Extreme Parenting

Read a wonderful book a couple of months ago - May Contain Nuts. A must read for all parents I think - a novel set in England about extreme parenting. Though some of it was TOO EXTREME to be realistic, I paused often to recognise similar patterns of thought I had. It was also a good laugh...

Going back to that article by Dr. Vijay Nagaswami, he says that children provide a new opportunity for parents to clue into their own lives emotionally. He sees parenting as a growth experience. I agree.  

What do I find most difficult about parenting? I think it is the loss of mental space. The constant demands are not just physically tiring but they crowd in on me. I would have spent a couple of hours playing with M on the beach and then read her book about the rooster and the sun for the  1485678th time and would sit down to have a cup of tea when something urgent would call my attention. By the time I am back the tea is cold. The need to be always on call is the most exhausting part for me. There are times when I just want to be left alone and those times are difficult to come by. 

For the record I should probably also say that M is by far the best thing that has happened in my life. I simply cannot imagine life without her. Cribbing about parenting does not mean it is not joyous. I am just trying to work my way through these conflicting feelings and thoughts. I often wonder how other parents manage. What resources, abilities or attitudes do they have that I lack? Am I making this out to be more difficult than it is? Is it just a personality-thing: may be there are calmer souls who handle this with great ease. 

More Montessori....

Montessori speaks of three external circumstances that may constitute the principles of her method of education:

1. Suitable environment

2. Humility in the teacher

3. Scientific material

At first glance, it seems that it is possible to create these at home as well. The environment can be pleasant and 'child-friendly', in that things are accessible to the child allowing him to choose his activity and to repeat it as many times as he would like and for however long. Today, M went down to the sand in the front garden by herself to play with her beach set. Entirely her initiative. She packed up her things and came up on her own when she was done. A few days ago, she spent half an hour shelling peas. So it is possible to create a suitable environment. 

Similarly, providing scientific material may also not be too hard - the stuff used in the Montessori school is composed of everyday materials - broom and mop to clean the floor, mugs to pour water, seeds of different shapes, sizes and colours, and so on. Some other materials such as calibrated pegs and bars may need to be purchased or made. But that is also not difficult to acquire. 

The difficult one on my list is the humility bit, which refers back to a previous post about anger and pride. Montessori speaks of the negative role of the adult - someone who creates an intellectual calm so that the child is not emotionally thwarted. That is difficult to do for someone who lives in the head much of the time. 'To understand a child' for me is often a process of analysing and judging. Montessori seems to suggest a need for calmness of character and nerves and I am anything but... She also seems to suggest this is the biggest work that an adult needs to do as preparation for being a caretaker, either as a teacher or as a parent. 

I read a piece by Dr. Vijay Nagaswami in The Hindu today on parenting. It echoed my thoughts on why parenting seems so much more difficult these days - I used to feel guilty cribbing about something I should find entirely joyful. (I really don't understand how my mother managed. And to think there were two of us, and what a pair we were!) I think Dr Nagaswami is right that there is enormous pressure on today's parent because s/he is that much more well read and conscious of their own parenting. We don't want to leave too much to chance and want to try and get everything right. Research indicates that much of our personality and real learning is complete by the time we are four years old. That leaves just one and half years for me to get things right for M! Phew!

Sometimes I think, " I will do what I can - anyway she will have to go to therapy at 16 and work on her inner child..."

 

Magic of shadows

M discovered her shadow a couple of days ago. What joy! It grows long, it grows short, you cannot step on it and it won't leave you alone. It is there, and now it is not. I loved chasing my shadow as a child - the game was to try and detach from it - M has hours of fun ahead of her. 

I had to add another post on the same day. I have now broken the pattern of writing once a year. At least this one does not start with "So here I am"...there is hope yet...

Montessori comes our way

So here I am - a good year and a half later to renew the Daily Parenting blog!

M has started school - actually today is the last day of her school term - she started school a couple of months ago. Montessori. Did not realise what Montessori was all about until M joined the school.  Not sure we still do but the first signs have been very encouraging. We were initially looking for a 'play school' so she can make friends and run around but I am so glad we did not go in that direction. 

