Resolving dilemmas

I recently read an article that has really taken root in my mind over time. I was flipping through a magazine in a waiting room and didn't think much of it at that time. I wish I could remember where I read it or who wrote it, so I could give credit where credit is due.

The author said that when faced with a tricky decision, her approach is to take 10 seconds to think what the impact of her decision will be in the next 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years, and the decision doesn't seem that complicated anymore. She called it her 10-10-10 rule.

I really like this 10-10-10 rule. It really helps to take my mind off short-term, and focus on long haul, and also makes short-term hardship that I have to endure for a long-term joy seem not so bad.

For example, I was wondering whether to let my girls share a room or let them have separate rooms. There are enough rooms in the house so I could go either way. The girls are still young, one is an excellent sleeper and the other not. When they are together, they can keep each other awake much longer and I have two very tired cranky children in the morning. It makes more sense to keep them in separate rooms for immediate relief. However, in the long-term sharing a room will teach them important skills in adjustment and compromise. I try not to inculcate "princess syndrome" in my girls - you know that they have to have things a certain way or they can't be comfortable. I'd prefer them to be easy going and make the best of circumstances. I also feel that sharing a room will make them closer in the long-term. Applying the 10-10-10 rule, makes the decision easy. For the next 10 months, things might be tough but much better in next 10 years. So they are sharing a room, and bedtime is crazy most days. sigh.

How many children - part 2

I believe that if a woman is going to have one child then she should, if she can, have at least one more. Multiple children in a family liberate both the mother and the children themselves. Of course, there are many reasons a woman can't have more children and then that is that, and so is life.

If you have a child you know the pressure that comes with it; you feel that you are shaping a life and how the child turns out is completely up to you. It is a roller coaster ride of guilt and congratulations - a heavy burden to go through life with. It was not until I had a second child that I realized that how a child behaves depends so much on the innate nature of the child. There is this other child, living under the same circumstances and rules, and behaving differently. I wasn't messing up my first child, after all! That made me less of an egotist - how the child turns out, good or bad, wasn't entirely my doing. I am not that important! I realized it wasn't so much nature vs. nature but rather that I had to nurture the nature. And that liberated me, I could relax a little and not blame myself for everything.

Looking from the child's perspective, they do not have to bear the entire brunt of the parents' expectations if there are other siblings. And once the parents are old, they don't have to shoulder the entire responsibility either. When my dad had a heart attack, I knew that there were two other people in the world who felt exactly as I did at the moment, whom I could call in the middle of the night and talk to. And because one of my siblings lives much closer to my parents, I didn't have to drop everything and run half way across the world. I could relax in the thought that the needful will be done. This was again a liberating experience for me, as a child.

So there, that is my theory!

24/7 entertainment

We are about to embark on a road trip - 4 hours drive each way. The invariable first thought is how to keep the children entertained on this long drive. A portable DVD player would be nice. Should I go out and buy a few new toys and books, for a secret stash that I can pull out when somebody starts to get bored?

Or should I completely disown the responsibility of entertaining my children? That is a thought. As a child, we used to take these three day long train rides every year with nothing more than a few books and board games. I used be entertained by watching out the window and seeing how the terrain across the country changed from state to state. We would make new friends in the train and learn new card games. At the end of that journey we would spend a month at my grandma's village with no electricity, toys or games. When I think of happiness, those are the times that come to my mind first. The times where endless summer days stretched in front of me without any planned entertainment or anything to do. I didn't learn horseback riding or ballet, but I did discover the simple pleasure of lying under a mango tree listening to a cuckoo.

These are the simple pleasures that I still long for - to have days where I do nothing more than lie under a tree and read a book. I want my children to find watching scenery out of a window entertainment enough, to be able to daydream, to not need 24/7 multi-media entertainment. This is one reason I have stubbornly refused to buy a DVD player for the car or portable video games. And the sole reason I would like to skip going for vacations to Hawaii and Europe, and save the money to buy a small cottage in the hills that we could visit on weekends and live during summer vacations. Dil dhoondtä hai, phir vahi, fürsat kè räät din as Gulzar would say.

