Run like Phoebe, son!

I have a handbag I love. It's a warm mustard yellow. Yes, yellow. I eyed it for days before God answered my silent prayers and it went on a sale. Half-price, at that! I used it sparingly and lovingly. And proudly. It made me happy, as only handbags or shoes ever can. Then one day, I took it along to catch up with good old friends, not to show it off, but like I said, because it made me happy, and because it was a yellow kind of day. "Since when do you carry around bags coloured like poo?", asked a friend, kindly, evoking peals of laughter in total agreement from the others. It felt like an insult like no other. In that one mortifying moment, I forgot how much I loved that 'poo coloured' handbag, how much I had waited to own it. All that mattered was that I being laughed at. I mumbled some feeble retort not worthy of memory, but I had already started the process of distancing myself from it. It was banished to the deep recesses of my cupboard, never to see the light of day again. I felt guilty not standing up for my choice, my beloved bag. But I felt the compulsion to conform. Once again.

Today I am a mother. I 'own' a little person. He is mine, and though I did not specify exactly what kind of child I wanted, I would have him no different. I admit that as he grows, there are things about him I initially don't identify with or understand, much less appreciate. Every child is different and all that blah, but in the face of 'normal' kids, behaving as they are wont to, as people expect them to, or as people believe is on the 'right' path, such resolve often cracks. I am discovering now how much strength it takes (and to some it comes naturally) to throw people's opinions calmly back into their face. And how vital it is for little kids to be protected from standards of 'normalcy'.

R is talking late. Taking his time, but picking up with help. Six months ago, I was despondent. Was he developmentally delayed? Was he ever going to catch up? How were we going to deal with it? More importantly, what was I going to do about it? The guy never got frustrated with my efforts to 'improve' him. Resilient creatures, kids. Thank God for that. We work hard on things he was/is struggling with, and I can only laud his efforts. But while doing so, I learned where he really needed help, and where I was just assuming he did. Things he was doing just because he was being himself. Or because he loved doing them. Not because of a disorder, or a delay, or some shortcoming. Much like the way Phoebe from Friends runs - because it makes her happy. People be damned.

So, he doesn't want to play with certain kids. He loves sitting with old people at the park. Some days he wants to take caps off bottles and whistles off cookers, and some days he will eat only blue and purple Gems. He prefers books to balls and will sit with kitchen equipment like he was born for it. Play-Doh is only for making snakes and rotis. He'll shout out his grandmother's name on constant replay to show love. And he adores a little skull-shaped rubber which I detest.  He has many such cute, eccentric, ever-changing (even maddening) likes and dislikes that he is not sorry for, which make him stand out. Almost like he's snubbing the world - 'We are like this only'. It makes me proud that he is not like me. I hope, in this regard, he never is. 

Years after I let go of my yellow bag, never forgetting it, my fashion-aware sister-in-law gifted me a small sling bag. She said she loved it on sight and thought of me first. I hope you like it, she said. I'd like you to use it. I do love it and use it. It's yellow. Mustard yellow. 

Thank you R, for showing me how to enjoy my yellow bag. 

 

(part of the strip "The Dead Raccoon", Calvin and Hobbes)


From the moment I came to know I was going to be a mommy, I made a happy collage in my mind of me as the Model Parent. The One with dollops of patience, a smiling face at all times, ready with a hug and cuddle forever. The One to whom all answers are beamed straight from the heavens above (instantly, I might add) and who knows how to churn out babies who would go on to become model world citizens. In my mind, the parent handbook was all sorted and set. What digression could a baby cause? Bah, humbug! 


The mother (or father, but I am biased towards the mommy, since well, I am one) who knows how to fix it all is probably the biggest myth of childhood, though the happiest one by far. As we switch roles to become parents ourselves, we realise how far from that image parenting really is - how many times we falter, mess up, doubt ourselves and feel lost trying to get it right. 


There have been times, especially in the recent past, when I have found myself feeling at my wits' end trying to do the 'right thing'. So many times I've seen parenting theories - my own and acquired - turned on their heads by R, and thought, 'This is not how its supposed to go!' Try as I might, I have not been able to stick to the image of The Calm One. Deep breath, count, let it go. It's not as bad as it looks. You think?! 


