Category: parenting

Parenting 2.0

On By Indu PatikkalIn Children, learning the hard way, life, life lessons, mother, opinion, parenting, Random thoughts, realizationsLeave a comment

I am a single mother of a 19 year old and a 17 year old. For the longest time I have raised them on my own. Not because I was single, but because of my emotional and physical involvement in raising them. As one is navigating college and the other is preparing to enter college, I am in kindergarten learning the art of letting go. I guess it will take a good while to learn this lesson, because it is not about just letting go. The skill I need to acquire is to know when to let go, when to be available, when to hold on. Its a full length practical class. And suddenly I feel, all the parenting lessons I learnt in the last 20 years, doesn’t really matter. I thought I was now proficient, not skilled or advanced, but proficient in parenting, and just then comes racing towards me another curve ball.

Children this age are being themselves, learning, exploring, pushing the boundaries, testing the waters, seeing how deep they can go before they have to come up to catch some air. My mom made it look so easy, when the adamant 17 year old me decided to go to Manipal, or the 21 year old me, decided to travel alone from Bangalore to different parts of the country to meet my partner. I remember seeing some fear on her face, but nevertheless, she stood there, smiled and waved at me as the train pulled away. If she were around, there is only one question I would ask, how did you do it.

It is a conscious decision I make everyday, again and again, its ok, let them do it. Its ok if they fail, its ok if they fall. I have the life jacket, rather, I am their life jacket or their oxygen mask. They know when they need it. They will grab it. So many metaphors I can think of from around us, in our world that equate to this situation. Like, I’ve taught them how to use their wings and now they are jumping off the cliff. They will land, maybe all nice and clean, maybe with a few broken bones, but they will survive. It is something I need to and tell myself everyday, because there is no other way of navigating this phase of parenting, other than being calm and patient. They do not want to walk in my shadow, because they are ready to feel the sun on their face.

In Life of Pi, the character says something to the effect of, finishing a puzzle is deeply satisfying because you have tried every misfit and found the perfect place for every piece. When the puzzle is finished, every piece has found its place. Life is never that way, so a puzzle fulfills your intimate need to bring order to the chaos. We have so much chaos going on inside our head. The puzzle pieces are flying everywhere, we are trying to put each one in its place, but most times it just does not fit. Parenting is one such huge puzzle, maybe the last piece fits when you stop being a parent, with the last breath of life. Elizabeth Gilbert said being a parent is like getting a tattoo on the face. It takes all your life to understand what this tattoo looks like. It is painful, it hurts, you appreciate its beauty, gives you joy, sometimes it oozes, and takes a lifetime to heal.

All said and done, would I do it again, without a moment’s thought ‘yes’. Being a mom fills my soul. I have to be honest, it is not always a bed of lilies, sometimes it sucks. But, there are no guarantees to anything in this colossal mess called life.

Grief

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, death, divorce, father, God, learning the hard way, life, life lessons, opinion, parenting, Random thoughts, realizations, The signs, Tranquility, WomanLeave a comment

My father passed on Sep 3rd. The same day my US Passport was issued. It has been tradition that my life progresses when he visits me in the US. The first time he came, I bought my first house and got my green card. The second time he came, I bought my second home, a dream home. The third time he was here, I got my citizenship, and got divorced. The last page was getting my passport and that happened right before he passed. Thinking back, it is strange that my passport was issued on a Saturday.

3 Saturdays later I sit here on my couch watching an SPB concert on YouTube. My younger kiddo is playing on his PC upstairs. A Saturday I have longed for this entire year. There is nowhere I have to be, there is nothing I have to get done today. Even if I do nothing today, its okay. I don’t like roller coasters, I am shit scared, yet this year has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. A job change, my elder son graduation high school, researched and visited colleges for him, got divorced, cared for my younger son through his wisdom teeth extraction, sold my house, moved to another house, convinced my dad to come to the US for the third time, vacationed with my boys at Mexico, got COVID, appeared for my citizenship interview, saw off my son to college in another state, nursed my father during his last two weeks of life, held his hand as he passed, cremated him. And I am here on the other side, strong enough to tell the story.

