the War of the Roses.

Women raise the bar for men after having mothered their children. Men are so overwhelmed by the complexity of post-partum behaviour that the only thing they are looking for is a place to hide. Since most of us didn’t marry with checklists and did it for larger causes like love and hormones, it might be a tad shocking that the product of our conjugation is very often greater than the sum of parts. I think if we have rigid ideas about how we should raise our children (bathing and brushing is sacrosanct, eating junk is sacrilege) we should have these conversations before our libidos get into a blur and the baby is already made.

And so I plead guilty on the following counts:

1. Maybe, when I expect you to take the ball and run, I should at least tell you where the ball is. Or what it looks like.

2. If I was so averse to technology, I should have told you right at the start, before our remote controls produced babies and grandchildren.

3. Somewhere, I fear that your tech toys may have a greater power of seduction on the boy than my books. Or cupcakes. Or salads.

4. I suck at drawing so I was hoping that you would doodle for the child and make dogs look like dogs and lions not look like hyenas. It was presumptuous.

5. I thought your OCD for orderliness would also translate into organising the child’s toys, clothes and books.

6. I celebrated your transition from PS2 to PS3 to Xbox360. Why now am I mortified by the PS4?

7. Someday, I decided that television was not okay. I should have told you then.

8. I know you don’t do parks and playgrounds but I was not counting on building Lego parks on the iPhone as outdoor stimulation.

9. I thought having a chirpy morning child would turn you into a morning person. I was wrong.

10. Sometimes, I am angry with you just because you can switch off. Maybe, I should find my switch-off button too.

Yes, I admit, we have never fought as much before as we did after the baby. But we never wanted to make up as much either. Maybe Re has helped us grow. A wee bit at least.

 

This post first appeared as my column in the Indian Express on 3rd March, 2013

 

The week in boy

So this is what I learnt from Re this week:
We must not be happy in a angwy voice.
We can be angwy in a happy voice.
We must not say sorry in a angwy voice or normal voice. Ony in happy voice or sorry voice.
We must play with all our toys and read all our books, othewise they’ll be sad.
We must not take a bath becoz the water will get spoilt.
We must dwink water from all the water bottles othewise they won’t be happy.
We must wear party pyjamas and dancing shoes everyday. Then ony we can be happy.
We must always sing and dance.

Love letter to a school

I did a little jig when Re started school a year ago. There was no separation anxiety. There was the settling in of course, but I was more than happy to take it slow.  “The smoother the transition, the more long-term it is” they told me. Yes, there were tears — sometimes his, sometimes mine, but I knew it would pass, because I so badly wanted it to.

When I left him and got out the gate after a week of hand-holding, I smiled to myself and walked out, not turning back. I had to celebrate. I had got a child school-ready. To me, that was big. I went out and got myself a coffee and a doughnut. I read 53 pages of a book at a stretch. I watched a movie alone. It was like a part of me had made a comeback.

And then one day, just when I thought it was all sorted, he woke up and told me, “I don’t want to go to school. I want to be with you.” I was putty all over again. And that’s the trouble with parenting. It doesn’t have an expiry date.

Being a stay-at-home mommy is often lonely. But being alone is still a luxury. Sometimes you wish the child would sleep, so you could read. Or write. Or that the child would be quiet so you could talk. Or just listen to something other than his voice. Or that the child would not ask you to supervise every bit of artwork he did. Or read every book in the shelf. Or ask you to push his jhoola in the park. Over and over again (for me that is still a low point).

The thing about love is that too much of it can be claustrophobic. People need to go away so they can come back. We need to not talk for a while so we still have enough for a conversation later. We need silence so that there is room for words.

School absolves you of some of the dirty work. It makes me look like less of a bad guy. “We must not eat lollipop, othewise our teeth will get dirtttty,” Re said one day. I smiled. Someone else had taken over, even if it was for a short time.

There are rituals of course. The thing about the uniform. “I want to wear clothes,” Re would say. “I don’t want to wear unaaaform.” The thing about hair. And grooming. The thing about shoes. The thing about regimentation.

School talks about germs, habits, manners and cleanliness, the importance of order and repetition and discipline and all those dark, dingy areas. The importance of “No.”

School also addresses issues of jurisdiction, which are too black and white for me. It makes the trivial look important. Like putting stuff away, getting in line, listening. It is about finiteness, beginnings and endings. It is like something that fits into a box. A box I so badly needed when I was struggling to be my own person again.

Teachers have a peek into a universe that perhaps you don’t. When you are too close, your universe collides and sometimes it’s hard to see beyond the intersection. My mother was a school teacher for 36 years before he retired. She would talk fondly about her students, they would discuss recipes, trees and fantasies – things perhaps the children never discussed with their parents.  She never had a dull day in her job. But as a mother, I would be debilitated if I had to do everything the teachers have to do. I am not brave enough to homeschool.

Every hour you spend away from your child is an hour for self-renewal. You need to deconstruct. Reconstruct. Reclaim your space. You need to become whole again, because motherhood sometimes makes you fall to pieces. There is also marriage, which suddenly, is not as invisible as it used to be.