The most frustrating of them all has been the recent potty training regression trauma. To me, being potty trained was a step into 'big boy-hood', a rite of passage. And though I am not overly superstitious, I did not speak of how my efforts in the training direction had (finally) paid off merely months ago, for fear of jinxing it. Together R and I had reached the point where we would soon be free of diapers even at nighttime! Nothing was as joyous (call me disgusting if you will) as R's announcement to the world 'Potty!' and the subsequent rush to the potty seat. I sang to myself every time we were done and R chimed 'finished!'. I should have known that with me, as with R, Murphy is always watching!


So when about a month ago R joined school after a 2 month long vacay, it was the beginning of the unraveling. The first week went by with no incident. With the second week, reports of the odd accident at school started coming in, though he seemed pretty much ok at home. It all disintegrated after that, the accidents started becoming commonplace even at home. I tried my best to keep calm, not make a fuss about the wet puddle - or worse. Googled 'potty regression', got much-needed solace from Tee about how common it was. But it affected me more than I could imagine. For some reason, even his lack of adequate speech never bothered me the way this did. He could not unlearn this, for sure!


I thought hard about what the probable cause could be - and could only come up with the school start as a possibility. I tried to get the school staff to help him by asking him every once in while, checking if the toilets were bothering him since he was using the 'big boy seat' at home. But it helped none. I got back to the basics, and take my word for it, revisiting that is the least fun of all. I had to stalk the tyke to catch any signs of needing to go, because like milk boiling over, he had developed the knack to go in his pants the moment I was away! 


I cried to myself trying to get a fix-it, and though the advice pages ask you not to lecture or make a big deal, I could not stop myself. The funniest bit was, he could not care less. His expression wasn't too remorseful, though he did come to me once the deed was done. Big boys do it on the potty? What's that got to do with me? You'll be happy if I inform you when I have to go? What good is it to me? I was a 'good boy', well, I'm on a break!


One particularly messy incident was the final straw for me. While cleaning up, I finally broke down sitting right there, next to him on the bathroom floor, and sobbed. Why do you do this, I asked? Didn't I deserve better? No answer of course. Not knowing how to deal with this hysterical mommy, his tiny little face puckered in a frown. A couple of minutes later, R got off his stool, patted my cheek, looked into my eyes and said, "Aai, happy!".  In that moment, I knew it would all be fine, soon, someday. Yes, he would mess with my plans, and yes, he would make me tear my hair out. But somehow, we would find a way out of these messes, and still love each other enough.


While the mommy is supposed to fix the boo-hoos, my little one kissed mine away. 

p.s. - Jinx or not, am glad to share that slooowly but surely, we're getting back on track by trying to be consistent and creative (bribes and over-the-top praise included). I am learning to be The One with dollops of patience and he is learning to be, well, himself.

Cherry on top!

There are days, and there are days.

R begins his 'final exams' at his playschool today. I detested the term as a child, and I detest it as a mother. At playgroup level, 'testing' is of no vital importance to me, though feedback certainly is. They had a neatly printed 'portion' sheet, a lot of which, with due respect, amused me no end. Months of the year, numbers 1-20, all alphabets, 6-10 rhymes, vegetables, fruits, flowers, birds, animals, conversation and story-telling. Whew. Each one sounds more daunting than the former. Was my two and a half year old going to get his head around any of it? The only bit I could cheer about was colouring, though I wonder if the theme for that - summer - would ring any bells for R. He is already behind his peers in the speech department. So most of his testing would seem to me to be, shall we say, pointless. Or so he would have you think.

Yesterday, just before we trotted off to 'sool' in the morning, R decided to dig out his ABC, rhymes and picture books, looking as thrilled as if meeting old friends. With my typical adult tendency of cynicism, I assumed we would be done with the books soon, both of us frustrated with each other's non-compliance. But the Gods were smiling benevolently upon us, and as A progressed into B, C and went all the way to Z, I could swear the tyke was trying to show off and have his mother fall flat on her face. There were glitches I would readily gloss over - he can't say B/ P as an isolated sound, F, L, R sound like Swahili alphabets, and W is an adorable, but wrong, 'bow-zoo'. I decided to test my luck and move on to the numbers page, which he can usually identify to 10 but won't say anything except 'two' and 'three'. As I goaded him into saying 'One', lo and behold, out came two, three, four..... , (a distant cousin of) five, and six! Be still, my heart.

