So Parenting is a Rocket Science!!

Best friend calls and we discuss the ‘writings’. I am indebted as an honest feedback is what I was craving and I receive just that. She suggests ‘Parenting’ to be the next topic and I say a confident ‘Yes’ but in my mind I am dilly dallying. Parenting is vast. Who can claim to have perfected this art which follows a lot of science. Myself a new mom or a new age Mom who is exposed to a deluge of information, experiences plethora of emotions every day, ranging from sheer joy, dew eyed with a choking throat being floored by her antics, panic and an overwhelming feeling over her so called tantrums, which is actually her way of communicating which the ‘know all Momma’ desperately fails to understand!

Yes, parenting is fulfilling since that’s the way to give back to life and no doubt, challenging ( to describe it in really mild words)! You jump along with your kid into the next phase and a new challenge awaits along with the exceptional euphoria waiting to be explored. So parenting is just not about motherhood. It is as much about fatherhood. The child looks upto both set of parents equally and any deviation from that can lead to severe confusion in child’s developing brain. When the Mom and Dad play the cool team complementing each other, the child experiences a sense of security, which can be a great catalyst in her all round development.

A child is an individual human being waiting to blossom. She is a clean slate on which impressions are casted. Primarily it’s the parents whose imprints leave an everlasting impact. Why do we extrapolate our parental responsibility? Why we want the child to be what we are?  Most of us start well but then enter the rat race and the maximum chunk of our effort and focus goes into what the child will become in the future…Education as well as parenting is a little more than that!

A very important aspect of growing up is how to mingle with peers and also how to face the impact that peer group is posing, what is popularly called ‘peer pressure’. This probably transforms into handling the relationships upon becoming an adult. No School or textbook teaches how to handle the complex human personas when grown up. As parents do we think about it and try explaining the various complexities of human nature which the kid will face in abundance in her personal as well as professional life..

As a mom I accept that I do get jitters upon my child’s onset of seasonal cold or accompanying fever. Everyone wants their child to remain healthy and disease free. Nutrition is one of the most important and basic requirement of a human being. Recently, I happened to attend the celebrated nutritionist Pooja Makhija’s session where she focused on Nutrition in early years. It was quite an eye opener. I couldn’t agree more with her when she said that a child is just not to be fed rather be explained from the beginning as to how a particular food helps the body and which food items are harmful. We are aware and well informed parents today, but mostly remain focused on how much to feed rather that what to feed. Maintaining an optimum body weight since childhood is extremely important for the child to grow into a healthy adult.

So parenting is holistic, dynamic, vast and an extremely creative process where learning happens at every stage. Yes it’s not just the kid, the parents also learn with every new situation and challenge. It is one of the most beautiful journeys. You may retire from your profession but will never retire from being a parent. There has to be a part second of this blog where I will talk about how our generation of parents is different from the previous generation. From parenting on instincts to a well informed and even helicopter parents, we have come a long way….phew this blog is also getting too long! Let me catch a breath before the bundle of energy reaches out to me to pull me into her magical and innocent world. I so wish my parenting always keeps the child in her alive…