Parenting Paradox

I have been a parent for 5 years now and I can rightfully say I am still learning.Its amazing how our kids think we are people who know everything and we think we are still learning.Our kids grow up too far away from home and we are the only people they look up to ,my husband and me.We sometimes feel the pressure and we have to constantly be watchful of how we say things and what we do because we are being watched all the time.
Kids are very observant. When you think they don't notice somethings they can totally stump you.My daughter is one of those classic cases of selective hearing. She tends to hear what she likes and the rest of it just flies right under her nose.But she made us realise how amazingly observant kids could be and how powerful their memory is.She can recollect promises we made weeks ago and ofcourse in our packed life ,we let it slip. She waits patiently when the time is right and lets us know that we did break a promise and so now we have to do something better than that.They are political .. kids.They learn so young. They know how to play the cards perfectly.
In our last parent teacher conference her teacher said she had an amazing memory. We moved her from her old school to the new school in the middle of the school year so we thought she would struggle. But she caught up amazingly fast and picked up on some of the curriculum she had never been introduced to.The new school has an interesting class in sign language. She had managed to pick up all the 200 signs perfectly in a matter of 3 months. Wow.... signs,thats amazing I thought. Now I see her in a whole new perspective. She has something I don't .. memory.So, we better watch out what we say to her.A new respect I would say.
A couple of years ago we started out with our daughter thinking we are the two people who knew everything in the world now we think our daughter knows so many things we don't.Amazing how things turn out. I think the process of learning is so wonderful .
As parents we want the best for our children.As a team we concentrate on different things.He teaches them what he knows the best and I teach them what I know the best.Its important to thrive as a team as parents , so we can always count on the other person to take on tasks you may not be very good at. My daughter's classic phrase is "Mommy knows a lot but daddy knows everything" . I think its wonderful if we can count on our children to be our teachers when we grow up.
Parenting is showering care,guidance and love to our kids and in the process we learn so much more everyday from them.The fact is life goes around in a circle,so if we put in the best effort now we will be able to see wonderful people in the future.

Toxic Talk

I read an interesting article by Dr.APJ Abdhul Kalam.It was eye opening to see how much damage we can do to ourselves by self talk. Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and made a positive comment like "I am looking nice today or I have a good hair day". Perhaps not we would most likely make comments like " I am fat" or " I wish I had a better complexion"
According to psychologists it takes seventeen positive statements to offset a negative one.When I read the article it was almost like somebody slapped me on my face .We do not intend to criticise but we do.Knowingly or unknowingly we do cause the damage everyday.
I found some interesting set of toxic vocabulary words .Notice these when you or somebody else is using them
But: Negates any words that are stated before it.
Try: Presupposes failure
If : Presupposes that you may not
Might: It does nothing definite.It leaves options for your listener'
Would Have : Past tense that draws attention to things that didn't actually happen
Could Have : Past tense that draws attention to things that didn't actually happen but the person tries to take credit for it as if it did.
Should Have: Past tense that draws attention to things that didn't actually happen(implies guilt)
Can't/Don't: These words force the listener to focus on exactly the opposite of what you want. This is a classic mistake that parents and coaches make without knowing the damage of this linguistic error.

Have you noticed doing this.When your child is running you say "don't run you are going to fall" .Likelihood is he/she will definitely fall and then you will say I told you so. I think this is a typical scenario we face everyday.I repeat this everyday with my 5 year old daughter when she is having her milk in the morning "I say you are going to spill your milk be careful" .What do you think happens ? She definitely spills it and tempers flare up because we are ready to load them in the car and now I have a mess to clean on the kitchen floor , a screaming child and frustration. I wish I had just said " Hold the cup tight and finish it up fast" . This would have a given her a more positive mental picture and she would have done exactly that.Try it. I did and it works.
I try very hard to create positive mental pictures for my kids now and they seem to be responding very well and in turn there is very little criticism that goes around at home.Its much more calmer and managable.
Examples :
Toxic phrase: "Don't drop the ball!"
Likely result: Drops the ball
Better language: "Catch the ball!"
Toxic phrase: "You shouldn't watch so much television."
Likely result: Watches more television.
Better language: "I read too much television makes people stupid. You might find yourself turning that TV off and picking up one of those books more often!"
Limit toxic talk from your vocabulary.Make a list of words you use to do toxic self talk or on others and you will begin to catch them yourself and change it.This is a simple exercise Dr.Abdhul Khalam suggested. It really works .Change it and feel the power of positive talk.