The week my father fell ill and the week after his passing were the worst. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would google ‘signs of death’ for my father. But I read each one of them and recollected what my aunts or uncles or mom had mentioned when others in the family passed. It all started on Aug 27th when he started throwing up only to discover on Aug 28th that the endoleak from his aneurysm repair had caused an aneurysm rupture. Almost lost him on Aug 27th and Aug 29th but I guess he was not ready. He woke up like nothing had happened. Nursing him for the one week before he finally passed on Sep 3rd is what I consider as one of my biggest blessings. The last few days of a parent is the absolute last ask they have of their children. There is nothing after that. Absolutely nothing.

I have had some really strong eye openers these past 3 weeks. After he passed, the funeral home tied him in a white sheet, transferred him onto a gurney, strapped him and covered him with a fitted blanket. They loaded him onto the back of a minivan and took him away. Everything one does in a lifetime ends in the back of a minivan. How much we emote, stress our asses off, hold grudges, push and pull in relationships, things we want to buy, positions we want to achieve, the egos we manifest, everything seemed so meaningless in that moment.
I am a believer of the concept, where the soul lives on and the body is merely a cloth that the soul sheds when someone passes. I also believe in signs. Three days after he passed, I saw the brightest light, lighting up my garage as I opened the door in the morning to drop my son to school. I knew he was going. I have never seen that light before or after. The funeral home director placed the bag with his box of ashes in the front seat and fastened the seat belt around the bag. It appeared like he was sitting right there, I spoke him on the ride home. When I got home, there were 4 birds, I have never seen them before waiting on the trees around my driveway. Like they were there to welcome him home. That first night, deers from the neighborhood sat vigil next to the wall where I kept his ashes. So many signs he has shown me, strengthening my belief in the soul.

I have been perusing a lot these last two weeks after his passing, and I realized that two roles of my life that I had been playing for years, ended in a matter of months, that of a wife of 19 years and of a daughter for 43 years. I may be a wife again, but I will never have to be a daughter again. And that has been the strangest feeling. We get so used to the multiple roles we play, that of a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, and we think these roles stay until the end. They do, but the realization that we stop being them is strange.

Suddenly I am not so sure what I should grieve for. My son leaving the nest or my father passing or my divorce. Walking into my son’s room and trying to organize his room is the most painful thing. I cannot bring myself to moving his clothes or looking for something in his closet. It is easier to hold my father’s phone or see his shoes outside the door or his glasses on the coffee table. Bringing a life to this world, giving that little human everything you have, taking every chance because there is no rule book and then letting them go is by far the most unfair transaction in this world. In the end parents are just bridges for the first 18 years of their life. When I left him in his dorm room briefly and walked out, I felt something leaving my body, maybe the umbilical cord? Weird.

Then seeing your parents pass and doing everything for their physical being, is just so unfair. And you go through that twice. It takes years to overcome (if you ever overcome) to push the sadness of one, that the other one goes and creates another layer of sadness that you have to push through one day at a time.

All said and done, I am not quite sure what I should grieve for or just let it be. As my therapist says put one foot in front of the other and take one day at a time.

Prepping

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, Children, growing up, life, life lessons, mother, parenting, Random thoughts, WomanLeave a comment

Like my friend put it, it is a ‘weird feeling’, sending off your kid to college. There are a few moms I know who are going through this weirdness this month. For some moms it is the first child, like me. For some it’s their second or third child and they have no more at home. For me, this is my first one, the one who has taught me most of the firsts of parenting from caring for a newborn, to teenage years, to everything a young boy goes through in their first 17 years of life. He made me better prepared for the second one.

What is prepping for college? I don’t know. I guess it is savoring every moment you have with the not-so-little-one before they walk out the door. It is not like you will never see them again, but what bites is that you will not spend years with them under the same roof, like there is no end. They will come for breaks and summer, but all those are finite times, a few weeks and they have to go. After college, they will decide where they want to live, work, and start chalking out their paths. So this is when the umbilical cord really slivers down to a bare minimum. Oh it never is cut completely, that I am sure of. You loosen the reign little by little, but you never ever let go.