Two things happened in the first week. First, M got fully potty trained in 5 days. We were just about resigning ourselves to a lifetime of 'toilet accidents' when her potty training happened in double quick time once she joined school.  It was eerie to see how quickly she picked it up and insisted on her own routine. Suddenly, there was no trace of something we had been struggling with. Now, if you are not a parent, you cannot imagine the immense relief we felt. This was BIG. 

Second, we saw she lost a certain edge that was building up in her - like a caged animal - a kind of frustration that was growing stronger. We did not know then what it was due to but we could see that school made it go away.

Learning Tree is a wonderful little place in Shastri Nagar that M took to immediately. Well, not quite immediately. The first couple of days were agonising for me to sit outside helplessly and listen to her wail inside the school. The Principal did the kind thing by me and asked me to go home. M adjusted and soon she loved it. But not for reasons we had thought. She was not making friends or having a jolly time as we thought she might. She was enjoying her 'work', to use a Montessori phrase. An hour of uninterrupted time to engage with various kinds of materials of her choice was manna from heaven for her. We had noticed earlier in her the need to be engaged with 'real' things around the home rather than toys and only after reading Montessori we realise that most children have this remarkable sense of order and a need to be productive that is not recognised and is hence smothered by adults. 

We think M lost her edginess when she joined school because she could be engaged in ways she was not at home. Her personaility resonated with the Montessori environment. It was a good fit. 

M likes to repeat things. Over and over again. If I were to write that sentence over and over again many times over, it would still be short of the number of times she likes to repeat. We breathe. She repeats. (She also breathes, thank goodness!)

Montessori demands much from parents. As if parenting were not hard enough. But it is difficult to turn away from her demands. She exhorts us to be better people. As I read her book I have this gnawing sense of how much more one could be as a parent and as a person. She asks us to purge ourselves of anger and pride. Now, I went to a Krishnamurti school where the idea was to 'look at' everything - not to attempt to purge it. So it is jarring to read this.  But in a way it is also liberating. For Montessori speaks of things from a pragmatism that is immediate. And concrete. Anger is real and its effects on a child are too real. You can see the face collapse, the colour drain, the tears roll and you know that something has tripped inside which you may not be able to put back again. You can see it happen. In slow motion. And you know it is a direct result of your anger. Guilt about anger is useless because it just postpones doing something about it and is an easy way to not take real responsibility. Which is to trap the anger as it arises and not allow it to explode. 

So Daily Parenting is a demand to not defend one's own personality against the child's. In public,  people speak only of the joys of parenting but in reality it is hard work. And there is no getting around the fact that it is unrelenting. 

M will be back from school soon. Today she wore a red and white dress as the school celebrates Christmas before they close for the term. She has learnt "Santa Thatha is coming to town". She made a paper Christmas tree two days ago and pulled out all the gold and red stars from it and stuck them on our door. Welcome home!

The First Entry

So here I am, starting a blog. Having taught about them at ACJ for a while I have finally created one for myself. With an internet connection that is barely faster than modem speed, I never thought I would start a blog. But here I am. In the same week that I have joined Facebook and created a discussion forum for a friend. Interesting, how things seem to happen in clusters.

But what does all this have to do with Daily Parenting? Well, I hope to write about what it means to be a parent - one who works from home and takes care of his one-year old daughter while his wife goes to college. Zak had asked us to start this blog a year ago, when M was born but the last year has been busy with parenting, rather than writing about it.

Parenting, I have come to realise is a Daily affair. It is unremitting. Anyone who has taken care of a child for more than the casual babysitting, will agree that if there is one thing that parenting brings with it, it is a sense of the never-ending. I don't mean the smelly diapers or the messy rooms. I mean you can cease to be a friend or even a spouse but a parent you will always be. For life. That is tremendous.

M has been a blessing. Truly. We asked for her. And we got her. To think each of us, yes you and I including, have grown up similarly, when life was truly one long ceaseless exploration. Everything is worth her curiosity. The forbidden (such as plug points) more so...The manner in which she approaches a new object: if it captures her interest, she does not grab it; on the contrary she takes her hand to it tentatively, and stops tantalizingly close to it before pulling back her hand; she smiles at the object - she knows it is not going away in a hurry; she then reaches out to hold it carefully in her hand before caressing and twirling it lovingly. Such a sight to watch. Makes me think of how adults tend to grab what they want while she savours the gap between observation and sensation.