What's your choice??

Every situation we face there is always a simple way to solve it. Have you realised what seems simple enough for you may be monumental achievement for another. For example , a simple addition is a colossal problem for my 5 year old but walking on a monkey bar or doing cartwheels is next to nothing. I would not be able to do cartwheels for nuts and certainly swinging upside down from a monkey bar is almost an impossible feat.
I realised that I had lost my sense of adventure. As kids I had great fun forming a secret society and going into the woods and look for clues to fight villians. Now I am perpetually scared of letting my dogs out into the woods.I am afraid they could get hurt.I am constantly reminded that they are dogs and they have to satisfy their sense of adventure when they are out in the wild.
We try constantly to find solutions to problems in our everyday life but things are better solved when you are laid back and you think of the simplest possible way to deal with it. Some people say I am perfectionist but I can say truthfully that I am obsessive.I am not extremely proud of it. I need everything straightened out in my family room before I go to bed even if its at 1 AM. I cannot see dirty dishes in the sink even if that means losing 30 mins of my valuable sleep time of which I get very little anyway. If we strive to be simple I think sometimes we will find ourselves finding a little more time to do somethings we like to do like read a book or watch a movie.Its been several years now since I actually sat straight through a movie. I am so restless and itching to get something done during that time. But I wish I could just tell myself I deserve that time to relax and just enjoy it.
I found that its always tougher to be simple than to be complicated . We need to execute to be more simple. Kids are always smiling because they don't have a problem with dirty clothes or a dirty room. They don't care if their toys are all over the floor they would still rest comfortably in their bed.We could definitely learn a thing or two here. I wish I could learn to think like a child and start working towards uncomplicating my life. Good luck with that !! :)

Goals and dreams

"Goals are dreams with a deadline" interesting way to think of something we all have in our life.Everybody has dreams but not many make them their goals. I think being goal oriented in life makes you very focussed . Being ambitious makes you more driven and seldom or never bored. You will constantly be challenged and that improves your perspective of everything around you. You do not ponder on irrelevant issues but stay focussed on the direction you are heading.
All the great achievers started off with a dream and then made that their goal. They chose to stay in that direction. Its not important what path you take as long as you are in the right direction. "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. ~Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead" This quote from the book the FountainHead is truly inspirational. Life would not be interesting if everything came easy.Challenges add the spice to our life. We cannot let anything stop us from getting where we want to be.
Life' s problems wouldn't be called "hurdles" if there wasn't a way to get over them. There is a weird sense of satisfaction when we do achieve something we set out to do. If we aim for the moon we might atleast land in the stars. Go ahead and set a goal none is too far from achieving and its never too late to be what you want to be.

Westernization or dilution

As the corporate world takes over , all countries big and small are influenced by the increasing demands of advanced technology and greater standards of living. Its now the era of fast food and life in the fast track. Everybody is in a rush ,a race against time . India has grown leaps and bounds in a very short span of time. Its amazing to see the infrastructure in the cities now and compare it with what was exsisting 5 years ago.It makes me very proud that my country has grown so much in a short period of time. India is predicted to grow by 7-8% by the end of 2009 by the economy experts ,which is an amazing improvement.

We have to lose something to gain something they say and India has lost a lot of its rich culture now. In the process of westernizing its society India has suffered dilution of its rich culture.Parents think its below their dignity for the kids to converse in their mother tongue and they need to be eloquent in English. The teenagers seem to think its fashionable to have boyfriends/girlfriends and they don't take into account what the parents think about this. How far are we going to take this?India has always caught the entire world's curiosity of how the younger generation abided by what the parents said.Gone are those days.

