Category Archives: Parenting

(Still) Blogging Anonymously

Posted on by
2

anonymous_blogger

I decided to go way back to my first posts and see how long I have been blogging. I realised I would have been blogging on WordPress for 7 years this year (my blog anniversary is sometime in August) and a couple of years before that on Blogspot. Wow! That’s a long time to be blogging, that too anonymously.

I revisited this topic again when sometime last week, I came across an opinion piece in an Indian newspaper by a famous author who was arguing about the privacy issues that a famous Bollywood couple are facing over their new baby’s photo. The baby’s photo was published across media when the doting father put it up as his Whatsapp profile picture (as most parents are wont to do so) and she argued that in this day and age of digital invasion, especially for a high-profile couple like these two, it was par on course, and not something they should take seriously. I am not going to link to the article, nor mention any names, though any Indian who reads this, may know who I am talking about. This article again raised the issue of being anonymous on social media.

05324746-photo-protection_1_0

Today, with oversharing being the norm, being someone who hides behind an identity on social media, I am probably an anomaly rather than the norm. With the exception of Facebook and LinkedIn where I am present as myself, I blog under a pseudonym on all other media. I guess I am not 100% anonymous here – you guys do know that I live in Singapore and have two children who are twins and are around 13/14 years old and in secondary school. But I have still not shared more details about myself or a photograph of me and my family, which seems to be what most family and lifestyle bloggers (as I see myself) have on their About me page. Maybe someone who is diligent can find out who I am, but I’d like to think that I am not someone who is famous or infamous that people are really curious to know whom I am in real life.

I know it’s quite hard for me not to build traffic to this site because I can’t just link posts from here onto any of my other social media accounts, so conversely I am actually proud of each and every new subscriber as I know you’ve come here organically and because you like what I write. This is pure validation to someone who considers herself as a closet writer.

I also want to protect BB & GG from any adverse effects of my blogging. Technology is jumping by leaps and bounds and what is probably in the realm of science fiction today may be a something very normal 10 years down the line. I want them to start and live their lives on a clean slate and don’t want any embarrassing photos or blog posts to pop up when a future employer searches their name a few years down the line when they start work or even when they apply for admissions at their dream schools. After all, even today a sweep of your social media profile is done when you are looking at hiring new employees or even students and you don’t want something awkward coming up when your name is searched.

blogger_anonymity

So there you have why I chose to blog anonymously. I am still not sure if this was the right decision or not, but it’s something I chose to do and will continue to do so moving forward.

Parenting: Importance of Breakfast

Posted on by
Reply

 

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We’ve also heard the adage “Breakfast like a king, Lunch like a common man and Dine like a pauper”. Breakfast which literally means breaking the fast between dinner and the morning is one meal which should not be missed.

 

There are reports from the Healthy Child website which say there are around 20 – 30% of teens who do not eat breakfast before going to school.

 

The first meal of the day is very important in providing energy to your teen for their activities in school. School work takes up a lot of mental energy and those who don’t fill up adequately before going to school may find their energy dwindling down before recess and a chance to eat food.

 

I am very particular that BB & GG eat something to fuel up before school and so far they’ve not disappointed me here. But somehow since school started this year, they both on different days would decide that they are full from the previous night’s dinner and so don’t want breakfast. Nothing I say would make them change their mind. It’s not because they sleep on and wake up late and so there’s time for breakfast. They are ready much earlier than S but would prefer to use their phones to eating, though on days when they do eat breakfast, they do both simultaneously.

I usually give BB & GG the analogy of a car with no fuel which can’t run for long on reserve fuel when they don’t want to eat breakfast before going to school. I also believe that without a healthy and hearty breakfast you will not be able to concentrate in class which will hamper performance in school. This is because those who miss breakfast lack the glucose which is needed for neurotransmitters to function properly in the body.

I sometimes suspect most teens (and BB & GG) skip breakfast as a way to reduce or control their weight. This tactic actually backfires on them as a study found that teens who ate breakfast daily had a lower Body Mass Index or BMI and gained less weight compared to those who skipped breakfast.

 

So this, in essence, is why breakfast is the most important meal in a day, not just for teens, but for everyone. Does your teen skip breakfast? What do you do to make him/her eat a good breakfast before school?

