Category Archives: Parenting

Parenting done right or wrong?

Posted on by
Reply

Every morning this is a familiar scene to us when we drop BB & GG to school. Parents carrying their children’s school + other bags.

Now this would not bother me so much if this was the younger lot – kindergarten to P1/P2, whose bags are sometimes bigger than themselves, but when I see this with older children, some of them wearing a prefect and/or school leader badge, I get really angry! Can’t a 10 year old and older carry his/her own bag to school? Does this service have to be carried out by (insert appropriate care-giver here – parent, helper, grand-parent)?

I remember during GG & BB’s orientation in school, during the first week of Primary 1, the school principal, in her talk to the parents of the incoming cohort told the child this, and I paraphrase as I can’t remember the exact words she said: “Your parents go to work and when they do, they carry a laptop and a bag. This is related to their job and so they are responsible for it. Your jobs are to come to school and learn, so you need to carry your school bag yourself and not ask your parents to do that!” So many parents who were in the school hall that day seem to have forgotten these words…

And we wonder/make fun of when memes of the NS man whose helper seems to be carrying his backpack goes viral like the picture above. Aren’t we all responsible for this in some way? What is to say 10-12 years from now, it will not be our children being made the butt of jokes like this?

For those interested in what we do – GG & BB have been always encouraged to carry their own bags, right from Kindergarten. Neither S nor I like to carry their bags, school or otherwise, without a solid reason.

School Holidays

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a week since BB & GG’s mid-year school holidays have started. However, vaccations are not a whole lot different than regular school days for them. Since they didn’t do well (read very badly) in Hindi, I sit with them daily for an hour daily. This is in addition to my mother-in-law and her sister doing school subjects like maths and science with them. S usually drives them to their home which is a 10 minute drive in the morning when he leaves for work. Then once I am done with my chores in the morning, I walk down to pick them up. We’re planning a short trip later in June to a neighbouring country, that’s their only ‘holiday’!

Thinking of school holidays brings to mind the days we used to spend during our school holidays. Then, holidays literally meant that – freedom from school, from studies and the regular routines. The entire duration would be only for mauj and masti (enjoyment and fun).  We would play the whole day, with morning devoted to badminton and the hot afternoons to playing indoors or just gossiping, coming home just to eat and sometimes not even for that, preferring to eat at whichever friend’s home we were at that point. Then only after the evening games were done, would we really go home.

But children these days have so much expectations riding on them that holidays is really a myth. I see almost all the schools near my home having some activity or the other for the children, most of the activities seem to be in the morning, for around 4 hours.

Guess, I should not complain too much, cést la vie after all!

 

Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, after quite some time, we went out as a family. What with S’s erratic work schedule, we hardly get time to go out together. We decided to check out the new mall in Jurong East – JCube. My impressions – same as all the other malls. Nothing so very different except for one shop Payless Shoes. Wow! So many shoes and the best part is that there were so many options in my size. My size is longer than the average size worn by women here and so it’s quite difficult for me to get good and reasonably priced shoes. I tried on many, but didn’t buy any. I will definitely go back when (if) I start working again. GG was also super impressed there. She’s getting to the age when all these things – shoes, bags, make-up are simply fascinating to her!

The USP of this mall is that they have Singapore’s biggest and only Olympic sized ice skating rink. GG wanted to to go in and try it out, but since we didn’t come prepared, I had to persuade her not to. We’ve promised her to come back and try skating there another day though!

We also had dinner at Chilis. Normally at most malls, it’s a challenge to find food to eat as we are vegetarians. But Chilis had some vegetarian options and we had American Southwestern (Tex-Mex) food. The portion sizes were huge and we could not finish our food. So a lesson for the next time – order less and share!

Image

S’s dinner – Enchiladas

Image

My dinner – Veggie BurgerImage

My Drink – Strawberry Lemondae – Super Yummy

Our starters which we couldn’t finish and had to take home in a doggie bag!

Woohoo…Friday’s here…

Posted on by
Reply

It’s the end of another work week and a week closer to my holiday! You must know by now how excited I am about it (I can’t stop talking or rather blogging about it!)

Image from Pinterest

This week has been a mixed bag one with a dash of mommy guilt thrown in for good measure! GG has been pestering me to do something special with her, but other than shopping, which I’ve promised her soon, I can’t think of anything which I will be able to exclude BB. The thing is that I am incapable of doing something with one of them and excluding the other. In fact I am scrupulously fair to the two of them – even if I buy someone something, the other will get something else of the exact same value!

So what are we planning for this weekend? We’re going to take BB & GG to watch Puss in Boots tomorrow morning. I’ve heard many good things about the movie and so will review it later. My only concern is that it’s been rated PG, but hope any fears are unfounded.

Then later, it’s some spring cleaning time (time to clear GG’s closets of the clothes she’s outgrown) and then maybe the library!

See you on the other side of the weekend!

Protective Parenting

Posted on by
2

Ok, here’s where I confess – S and me are very protective parents. With parents being bombarded all around about predators around children, it is enough for me especially to want to pull my children around me and never let them leave the security of my arms untill they are adults! But – and here’s a big but – I also want them to grow up to be independent and confident young people/adults.

GG and BB are not allowed to go out on their own. Period. If S is bringing them home from a class and has to park the car, he will drop them at the lift lobby of our building, see them get into the lift alone and then call me to let me know they are coming up. I’ll be on the phone with S outside my home till they reach our floor and then let S know they’re home safe. This is the extent of their trips alone. If they want to play outside our home (we have a huge corridor outside), they have to play at a place where I can see and hear them. If they want to go down to the playground, they are accompanied by a responsible adult (me, S or my helper at my place or my inlaws if at their place) and they have to play where they can be be seen at all times by the adult they are with. These are non-conditional  terms and any violation of these like going to play in another area means we bring them back home immediately.

When we are out at malls for example, till about last year, BB would come with me to the girls toilets if S was not with us. Now that he is older, he is allowed to visit the men’s toilets, but I make it a point to stand outside and do not hesitate to ask someone about him if BB takes too long inside.

Writing this post made me think of the freedom we were allowed growing up. During the school holidays I think we were at home just to eat lunch and sleep at night. The whole day would be spent either at friends place watching TV or some videos, playing at our building or at the neighbouring one, or the building in the next road (except when it was too hot to do anything but watch videos), go visiting other people (even if it was people you didn’t know at all). All this time, our parents would not really be worried about us except when we didn’t come home for meals. This was an era of pre-cell phones and in most homes in India those days (late 70s to early 80s), didn’t have telephones too (this was the height of the licensing era where you booked your phones and were lucky if you managed to get it in 5 years time!).

Parents those days didn’t worry about children as much as we do today. We grew up healthy and independent. But the reality of today is so much different from those years! In retrospect, do you want that life to this one? I for one am not too sure if I would like to live like how we lived in an India in the eighties, give me technology and today anytime!

What do you think? Are you a protective parent or a more liberal one? I’d love to hear from you.