I have not hit rock bottom yet, or had that crying like someone is ripping your heart out, but it will hit, sometime in the next few weeks. I am not quite sure what I am going to miss most. Most likely its the calling out ‘Ma’, a thousand times a day. It is always Ma, this or Ma, that or something else. Even if I am sitting next to him, his conversation always starts with ‘Ma’. Or the hug, or the bragging about muscles, protein, gym etc. I guess what I will miss the most is the singing. I don’t know. The feeling is of standing at the shore, waiting for that huge wave to come and drench you.

I don’t know how our parents did it. Let us go in a time without cell phones, just handwritten postal letters or a PCO booth, dinging at every minute. It is a strange feeling, because you have fed, nurtured, been with them through their emotions, held their hand, given them a hug every time they felt low, told them right from wrong, watched their every step.. Now you are letting them walk out the door into the wild, on their own. All you can do is sit back and wait and hope that you did well.

I know you may be thinking, what is the big deal, it may not be, but I know fear for their child is something almost every mom carries in their heart for their child. Fear of being safe, of eating good food, of taking care of their bodies, of being respectful and being respected, its a transition where we switch from being sure to hope. Hope that wherever our children may be they are healthy and happy.

Like I have said before, my children are the best thing that happened to me. My older one says to make me feel better, ‘but you’ve got the younger one’. It is just not the same. It is like 2 pieces of a puzzle, one cannot replace the other. A void is a void. So like everything else, this is the next phase in parenting. The most challenging one so far. Everything until now was easy peasy, compared to this. And now I fully well understand why they call it empty-nest. Whether you have a partial empty nest or a full empty one, hang in there Mama and believe that ‘you did well’.

Family

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, celebrate, Childhood memories, growing up, Happiness, life lessons, parenting, Random thoughts, realizationsLeave a comment

We are taught, right from the day we have some understanding of our surroundings, that family is your parents and your siblings. Then you have an extended family which is your aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins. For many years I believed this. Family to me was always father, mother, children. It was an etched-in-stone kind of definition.

The world as we know it as moved away from this definition. There are many women who choose to be single mothers, there are many men who choose to be single fathers. Then there is the gay community, where family is either father, father and children or mother, mother and children. Families now come in all shapes and sizes. Not every family fits into the age-old definition of father, mother and children.

I grew up in a middle class nuclear family. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, grandparents were people we interacted with during the summer vacation. My core was my father, mother, brother and paternal uncle who lived with us. This was my space in the universe. In this space, I was allowed to feel, I was allowed to talk, I was allowed to be me. If I said something out of disrespect, I was corrected. If I said something out of anger, I was given the space to calm down. If I did something wrong, I was told why it was wrong and I was given the opportunity to apologize. My family had a lot of friends and we called them family friends. These were people who lent a hand financially when my parents were struggling to pay my school fees or were short handed at the end of the month. They were there with us emotionally, by encouraging us to push a little higher and have some success in the print world. We participated whole heartedly in each others family events, marriages, death, birth, etc. I have seen more of my parents friends come to our house, have a meal of simple chapathi and curry or whatever was there, than my aunts and uncles.

My concept of family developed through these people. They were family to me, not just family friends, because they were there for us. They didn’t tell my parents that they were trying to do something impossible by trying to set up a print shop. They didn’t judge my parents and say why are you sending your children to the best and most expensive school when you know you cannot afford it. They didn’t comment on the clothes we wore, or the humble living quarters. They sat cross legged on the floor and ate what my mother served. Without asking they brought money and handed it over to my parents. I owe these people a lot and remember them fondly. Many of them have passed, but they were placed in our lives for a reason.

I am a movie buff. A few movies have left a lasting impact on me. One such movie is English Vinglish. After learning English, at the end of the movie, the protagonist defines what a family is, and those words have stuck with me. She says, ‘a family is not judgmental’. That’s precisely how I was raised. My family and everyone around my family, our support systems, never judged us. So that is my definition of a family. A group of people who do not judge you and with whom you can be you.

As I go through my divorce, I have been re-drafting my age-old family definition of father, mother, children. Now my family is mother and children. And that is okay, because for single moms, mom and children is family. My son recently asked me what is family. I told him from my experience this is what I have learnt – a group of people who don’t judge you and let you be you. He said, you took the words out of my mouth. I am glad, rather proud, that my child is not stuck to age old family definitions. That he understands, family is not judgmental.

Dont fix them..