But long drives always test my will. Little kids, when bored, can drive you nuts, especially when they start picking on their siblings for entertainment and I start wishing I had gotten that Gameboy after all.

NY Times article on co-sleeping

I just read this article in New York Times and was quite shocked at the tone of voice and choice of words. First let me confess that our household is quite similar to those described in the article - in terms of how they sleep, not in terms of all the fancy kids' furniture and sleep-therapists they can afford. However, unlike the families described, or the author herself, I do not think that kids sleeping in our bed is "gross". In fact, I want to laugh loudly at the statement that co-sleeping is inching into the mainstream. Puhleeeze - kids have been sleeping with their parents (except for maybe those of European royalty) all over the world since time immemorial. It is making kids sleep alone that inched into the mainstream in recent past. Has anyone stopped and thought that if parents are having so much trouble getting kids to sleep alone in their rooms, and need to employ sleep-therapists no less, maybe kids sleeping alone is what is 'abnormal'? The adults in the house get to sleep with somebody and little kids have to sleep alone, sometimes on a whole different floor of the house!? If you have to go to all these lengths to create a bear that talks like the mother, and smells like the mother, then isn't the child telling you that he'd rather be next to his "real" mother?

Here is my favorite quote from the article
"It’s commonly believed in the mental health field that it’s important the children learn to sleep on their own. Not doing it often generalizes to other problems, because it’s about a fairly important way that parents say no to their child.”

Bravo! Because I let kids sleep in my bed when they feel like it, I have been instantly labeled a bad and indulgent parent who is unable to set boundaries. Oh and also I must have intimacy issues in my marriage. My kids are not allowed to bully, call people names or kick the seat in front of them in an airplane, but I don't think a child seeking comfort with a parent is doing anything wrong at all. By letting my children know that I am there for them, I am harming their mental health forever! Wow! You gotta love these modern experts. They have so wonderfully positioned themselves over a mother's instincts and are all the more richer for it. This modern world is crazy - we need nutritional experts to tell us what to eat and parental experts to tell us how to raise our children, something that is so natural to our very being that even a bird can do it! The most intelligent life-form on the planet, however, needs an army of experts.

What I really want to say, once I have taken a few deep breaths, is that this should not even be an issue. People are different - parents and kids alike. Although experts who have copyrighted parenting methods would very much like us to think so, there really is no one right way to parent. We do what works for us and agrees with our values, and others do the same. Live and let live, and let us do our parenting in peace without assigning a subliminal pathological explanation to everything.

Choosing a school

I have one child entering kindergarten this fall, and I was talking with another mom about the options. Her child is in the same preschool as mine, and will be starting Kindergarten in fall as well so I was really eager to hear her point of view. She told me that she has decided on elementary school 'A'.

Somebody who has already made a decision - Oh, I want to know more on what factors she considered as it will help my wavering mind. Our neighborhood has a school too - school 'B' and I hear it is quite good as well. So I felt compelled to respond "Why did you choose 'B' over 'A'? I hear 'A' is good too, and we can just walk the kids there instead of driving."

"Yes I looked at 'B'. But 'A' is a newer school. It was built just two years ago." She replied.

I patiently waited for her to finish her reasoning, hoping to hear more - something about teachers, principal, PTO. But that was her whole criterion - the newness of the school!

A few days later I was talking to my Realtor about another area that we are considering living in. He tells me there are two good schools in that area, but I should focus on the east of such-and-such road, because then my kids can go to the newer school.

Huh? That is how we are deciding which school is better nowadays? And I though that the quality of a school depended upon the leadership of the principal, the quality of the teachers and the involvement of the parents! Of course, you wouldn't want to be in a school where the roof leaks, or the play-structures are falling apart but this whole area is so new that even the "older" schools are no more than 10-15 years old and the facilities are in excellent condition. I mean, Harvard is pretty ancient by these standards, but I hear it is a pretty good school. No?