I tentatively turned to the fruits page, all of which are usually 'appu', i.e. apple. Today, we had a chickoo, a pear (not clear but similar sounding), identified a handful others right away and just when I ignored the rest, the chap points and says, "Aai, Cherry!" .............What?!?! He hasn't even seen a cherry in real life! <Jaw drop> Riding on that wave came some of the birds (owl, crow, cock, eagle) and animals. I wanted to say nothing in fear of jinxing it all, but oh, how I wanted to cheer! Whether or not it was flash in the pan, it's always pleasant to be surprised thus!

And then, to put it all in perspective, when we reached school, R's pretty little classmate replied to my greeting in crisp, clear words, 'Good morning, aunty'. Sigh, there's some way to go yet, but oh well, at least I got the cherry on top ;)  

Baby read, Mommy read

R is a big lover of books (Glory to God!)- usually the board book variety, stuff that can withstand his show of love (read mauling, smooching, hugging, folding) and repeated thumbing through. We keep adding to his bookshelf from time to time, based on suggestions from friends, things we stumble upon browsing at the bookstore, or out of just plain fancy - his mommy's, obviously;) .

Now toddlers obviously don't seem to consider repetition a boring concept. So though R has been steadily populating his list of favorites, we keep returning to a few books that have stood the test of time, repetition and rough handling.

R's first ever book was a Noddy title that I picked while pregnant and read to my baby bump, in the process feeling good about myself ;) R's daddy also read to him, mostly because he would not know how to talk to his unborn baby without feeling foolish. The story was hardly award-winning, but I hoped it would soothe the little one inside and familiarize him to his parents' voices. The first book he ever 'read' was an off-the-shelf buy, 'Who's hiding, Pooh?', with colorful illustrations of Winnie the Pooh and his band of friends. It has a lovely 3 line rhyme about each character that allows the reading to be musical and fun. His eternal and total favorite, though, remains Goodnight Moon. When I first asked my mother to bring me back this book from her trip to the US, I was excited reading the reviews on Amazon and the like, but hardly knew what to expect. All I wanted was a set of good baby books to get R started.

After close to 2 years of owning it now, I find there is more to it than just a story about a bunny going to bed. I look back at how the book and its illustrations and words keep throwing up new meanings for R. It started as a bedtime ritual, became a picture haven and has now become a veritable treasure chest of words for R, given his struggle for words. He keeps discovering new elements in the pictures - I never noticed that the mouse ate the mush (mum-mum or bhaat for us)! I use it a lot to sneak in related sounds and words. Add to that the benefit of it keeping the guy occupied when I need some time-out! Love the book, and don't judge this one by the cover - the illustrations might not always appeal to an adult eye, but they seem to work their magic on the untrained toddler mind :)

The other one that almost parallels Goodnight Moon for R is 'Guess How Much I Love You'. It's the most adorable story of a little hare asking his daddy how much he loves him. And it never fails to bring a smile. Here again, apart from some obvious concepts like near and far, big and small, up and down, there is so much I find toddlers picking up on. We have mastered the concept of 'stretching out your arms as wide as they could go' to show how much, of anything! He learned early on how to gesture 'Too sleepy to think anymore' by rubbing his eyes, all thanks to Little Nutbrown Hare. I also find that in the Indian cultural context, parents are not always accustomed to saying the occasional 'I love you' to their tiny tots. This would be a good starting point for those of us who aren't saying it enough already :) Though R certainly is not overcome by emotion if I were to say it to him, he probably knows its important to me - his tone immediately changes as if to return the strange adult emotion, to a softer, lilting 'Aaa-iiii'. ;) Works for me! And I can steal a hug because the story demands it ;)

Apart from these two golden treasures, we love 'I Love You Through and Through' - a great one for simple, well-depicted reading, 'Good Morning, Good Night' - our favourite touch and feel book, 'Dr.Seuss's Mr.Brown Can Moo', and 'Spot Goes to the Farm'. There are some that have fallen out of favour to make place for others, only to return a few weeks later. Some that we have never taken a liking to, reasons unfathomable. But for R, his bookshelf, all neatly arranged, has pride of place. Let's pray it continues to be so!