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, celebrate, Childhood memories, Children, growing up, life, life lessons, opinion, parenting, Random thoughts, realizationsLeave a comment

Parenting a teenager has been and still is the my most challenging yet rewarding experience of these sixteen years of being a mom. This time I am taking baby steps, almost like I am the baby and he is the parent. By the time my second one becomes a teenager, I will probably be sitting up. As I’ve said like many others, there is no golden book. You fall, you get up, again stumble, again rise, you get the idea. There is some method to the madness, but each child is different. The most important lesson being, don’t try to fix them.

As parents we think our primary responsibility is to make them the best, in academics, in behavior, in manners, in their career, their family. In this process we take the leader role and the child is the follower. This is the primary mistake. They lead and we follow. The simple logic being, they are teaching you to be the parent, so let them lead. Of course, few essential things need to be taught by example, but by and large they show you the way. This trying-to-fix syndrome does not work with a teenager. Their mindset is that they are almost adults, as much as we are, so they don’t need any fixing. The more you try, the more they get away from you, emotionally and sooner than later, physically.

So as they start thinking that they are almost adults, you need to treat them like one. Make it real. Tell them one thing about your day, everyday. Don’t bring the work home, but bring the people you work with, home. It’s not about you dressing up and leaving in the car and getting back in the evening. There is more to it, and open those doors to them. They want a taste of the real world, this is when they want to race to their twenties, missing the fact that pre-twenties are the best years.

Remember, what your pre-twenties looked like? No phone, if you didn’t live on the same street, you didn’t see your friend till the next day at school. We live in an age and time that by the time they are 15, they have a phone. They are constantly texting their friends, looking up anything on the internet. Their pressure is greater and I know that fomo is real. If they don’t check their phones every now and then, they think there will be a hundred messages that they will miss responding to. If they don’t respond, they are left out. Nobody has time to wait for someone to catch up. Everyone is running, running towards what nobody knows..

Phone is not something you take away from a teenager. It is the new stuffed toy they probably carried around when they were a baby to drive away some fear. That small elephant or teddy bear stuffed toy they hugged to sleep and walked around with, which was their security blanket. Well, as shocking as it is, that 6 inch of radiation causing non-sensical gadget is that teddy bear now. When it’s taken away, it’s like they have lost oxygen. And don’t even get me started on, if you look at the phone, yes, just look, not unlock, not actually read anything. It’s an invasion of privacy. I think when we gen-x were in our teens, we wanted to tell our parents almost everything, but now privacy prevails.

With all this mess and nonsense that the internet feeds into their brains, they need an avenue to vent. I don’t think it is even venting, it is a release of unwanted energy. This is where your follower vs leader trait is put to the test. If you are a follower, they will vent to you. If you are the leader, they don’t want to get anywhere close to you. You need to give them the room to vent. They are almost adults, remember, so they get angry, and they need to release the anger. This the the age when every emotion is distinct. They are figuring it out, so follow their lead.

When you follow their lead, you also need to lead by example. You cannot tell them to spend less time on their phones while you are glued to your phone. You cannot expect them to pick up after them, if you don’t. They will make the bed as much as you do. You don’t realize much when they are young, that they are observing your every move. Well, fast forward ten years and your teenager will show you exactly who you are. This is when you are shocked, feel like you are a miserable parent, like you’ve lost this race, you’ve ruined it, and your first impulse is to fix it, without fixing yourself. A tween will point out hypocrisy before you see it.

A friend of mine posted a beautiful picture of her daughter and said ‘when parenting seems perfect’. The keyword here is ‘seems’. When there is no hypocrisy, when there is no fixing, when you follow, you will get a few moments of when you feel like you’ve won, it ‘seems’ perfect and you give yourself a perfect score. Just then they will flip and wander off to a direction. So you just have to see where they go, take a few steps further and be ready for them. As individuals we grow within ourselves, but as parents we grow in two directions. Individual growth is so different from parental growth. You have to grow as your child grows, gain strength from your individual learnings and be there for them.

And in closing all I have to say is ‘no one got it right’. Everyone aims for perfection, but nobody is. We need to understand that we are not perfect and should not expect it from our children, specially from teenagers. If you have missed the boat on something before they became a teenager, then don’t try to catch the boat and get in, its sailed away. In time, your fella will catch it.