 

Parenting: Delayed Gratification

Posted on by
Reply

January is drawing to a close and so I wanted to share some thoughts on one of my words for 2017 which is ‘Delayed Gratification’

 

Delayed Gratification refers to the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward and wait for a later and maybe bigger reward.

So why Delayed Gratification? I have read research that say those people who perform delayed gratification on a regular basis are, perceived to be more successful in all walks of life, including success in school and work, better physical and psychological health as well as socially more active.

 

Someone who is able to delay gratification also is able to be more patient, have better impulse and self-control and also be able to control their willpower, basically anything that requires self-regulation.

I also came across a series of research conducted by Stanford University in the 1960s by a psychologist and Stanford professor named Walter Mischel who conducted a series of studies on delayed gratification on children aged 4-6 years old. In these studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately, or two small rewards (i.e., a larger later reward) if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned. The reward was sometimes a marshmallow, but often a cookie or a pretzel. The children were followed up for years, some as long as 40 years, and in follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures.

 

What the research essentially confirmed was that the ability to delay gratification is more often than not the measure by which you become successful later in life.

Another study took the Stanford study a bit further and saw that the ability to delay gratification was not an innate ability, it was not something which was genetic. What it was instead, a result of life experiences. When children were promised rewards for completing something (delaying gratification), but not given the reward, they tended not to delay gratification as their experience told them it was better to take the smaller reward first instead of waiting for a bigger, but later reward. Those whose life experiences did otherwise were able to delay gratification and so became more successful later in life.

 

As a parent to teens, I believe that this age is the perfect age to teach them the techniques with which to learn to delay gratification so that it stands in good stead in life for them later. So how would you go about creating a plan or strategy to delay gratification?

 

Avoid Distractions
When we don’t see it, we don’t need it. In the Stanford experiment, when the children closed their eyes and were not able to see the cookie, they were able to delay gratification. Similarly, make your children keep away distractions when you want them to say study or do something else. So keeping their smartphones or laptops away from their room may help them focus better on their studies.

Know what you want
Teens are (hopefully) more mature than young children and talking to them about their life goals may give them something to work on. Once they know what they need to aim for, they may be able to make the right choices to reach those goals. In our home, this is a crucial year for BB & GG as it is streaming year for them. I keep emphasising the subjects they need to choose now so that they can take the subjects they need to major in when they reach university so that they can become what they want to do. As teens, they should have at least a vague idea of what they want to do when they grow up. If you child has that idea, use that to help them make goals and try to stick to it.

Talk out of Temptation
Teach your teen to talk themselves out of temptation. When faced with a temptation they know they should not give in to, let them engage in self-talk that they can use to distract themselves. For example, when they know they need to finish their homework before playing games, they can tell themselves “I need to finish xyz and then I am free to play”

Reward Periodically
Some goals are far away in nature (like career goals for a teen, for example) and so will take some time to reach them. In such cases, break down the goals into smaller, attainable goals and when each smaller goal is reached, reward your teen with something they have been waiting for – another delayed gratification!

It’s important that parents consistently apply these tips to allow your child/teen to become competent in being able to delay gratification. I read an article where a psychologist who studies self-control has compared it to a muscle. This means that it can strengthen with exercise.

By helping our children apply their best self-control strategies to delay gratification in everyday situations, we can help them to develop better self-control overall, which should help them become better individuals when they grow up in life.

Code Switching

Posted on by
Reply

When I was a student, years back, my school had an ‘English Only’ policy. What this meant was that we could only speak English while in school. If teachers found students talking in any other language other than English, they would punish the student. However, this enforcement was possible only in kindergarten and primary schools. By the time we reached secondary school, we were effortlessly speaking multiple languages with each other – English when speaking to our teacher and a mixture of English, Hindi, Gujarati and even Parsi when speaking with each other. What we didn’t know then was that we were actually code-switching!

 

What is Code Switching? According to Wikipedia, “in linguistics, code-switching occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation. Multilingual speakers of more than one language, sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other.”

Code Switching happens in societies which are multilingual in nature, so you see a lot of ode switching in places like Mumbai and Singapore which have people living in close contact who speak different languages. I guess it also happens when people who speak multiple languages live and work together. I’ve been known to speak in English, Hindi and Tamil all in the same sentence!