After a couple years of reading mostly picture books and toddler stories - leave aside the occasional Cosmo - I decided it was time for me to graduate to something more meaty, shall we say? I had my eye on 'The Immortals of Meluha', book 1 of the Shiva Trilogy by Amish. I'm a great lover of mythology, especially when an old story is written from a new perspective. And after a long, long while, I finally found a book I would only describe as 'unputdownable'. Its everything a good read should be, per me - dramatic, racy, thrilling and with an element of reality and romance, and leave you contemplating. Amish's descriptions of the cities, its people, their clothing is so detailed, it springs to life as you read. I haven't bought a book in a while, but absolutely had to rush to get the sequel - The Secret of the Nagas. Must say this one too lived up to its predecessor. The last part of the trilogy is due to be out at the end of 2012 - too long a wait! I could pay Amish a couple million to get my hands on the story, right now! Or maybe he could trade it for a few board books? :P 

A word a day

You know how people talk about taking life and its little joys for granted? I guess I did not quite know what it could really mean till my little tyke came along. I spent the first year of his life in turn marveling and obsessing over his milestones. His flipping over, sitting up, crawling, walking.... I even got into that dreadful thing - comparing ( still do, though I've learned to catch myself just in time). All my conversations with the girls were dominated by 'your baby, my baby' sharing, and heartening though it was, I found myself regularly losing myself in it, forgetting to live the moment. So where R was having fun trying to catch his own shadow, I was fretting over how he had not perfected the pincer grasp that another baby had. I know you're probably shaking your heads in disapproval by now, I am too! ;)

Over the past year, I have taught myself to enjoy *every* one of his achievements, big or small. This attitude helps me particularly in our struggle with speech. Earlier, I let myself be led into hopes of R being a lazy child who will sprout sentences any day now, of him being an action-oriented rather than speech oriented little man, of him taking some late-talking relative's genes. I still hang on to those. But increasingly, I see his efforts to produce the sounds he hears and sees modelled and I know I could not just sit back on hope and let him deal with it.

While R has just about met most talking milestones, he has never shown much skill at it. This lack always strikes me more when I see or hear other toddlers, even those months younger, showing ease and even eloquence in their verbal expression. R's receptive skills are more than on par, and I can vouch for that. He floors us with stuff he picks up from the world around him. He can usually also communicate very well what he wants, using a combination of signs and sounds and a lot of gesturing from either side. But there are invariably instances where we misinterpret him and cause him, and us, some amount of frustration. I do need to translate his signs or words now and again for others. Add to that some well-meaning people popping that dreaded question, 'he's not talking yet?' I have had mini meltdowns, which I am ashamed to admit have often ended with me losing my cool with R, pressuring him to say something, or say it better.

Now we all know how badly that works, or backfires, more like. Toddlers have enough on their hands with their minds exploding with new information and emotions. They deserve a helping hand, right? Thankfully, I am getting better at dealing with my own lows in this regard. So apart from over-enthusiastic applause when he gets close enough to cracking a tough word, I try to find ways of making talking more interesting and fun, and certainly less of an expectation from his mad-hatter mommy. I hunt for different places and opportunties for words to pop up. I have great fun in the process, and look forward to our trips to the grocery store, book shop, garden, doctor, anywhere really!

I have great support from girlfriends in the matter - ideas, experiences or just lending a sympathetic ear. There's also a wealth of information out there about speech delay and I have been scouring the web (don't I always;) ) I've read blogs and medical sites and parenting sites and forums, and there's still so much I might never know. Whether or not R has a developmental delay, and even if he is just a late-talker, I am glad to be doing this research. Everyday I learn new ways of getting the best out of R, about help I could easily provide at home through routine activities. I read rambles of moms like me, about the strength of mothers who face real fears, about their kids who deal with struggles so bravely. Most importantly, I learn over and over to appreciate each new step, feel the thrill of every small achievement, irrespective of its importance to any one else.