The price we pay for moving forward is forgetting some golden principles we learnt from the previous generations. Not many countries enjoy the rich culture and diversity that our country does. We speak different languages and have different cultures in every state. We have always wondered when would be a right time for us to return to India. We have felt a yearning to be back home and feel more secure both for us and for the kids growing up in our culture.We want them to know their roots and feel proud of where they are from. Everytime I go back to India I see some of the that hope fading. My kids are very curious about their origin and like to share the information about their country and the heritage to all their American peers .They have a sense of pride of where they are from . I see a big contrast back home where kids don't seem to care. I understand that we need to let go of some of the superstitions and move forward. Learn the good from other cultures and adapt to changes but we cannot afford to forget our roots.We need to make sure we know where we are from and what we are . There should no sense of shame or hesitation in saying we are Indians. We are what we are we should be proud of that.

We are debating whether we can better teach our children to appreciate their culture and roots here or back home where its almost insignificant in the present days.I think we can pick up the good and leave out the bad and in turn show the world that we can still keep what we regarded priceless and still make huge strides growing as a stronger nation.

Sudoku Strategy

In our perpetual busy lives how many of us sit down and do something we really love to do. I realised that when I was a stay at home mom I did something that both my daughter and I were passionate about. After we got my son to nap in the afternoon we enjoyed hours of jigsaw.She loves to do it with me and I just love to do jigsaws to clear my head . It helps me focus on something besides "what can I make for dinner?"
I think hobbies meant a great deal to all of us growing up and in today's busy lifestyle I think we don't have time to keep up with what we love to do the most. Its ironical how sometimes we are lost in our office meetings and we forget to have lunch . We all work for a living for three most important things food ,shelter and clothing.In today's corporate world we are so high strung with our careers we don't have to time to decide to what to wear,skip meals and never be home. There seems to be something technically wrong here, don't you think?
All we need to do sometimes is to just slow down and do something besides working. I found an interesting way to enjoy my breaks. It was tough in the beginning may be because my puzzle solving days were long gone and I had lost the touch of lateral thinking.I enjoy doing it during breaks I take at work.Its like a breath of fresh air.
Its more often than never that I come with solutions to a program I am developing when I am doing the Sudoku.I changes my perspective of thinking and all of a sudden there is a new dimension to the same problem and hence a solution.
To any puzzle solving there is a combination of three processes : strategy,marking up and analysis. If we look into these carefully we could use these three processes to solve any problem in our lives and handling any situation. In any situation the first step is the scanning understanding the problem/situation at the outset. Then when the problem cannot be scanned further we jump to the marking up process where we start thinking logically and finally the analysis where we have already come up with some solution with our process and now finally deciding if that is the right thing to do. Any analysis would have two ways of doing " Elimination " and "What if" . As the name signifies we start analysing the solution using the process of elimination and finally come up with the one and only possible choice. The "What if" strategy is used when we come up with two possible solutions for a problem and we have to make a guess. If we ask the "What if" question to ourselves , in any given situation we can choose which one of the results would be a better fit for us.
I think lateral thinking for problem solving adds a lot of creativity to our lives and also keeps us intellectually stimulated.

Can we think outside the box?

The Nine dot puzzle and one of its solutions

I wonder if its possible for any of us to think "outside the box" . Have you wondered how sometimes we are all so different and yet so similar. We all want the same thing and more often just because the other person thinks its important.Its very natural for us to use some one as a role model in our lives. When we were kids it was probably a parent,uncle or aunt or perhaps even one of our friends or even a rock/movie star. But we get more practical as we grow up and start setting some realistic goals.

As adults we don't realise that we lose the creativity we enjoyed as kids. We made a house out a cardboard box , made hand puppets from socks and made a TV out of a shoe box.As a kid I used anything around the house to make my saturday afternoons interesting. I collected the comic strips from the saturday paper and made my very own comic book.As adults do we allow our kids to think outside the box and explore themselves. Especially Indian parents are more or less obsessed with being making their child have a successful career. Why not let them explore and realise what they are good at and let them think outside the box.