While working, when I have colleagues who speak Hindi or Tamil, I more often than not speak to them in those languages, especially when we want to speak things we do not want the others to know about, switching to English when another colleague joins us. I see this a lot here in offices here when ethnic Chinese people usually speak in Mandarin, but here, many do not speak English when others who don’t know the language join them.

 

GG code switches more than BB moving between Mandarin, Singlish and Standard English. I am pretty particular about not using Singlish at home, but I am sure both GG & BB code switch between Standard English and Singlish when they are out with friends. This is actually fairly common in Singapore, where Singlish (or Singapore English), a colloquial version of English is the localised version spoken here. While English is the official language of business, Singlish is the language spoken between friends and while relaxing at home with words borrowed from Mandarin, Hokkien, Malay and Tamil.

 

When people are skilled Code Switchers, it allows them to connect culturally to people immediately. When you travel, when you hear Singlish or even Hinglish (the Indian version of Singlish), you immediately know you are among friends. It also allows you to make friends easily, especially when you and the person opposite you speaks a similar language. Code Switching also allows you to fit in immediately in a new environment.

 

I realise this when I go to Mumbai, I immediately start speaking in Hindi over English, even with friends with whom I’d text in English. I assume the reverse would happen if we go to a predominantly English speaking country – we’d automatically start speaking in English and also possibly start mimicking their accent.

 

I think back and realise we do this without realising it – one of my old bosses was a Brit and when I spoke to him, I realised my accent had become more crisp, almost copying the British accent.

So do you Code Switch? I’d love to hear your views on this interesting phenomena!

What’s Happening to the World?

Posted on by
Reply

The past few days have been very disappointing and depressing for me as a woman, as a feminist, as a mother, as someone who is a minority in my country and most importantly as a human being.

Like many others across the world, I was following the US elections and was hoping and praying that the glass ceiling will finally be shattered in that country. But like many others, our hopes were instead shattered that day and millions of women, minorities, and others were left devastated and crying.

As a woman it makes me wonder why a country which has taken the lead on the world stage can’t come off the patriarchy it seems to be in and vote for the person most qualified for and most competent for the position? Instead, they (and by they, I am not only referring to the white male, but also to the 53% white female who voted for patriarchy) voted for someone who not only showed absolute disdain and contempt for women and minorities, but who also ran a campaign on a racist, sexist, misogynistic and xenophobic tone. How could this person be so much better than the woman who opposed him? I am not saying she was perfect, she did have her faults, but how was he better than her? I still can’t get my head around that one!

What’s more frightening to me as a mother of impressionable teens is that how they will now perceive the world around them. I’ve always been telling BB that she can be anything and anyone she wants to be, even the Prime Minister of her country, but suddenly now, I am not too sure. As a female of a minority race, does she even have the same chances and options as a male of the majority race? This election is making me rethink what to tell her now. Maybe our country will be enlightened enough a couple of decades later to elect a minority female prime minister, but do I have the conviction to tell her that now? Can I continue to tell her to work hard, do her best, be nice to people and she will get the results she is hoping for? Or is this all a big fat lie we parents tell our girls?

And then there’s BB. I have always believed that mothers of young boys have a greater job in ensuring that their young boys grow up to be men of integrity and character, that when they grow up, the teachings they learn from their parents and especially their mothers should be the foundation which they base their interactions with the women in their lives – be it wives, daughters, friends, colleagues and every woman they meet in their day-to-day lives. They should be polite men who believe internally that the women in their lives are equal in every respect to a man. But this election has blown that out of the water. That a man, who denigrated women at all times, who was caught doing this so many times, has become the most powerful man in today’s world is nothing but catastrophic for parents who want to teach their boys how not to behave as opposed to how to behave. Now when you teach boys good behavior, it’s going to come to pinch you in your back when they see the reality around them. What they see around them tells them that their parents are wrong. You do get rewarded for bad behavior and the reward is nothing else but becoming the most powerful man in the world! I have no words….

It’s going to take me some more time to get my head around the new reality of our world today and I think I need more time to process it further. I also need to think about how I am going to continue to teach my children how they need to navigate this new reality. This post is the reaction if my feelings from the past few days and is actually a very early morning (4:30 am to be precise) post where I had to write down my thoughts and feelings.

I’d love anyone who reads this to react and comment. Maybe I get a better understanding of the situation and also some tips on how to navigate it.