being a parent

While actually becoming a parent is easy, being one is not. There are so many things you do not know when you hold your newborn babe in your arms. You don’t know how to feed him, you don’t know how to hold him right or bathe him. It is a terrifying experience and also very momentous. The weight of responsibility is crushing and the fears mount alarmingly. What if you do something wrong? How did God entrust you with a life to take care of other than your own when you are hardly great at managing your own life!

For me the scariest times are when my children are ill. I am really helpless while I watch them lying listless and weak or in pain. Medicines are of course there but sometimes you have to let a fever break on its own – those are the hardest times. It is important to be able to not succumb to easy remedies like antibiotics which the Bangalore pediatricians seem to love irrationally. I let my son be dosed frequently with those till his immunity was shattered. It took a long time for his immunity to restore itself to a semblance of what it would be for a healthy child. I was more careful with my daughter but the guilt stays because I unknowingly harmed my kids with bad choices.

Another difficult thing to do is stand back. I am bad at that. I can’t see my kids hurt. Of course I am not gentle with them but no one has the right to hurt them. I get incensed if the other kids tease my son when they cannot understand what he’s saying. True it sounds like gibberish to them but they are merciless in their hatred of anything that can be ridiculed. My poor son! My daughter rarely needs my protection. The feisty little character can take care of herself and sometimes her elder brother too. But even with her I have had to stand back and let her go through some harsh lessons so that she may learn. I have had to restrain myself from whacking a neighbor who deliberately shows a mean face to her when I am not around (or she thinks I’m not around) – she’s always honey sweet when she sees me. I have had to think up explanations when my daughter asks me why I won’t let her play in that neighbor’s house when her daughter comes here all the time. How can I tell her that I have caught the lady hiding behind the curtains in her house not opening the door to my kids while at the same time sending her kid to my home every day so she can go gossiping to the other houses? How can I tell them to be cunning and not to trust people? It is a scary world out there and I have no idea how to prepare my children for it.

My son hates reading and writing but loves computers and puzzles. I have to figure out some way to instill a love of learning into that boy. My daughter loves learning but has a really stubborn nature which makes me pull my hair in frustration during the times she is not making me laugh. They are a joy to me. I don’t know what I would have done without them. But they are an awesome trust too – in the seven years since I have been a mother, it hasn’t gotten any easier and I doubt it will ever be easy only I hope to better myself at it as I go along.