Creativity is lost now with the Playstation and hand held video games.Kids do not want to explore.They prefer to sit down and use the computer or the tv for their entertainment.

The origin for the phrase is very obscure. In today's world its used most by management consultants and executive coaches in the business environment. This phrase was claimed to be introduced by John Adair in 1969 . The management consultants used the nine dot in the 1960s till the 1980s to challenge their clients. The challenge was to connect the nine dots by four straight,continuous lines without lifting the pencil from the paper. This demanded that the person use his creativity or lateral thinking. Now how many people encourage this generation to use lateral thinking. I think we would be able to create a whole generation of smart thinkers by just encouraging our kids to be more creative in their problem solving.
Now try to see if you can think outside the box and get another solution for the nine dot puzzle.Its a lot of fun.

Ya Ya sisterhood

Have you ever felt this way. I grew up in a big family with my grandparents,my aunt ,my cousin who was more like a sister,my parents and brother. Not to mention a population of guests who floated in and out of the house year round. That never seemed to change till I got married.We grew up in the same house and lived together till I was 21 . I got married and moved out and suddenly I was completely out of the scene . I am in regular touch with parents,now more than ever since they are aging and they are looking for the support from their kids. Last year my sister got married and I was in India with my kids till the wedding took place. I would not consider myself being very close to her or my brother perhaps because that was my personality but suddenly the feeling of sisterhood was gone. She seemed more comfortable with her friends . She related more to them and wanted them around her more than she expected me. I realised I was unable to relate her anymore.
Perhaps sisterhood doesn't necessarily come with being blood related. Any person you can relate to and be open with and perhaps be yourself could be your sister. I met my childhood friends while I was in India last year. We first met each other when we were in 3rd grade. It felt great to be with them. I felt they were more my sisters. We are all from different backgrounds and we don't even speak the same mother tongue. But there is a strange connection between us. I am not in touch with them all year round and sometimes I forget to call them on their birthdays and anniversaries but when we see each other the connection is instant. We don't think about what we didn't do the whole year when I was not around but want to make sure we meet as often as possible and hang out and talk about school days,marriage,kids and everything under the sun like real sisters do. We are very open and frank about each other. I realised that there was a strange stress associated when it comes to relating to your family. I think if we start looking at everybody as friends there will be no expectations and the atmosphere changes . I read a very nice quote somewhere
" Do not lead ,for I might not follow
Do not follow,for I might not lead
Walk beside me and be my friend "
When the kids grow up and we start treating them as peers and the equation becomes different. Ofcourse as parents we have a responsibility to correct them when they are wrong but if we do it as a friend and gently nudge them back to the right path we can continue to be friends and confindantes to our children and still be a parent when we need to be one.
I love my friends and I like to make new friends all the time. You never know when you will hit a jackpot again and have a best friend who can even listen to what you don't say.
"Every body hears what you say,friends listens to what you say,best friends listen to what you don't say"

Forgiveness I learnt

" To err is human and to forgive is divine" I learnt this in school. I believed it was true and incorporated it to a large extent in my life growing up.As kids we believe everything our parents say and our teachers say ,they could never be wrong to us. Somewhere the innocence is lost and as teeanagers we go through a phase where we want to decide for ourselves and in the process of fighting with ourselves and with our parents trying to decide who we really we are we lose track of the good things we learnt in school.Practice maketh perfect they say , we forget to practice the simple philosophies that we learnt in school , some that we thought were very important .As adults we lose the hope and the smile we always had when we were kids.
Our demands were so limited but we were still happy. On a hot day an ice cream cone would be heaven but nothing is good enough anymore.Where did we lose track and how do we make it easy on our kids who are growing up stay focussed on the simple pleasures and teach them that just by smiling things suddenly seem very easy.
When I wake up every morning I tell myself that my life is good and its a gift from god.Ofcourse its not perfect and there are somethings that I would like changed about myself and around me but this was meant to be and God gave it to me for a reason. I have learnt to appreciate childhood through my kids again.
There are days when my daughter comes back complaining from school that a certain friend did not want to play with her .She is down for a couple of minutes and when I give her ,her favorite snack she seems to miraculously bounce back and forget all about the bad day she had. The next morning is a whole new day for her and she might play with the same friend today and forget all about yesterday.
As adults why is it so difficult for us to move on and shrug away and approach our old enemies. The answer to how we can be happy is right in front of us,we just need to look at our kids. If we learn from them and continue to keep smiling even at people who have done us bad they might one day smile back at us. We are in the process teaching our kids to love more and hate less.
Its true that there is a circle of life in everything. We learn from our kids and in the process teach them that hating only makes you feel hopeless and unhappy.When we need to smile there should be no thought associated with it,stop thinking and keep smiling. One day it will become a habit and you will start spreading the cheer and light up the place you walk into.