All this was brought on by this - today, R and I were visiting our usual bookstore haunt - Crossword. He is a systematic little guy when it comes to books - what comes off the shelf, must go back there once done. After some amount of babbling, muttering odd words and turning pages, he tugged at me and pointed to the shelf out of his reach. Lost in checking out a book, I absent-mindedly asked him what he wanted. He gave me an exasperated look and said, "Put!" pointing to the shelf. Before I could process the new word, he pointed again and said "Put  (long pause)  boots" (his word for books). By now I'm sure I looked like a woman off her rockers, and R looked at me like similarly. Surely mommy would know to put the stuff back in place! Goodness, the things I need to tell her to do!

And that's how we're progressing, one word at a time :)

R has been down with another one of his seemingly endless illnesses - a chest infection this time round. I don't usually get too worked up about his umpteen cold and cough bouts, but this one had me a little worried, I must admit. His doc recommended an x-ray if he did not respond to his meds, and I had to get one done eventually when the fever would not subside. The report, scarily enough, diagnosed minimal bronchopneumonia. That's a medical term long and complicated enough to set off alarm bells in any mother's head. As it turned out, it was nothing to worry about (I so love pediatricians who make being sick sound routine;)) And as if to prove his doctor right, R bounced back in that amazing way toddlers have, literally waving away my fussing over his racking cough. He's on his way to a full recovery and will not tolerate being treated as a patient anymore.

There are enough little ones being unwell around me to feel like I have company. Season or not, toddlers seem to hunt out ways of catching that cold, or that tummy bug. But I cannot appreciate more our mothers (and fathers), sitting up through nights and going through that dreadful waiting at pediatricians' offices, all the while managing their own lives. There are days I feel I could not deal with the multitasking parenting requires, at all! Then again, we probably have some God given gene that helps us survive, battle scars and all.

It's a new year, one I hope brings more health, more happy squeals and certainly many more words from R, who has some serious catching up to do where his speech is concerned. I long to be bombarded with questions and endless chatter from this boy, and he's certainly going to do it his own way in his time. I must document his speech developments here to be an encouragement and resource for me later, if not anything else.

Being judgemental

It's never easy knowing how to balance between extremes when it comes to children. Like many mothers around me, I keep worrying if I am over-indulging my toddler under the name of caring, or coming down too hard on him in the guise of discipline. I make my mistakes, and feel lucky that R is still young enough to let me get away with them.

I recently introduced the concept of 'time-out' / 'corner' to R - the place he is sent to calm down or realise something he did was not very pleasant. He quite defeated the purpose in the beginning by running gleefully to the corner, facing the wall and coming right back to repeat the offending act. When such a time out occured in front of some family friends, they wondered why I was 'punishing' him at such a young age. 'He hardly understands what he is doing', they said. My point exactly. How would he know what he did was not praiseworthy if we didn't point it out. Longwinded, logical cause-effect explanations are not going to cut it with him at 22 months. Knowing that a certain act causes his mommy to be upset might do it. Being removed from the place of activity certainly does it. Am I doing the right thing? Judge away.

Now that R goes to a playgroup, I get a better opportunity to observe other mothers, teachers and their toddlers. Say what you will, but I find myself getting surprisingly judgemental about parents' and teachers' attitudes towards children. I would have thought myself to be the 'Do what works best for you' types, but my parent avatar seems to disagree a bit.

What set off this diatribe today was this - R has a new teacher who in all her gusto to 'teach' seems to me to have forgotten that toddlers hardly need someone chiding them for being who they are. What set me off was when she questioned a wailing tot at that difficult time of drop-off, and not too gently, 'Why are you crying, early in the morning?' Surely no toddler cares for being made to feel at fault when they're already dealing with that emotional mountain of mommy leaving them. It instantly took away my security as a mother. Or was I being too protective? Could it be that toddlers respond better to that no-nonsense approach?

Questions like this one and others wizz around my tired brain, and in the end I just go with the the tried and tested 'mother's instinct'. And care little about being judged :)