Starting all over again…

On By Indu PatikkalIn birthday, Blessing, celebrate, Children, growing up, Happiness, life, life lessons, mother, opinion, parenting, realizations, WomanLeave a comment

The nineteen inch, nine pound bundle that sat cozily wrapped up in my arms many years ago, today stands next to me, towering over me, looking down to look into my eyes, grinning from ear to ear at his towering achievement. I stand there in my five foot yardstick looking up thinking, well, blank actually.

My teenager turns fifteen tomorrow and I can’t help but pen down the emotions being a teenager’s mom. When I became a mom, now what seems like in another lifetime, I thought been there done that. But that ‘becoming mom’ is just for the first phase when you help the teeny tiny thing in your arms learn basic skills. You feed the baby, rejoice when he starts crawling and then walking, go ooh and aah at his first words, play with him, give him hugs and make him feel loved. Fast forward about fourteen years and you will find yourself doing all of this all over again. Yes, everyone of this, in different ways.

Your teenager will now put into his mouth anything he likes, just like as a baby he picked anything from the floor. When he was a baby you took care to buy organic, or home prep baby food and what not. Now he dunks down soda and burgers and hot dogs what you can group as J-U-N-K. You are not feeding him now, but still have to silently watch what goes down his gut. You cannot say no (not too much coz then it becomes an issue about his freedom), but start learning to explain to him the harmful effects of too much chemicals in his body.

He can run now. He will sit in his friends cars and go to Whataburger or McDonalds and where not. Its your job to know where he is, just to be sure he is safe. As a toddler if he ran into the hallways, you pick him up and bring him right inside. Now, you can ask nicely, ‘where will you be buddy?’, ‘in whose car are you riding?’… You have to magically become smart enough to not cross into his ‘friends’ territory.

He can talk, never ending, he can go on and on and on. You don’t have to teach him the words, but now you have to ensure he is using the right words. Remember at the end of this, you want to give yourself that invisible trophy titled ‘best parent of the year’ award. You dont want him to evolve into a saint, but be able to maneuver his way in the world. He will learn cuss words, and use it. Making him aware of minding his language in appropriate situations is what you should talk to him about.

As a baby you protected him from practically everything. As a teenager, it is time to allow him to expand his territory and test the waters while you are around. Let him make a mistake, let him fall, so you are there to give him a hand while he will take it and you are there. From this whole re-learning to be a parent, my biggest learning has been to keep the communication channel open, both ways. If you want to keep it real, it is important to open up some of your emotions to them so they get an on the job exposure to adult world feelings. He is not a friend from your age group, so use your judgement at what you let him into. The biggest win at this stage is that he wants to talk to you. Encourage conversations and give him some space. In your mind, he is a baby and will always be. My 70+ father thinks of me 40+ as a kid who needs to watch out while chopping vegetables. But giving this space and having those conversations are so important for their emotional growth. Few pointers –

  • What really stands out to me is if you are disagreeing with something they say, be open to hear their perspective. The time when you talk and they listen blindly is over, because now their minds think too and at that age they think ‘they know’.
  • When you ask them to do a chore, don’t order them to do it, work with them. They have a schedule and plans. On one hand when you are encouraging them to make a plan, help them stick to it.
  • Encourage them to plan on their own, not just school work but non-school work.
  • Give them chores at home – loading the dishwasher, unloading, doing their laundry, putting it away, cleaning the toilets, putting the trash out, dusting, mopping, cooking. These are basic skills that every person should learn.
  • Give them real life experiences based on their age – how to board a flight, how to shop for grocery, how to fill gas, how to work your way at the bank, how to get an uber, how to use public transport… etc, the list is endless. These are essential skills that no school teaches.

I have not listed values on purpose. To me values cannot be taught, they should be portrayed. Based on what parents portray, children will imbibe the values.

There is no fool-proof method and everyone parent learns in the class of parenting at their own speed. It cannot be taught and only comes through experience and your unique situation. It has been the best learning school, where sometimes I fail and sometimes I pass. Every small win feels like a leap in faith that you are doing something right. Every fall doesn’t put me down but encourages me and teaches me to do better the next time.

So here’s wishing my first guru in parenthood a very happy fifteenth year of teaching ! I love you, forever and forever…