When he started taking the school bus six months ago, I did an even bigger jig. No more hanging out with sad mommies always complaining about maids and other demons in their life. I began to get good at incentives. First there was the bus cookie. A cookie that only children who make it on time to the bus got. Then there was Sheroo and Sher Khan, the local resident strays, one or both of whom would hang around Re, waiting for the bus. There were leaves to be picked up, autos to count, birds to spot.

The last time we missed the bus and I dropped him to school, I found his hand loosen in my grip the minute we entered the gate. Two seconds later, he was gone. “Please turn, please turn,” I said to myself. He did, and blew me a kiss. And that’s when I realised that he was just not in school. School was in him. And so yes, I don’t miss him when he is away, and I do look forward to seeing him go away every day.

 

This piece first appeared as my column in the Indian Express on 10th February 2013. For older columns, click here

How to talk so kids listen: a parenting workshop

Here is your chance to acquire & polish those parenting skills with this award-winning 6 series workshop inspired by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish’s best-selling book on parenting, ‘How to talk so kids listen’

Where: Oberoi Woods, Goregoan East, Mumbai

When: First session begins Feb 1, Friday at 9:30 am

Fee: 6 sessions program participation fee is 4500/-

Contact: Yasmin on +919819890069 or write in to yasmin@nourishandnurture.in or visit www.nourishandnurture.in.

Facilitator: Effath Yasmin  MA, HDSE, CLEC(USA), IBCLC

What : The facilitator will guide you through this award winning communication enhancing program by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish – a 6 week, 6 session program to enrich your life. You will learn how to:

• Help your child develop a realistic and positive self-image
• Set limits while maintaining goodwill
• Cope with your child’s negative feelings
• Express anger without hurting
• Engage your child’s willing cooperation
• Resolve conflicts peacefully
• Create a family atmosphere of love and respect

The sessions will cover:

1. Helping Children Deal with Their Feelings
An exploration of what happens to children when their feelings are denied. Specific skills that help children to recognize and cope with their negative feelings-disappointment, envy, frustration, resentment, anger, etc. Ways to accept children’s feelings, limit unacceptable behaviour, and still maintain goodwill.
2. Engaging Cooperation
How children react to commonly used methods to get them to cooperate: threats, warnings, orders, name-calling, sarcasm, lecturing, etc. Five ways to invite cooperation that will leave parents and children feeling good about themselves and each other.
3. Alternatives to Punishment 
How do children normally react to punishment? Is it necessary to rely on punishment as a means of discipline? Some alternatives to punishment that enable parents to express their strong disapproval as well as encourage children to assume responsibility for their behavior.
4. Encouraging Autonomy 
Ways to help children become separate, responsible people who can one day function on their own. Specific skills that help children to become more self-reliant.
5. Praise 
An exploration of the kinds of praise that build a positive and realistic self-image-and the kinds that do not. A variety of ways to help our children become aware of their strengths so that they can put them into action.
6. Freeing Children from Playing Roles 
A look at how children are sometimes cast into roles (bully, whiner, dawdler, mischief-maker, etc.) and how we can free them from playing out these roles. Six skills that help children see themselves in a different and more positive light.

Here is what Moms have to say about the series:

Preeti Vyas, a mumbai based mom says, “Just completed a program on Parenting Communication and I am so amazed at just how much I discovered about my son Neel and myself as a parent.. thrilled with all the skills I learnt.. I feel like an artist who had ideas and inspirations but now has brushes and a paint box! Thanks Effath Yasmin … it was an unforgettable experience.. Highly reccomended to all parents..”

Preeti Birla Nair, a Mumbai Mom says about the workshop series “This was most importantly about gaining insights into the impact of the ‘Quality’ of our conversations with our children. Implementing each of the insights is a ‘trial & error’ learning journey and definitely worth it! I have experienced it working not only with my toddler, but with other important relationships as well- including that with myself! Anyone in doubt….Go for it – You will only comeback enriched!”

Sudha Sriram ~ says “More will still be less to pen down the positive effects the session had on me. The most important change the course and the reading material had on me is to help me handle my own emotions much better rather than messing up and feeling like a wreck later on. I don’t erupt when my son says he carelessly lost a newly bought game or when the younger one throws up a fit when I say we are going home from the garden every evening. Instead, I just let my son know that it’s good that he informs me about his lost game and give the younger one a choice of using the stairs or the lift to go home (not even getting into a bargain of whether to go home). I can feel the steady change taking place in my approach everyday.. Many thanks Yasmin to open my eyes, mind and heart to the most precious treasures I address as – solely mine.”