Time flew by

My daughter is turning 5 next month.I know she needs to grow up and that means I need to grow up as a parent. There will be more difficult questions and more so often sticky answers .She will start saying " Mommy you don't know a thing" more often now not realising I am holding back because I don't want her growing up so fast. I do not want her to be exposed to things that I do not want to deal with and explain to her. As a parent I do not want her to grow up fast and deal with the pressures of the changes that come with it but as I realise that I need to learn to start to let go.Its important for me to make her more independent of us from now to be reassured that as a adult she will be a strong individual capable of making her own decisions and also stand by the wrong ones she makes.
I cannot imagine how fast time has flown by since the day I found out I was pregnant with her the horrible mood swings ,outrageous morning sickness,longest and painful labor and the most depressing baby blues . Here were are now she is 5 already and I don't know how the 1825 something days flew by. Sure there were sleepless nights , night feeds and a screaming baby but I look back at those and would not trade those memories for anything in the world .She was our first and when I found out she was a girl I was secretly most excited in my mind.I finally was going to have a best friend when I grew old. I will have someone to talk to and share special moments with through the rest of my life.
I am looking forward to sharing some wonderful times with my daughter her high school graduation,her college graduation,wedding and ofcourse I will stand by her labor and always support her whenever she needs help with her kids.I know its a long way but nobody said you could not dream . Right now we will work on giving her a great birthday bash something she will remember when she is older and have something exciting to look back in her childhood memories.

Food for thought

During a recent conversation with my husband I realised that we are pressured by family and friends on everything one way or the other. We do charity every year and every special occasion we believe we should do something charitable in order to give something back in gratitude. I come from a very religious and a rather conservative family and he is brought up in a more open minded and a rather free thinking atmosphere. Over the last few years we have understood each other's limitations and strengths even with respect to our outlook of small and big things around us which is largely influenced by our background.I must say we have taught each other some valuable lessons , sometimes with some real heated arguements and some more subtle .
We have managed to influence each other positively as well as negatively. Family is an important part of everybody's life and just like every one else we are very grateful we have a great family around us. But in more than one occasion our difference in the up bringing glares back at us when we are the middle of our extended family.We have somehow understood how to deal with that difference when we are by ourselves but we most certainly cannot ignore that when our family is around us.
He is very charitable and I have never held him back from doing charity of any kind but this year with so many natural calamities and so much hunger around the world I would really be happy if people spent a little bit more time helping the helpless and not spend so much time building temples. They alwayse say serve mankind and you serve god. We are afraid to make that call because we do not want to be an outcast amongst our family and friends. We want to be good for our family and the people we know and not be called an atheist. In one hand we do feel bad about what we read/see in the news but when we have the opportunity to do anything about it we don't. We think about ourselves my husband,my kids,my dad and my mom. I want to donate to a temple and make sure my family is safe. When they one good deed leads to another ,why not spread the message . Why can't we be the one take one step forward and make a different choice this time. We might be able to spread the message to our family in return and they might start to think differently about charity too. God is a faith who helps us going through the tough times. Why not take this as his calling for help to our fellowmen who are in need of a roof to stay and food to eat ? He doesn't need his temple expanded now as much as they need food and shelter.