Prema Shrikant

shares “I want to have more and more sessions like this because it is an ongoing process which I have to deal with it everyday. Every session was very important and an eye opener where in I learnt it everyday. And of course I want to recommend this sessions whoever I interact with”

Nandini Sankar Pipariaya shares, “Now I have a great toolkit to use. It was a pleasure to attend the sessions, an instructor who cares and has had similar experiences made it all the more special. Thank you!”l

~ Another Mumbai-based mom says “the parenting program, gave me an insight into the how’s and why’s of the way children behave.. and the discussions with fellow moms made it an even more collaborative experience.. 9 out of 10 times, I would be empathetic to my situation of having to deal with high energy, high need kids single-handedly but with the course that spanned over 6 weeks, and the exercises done forth, I have now, despite my impatience and short temper become more receptive to my kids, their needs, and their form of functioning..Many thanks Yasmin to open my eyes, mind and heart to the most precious treasures I address as – solely mine.”

Smita Jain Lunawat says “Yasmin, this workshop helped us realize so many key aspects of our relationship with both the kids. These were usually overlooked or not given much importance. Respecting the kids as individuals, understanding the way they think, while we react and respond is a great learning.
Though that requires practice and control (a lot of that) to adapt ourselves to the approach, the outcome is amazing.. Having done the session, I have also realized that the approach helps work on other relationships too.”

 

If you wish to be featured on this page, mail me on mommygolightly@gmail.com with a brief descriptor of the event, the date and venue and a photo if possible.

 

Friends with benefits: The art of mommy dating

There is a time when you pick up your child (somewhere between zero to six months) and think that you could gaze at it forever and nothing else matters. That feeling—and that foolish rush of hormones—quickly passes. Somewhere along, you realise that you and the child cannot really entertain each other without getting on each other’s nerves. You need company. Friends. And if you, like me, haven’t married your neighbour or are a decade too late in ‘settling down’, you need new friends.

Location is key. Any friend who is not around is no good, even if she makes the best dips or can tell the best stories. My BFF, childhood friends, in-case-of-breakup-friends, hostel friends, work friends, the friends I made when I was on the prowl—had all been packed off to different corners of the universe. So there I was, all alone, with a child, faced with the ordeal of making new friends. Slim pickings attained a new meaning.

Enter the mommy date.

Mommy dates are actually play-dates in disguise. You make it about the child, because it’s legit. But what you are really interested in, is the mother. Will you click, will there be laughs, conversation, wit, sharing, food, travel, sleepovers?

So you put yourself out in the market as someone who is dateable. You lurk. In schools. Parks. Book stores. Libraries. Twitter. Facebook. Luckily for me, Re is enough of an arm candy. But that puts additional pressure. I have to be nice.

Finding everything that you want in one mommy is as hard as finding all you want in one man. The only difference is, when you come close in the latter, you end up marrying the guy. Here, you can date forever.

Some mothers you have instant chemistry with. One has a sense of humor. One makes cupcakes. One knows the best deals. One can cook. One can paint. One is good with animals.

Since I am a romantic, I don’t believe in playing hard to get. I invite them home, plan lunches and tea around them, bake cookies for their kids. I make the move.

It takes work. It takes heart. It takes the ordinary. The extraordinary has issues. The ordinary listens. The ordinary has empathy.

Like conventional dating, there are a few ground rules:

First you have to like her.

Then your child has to like her child.

If it goes to the next level, well, the husbands have to like each other.

Men have it easier. They don’t have to go through the prowling, the small-talk, the scanning, the short-listing. They enter the game once the groundwork is done. It’s almost like, “Here is a child and parents I’d like you to like. Now you better!” No wonder they go through it with a strange sense of passivity, unless they really click with the other daddy (or mommy) and want to make them endless rounds of margaritas. Mine has his favourites, and thankfully, things are still going steady and our margarita pitcher always runneth over.

But unlike a bad date with a guy, a bad mommy date is worse. Especially if there was hitting or throwing up involved. But the tricky part is that even if the date turns sour, she or her child will continue to be in your universe. There are just so many parks and public spaces and schools.

I am no serial mommyniser, but just for clarity, I decided to list down my type:

1. Moms who are curious. About people, things, food, me. (There is a thin line between curious and gnawing.)

2. Moms who like food. Who know food. Who eat food. Who serve good food.

3. Moms who are low maintenance are particularly valuable (read that as those whose kids will eat anything and sleep anywhere)

4. Moms who have no trouble asking ‘What’s in it for me?”

5. And lastly I like moms who are spontaneous. Who don’t have to consult charts or tea-leaves before confirming a beach-date or a weekend getaway.

I have learnt the following from the rules of the mommy-dating game:

1.       If she likes you, she will invest in you. Time, food, toys, books, babysitting, pet sitting, alcohol.

2.       If she doesn’t call you back, someone else will.

3.       If she loves you more than you love her, it’s good for you and your child.

4.       Interesting mommies don’t always have kind kids and vice versa. It’s a chance you take.

5.       “Let’s do a play date” is the new “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

6.       “Come over anytime” doesn’t mean a thing.

Things happen. You get stood up. You get served bad food. You host and don’t get hosted back. You are bored and want to leave but can’t, because the children are doing fine. There will be times when you are at a loose end. When there will be no plan B. But one thing I have learnt to accept is that in mommyhood, as in dating, chemistry is overrated. Ultimately the mommy (or the man) to keep is the one that is willing to do the work.

 

(This post first appeared as my column in the Indian Express Sunday Eye on 6th January 2013)