My first Day

Its May 16. I started this blogspot to celebrate some memories I share with my family. Everyday I thank god for a wonderful family . We have some rough times and say somethings we shouldn't .We don't keep in touch enough with our brother/sister. We need a reason to call everyone and gone are those days when we can make a friendly call to check on how our near and dear ones are doing. Everybody says the same thing " Wish I had more time" . I tell them we are so much better than our forefathers . They had to walk to the lake to have a bath and now you can do it at the comfort of your own home. They had to draw water from a well to wash and now we have pipes and taps with hot/cold water. They had no electric stoves or microwaves still they knew everything that was happening with all their near and dear ones and we don't . We blame it all on time. My grandfather always said " if you say there is no time,then you are plain inefficient. Being organised and making the best of your time is what makes you successful. "
Those words sure did not mean so much to me then but they made a lot of difference when I was a student ,a wife,a mom and a homemaker all at once.I realised that time was critical and it was important to learn to value it. I am now a mother of two , work full time, a home maker ,a wife and a student. It doesn't sound difficult to me anymore. I like the challenges life throws at me and think thats what keeps it very interesting for me.
I want to record some special moments with my family and friends in this blog ,all the people and all the events I want to cherish.

Happiness Arrives

April 12,2008

We had a big celebration for the Ugadi and Daksha and myself decided to do something special as mom and daughter and we signed up to dance in the occasion. She loves to dance and though I have tried in several occasions in school and college I simply wasn't sure if this was a great idea .I did not want to embarass myself in front of her but Daksha has a great gift in making everything sound very simple. I always believed that we would be the ones teaching our kids to live a certain way and prepare them for the world but my daughter has been my greatest inspiration in taking things easy and also enjoy everything big or small. She loves everything around her and for her everyday is new and she alwayse has something to look forward to even if its learning new numbers/words in Spanish.For me growing up that was called "school work" not associated with fun definitely.
That morning we woke up thinking this is the day we are going on stage . There was tons to get done before the event in the evening including a dress rehearsal in the afternoon.We didn't know somebody made some alternative plans to change our lives that day.
We had contemplated for a long time about adopting a child and when we had our son that idea was out of the door. We were definitely not ready to take up the challenge of raising three kids and make ours understand why their brother/sister looked very different from them. We decided we would adopt a dog preferrably one who would receive a new lease in his/her life.
We found out there were some puppies who were possibly going to be euthanised if they did not get homes because of the limited space in the shelters as well as the limited donations the shelters were having to make do with.
It was pouring rain that morning . The previous day we had gone online and decided to pick up a 5 month old Lab puppy "Cotton" who was abondoned by his previous owners. Both of us thought he would be the perfect fit for us. By the time we called them in the afternoon the lil guy was already adopted. So we decided we will show up at the shelter and look at some puppies and also put our names in their list so they can call us in case they had a puppy .
Little did we know our lives would change that day and so would another poor puppy's .We entered a room full of screaming puppies all wondering why people were not picking them up and taking them away from this dreadful cold room . We saw a lil brown guy sitting and shaking in the corner. He was in the pen with two of his brothers.When we checked the shelter in the morning we had decided we would pick up a female puppy called "Silvia" ( we would rename her ofcourse) and may be Daksha would have someone close to a sister . But as we drove into the shelter we say another couple walk out with Silvia.. .we went in secretly hoping there was another female in the litter or it would break Daksha's heart.
Ofcourse there were no more girls left in the litter so we decided to pick a lil guy instead. We saw the one lil guy sitting very quiet and almost depressed that his sister left and thought he would be the one.Skandha was so thrilled to see someone smaller than him.We came home with him and introduced him to Patches . The quiet lil guy in the shelter and the shaking puppy in the car was long gone... he was so Happy to have actually have a home and a family and he was running all over the place. We decided to name him "Happy Cotton" to remember the puppy thay inspired us to make a difference . He is cheerful chubby 5 month old lab now... he loves to run,chew and jump . He cracks us up totally when he walks holding Patches tail .We thought we were making a difference in his life but he ended up making a big difference in all of ours.
We love you Happy !!