Thoughts — Parenting

Have you ever felt frozen?  No one is a stranger to the hijacking of the brain with self-doubt. Standing up in front of a crowd, presenting with your camera turned on during a Zoom call, or the moment before you take the proverbial leap. The biological component of ‘feeling anxious’ is something we’ve all experienced (and shuddered at). It starts as children when we are about to perform in front of our friends, participate in our very first recital, or even own up to a mistake.  It’s scary.  But being scared is a real human experience.  As a new mum...

As women, we have been trained to do everything house related since we were children. Whether that’s taking care of the household or serving the elders who sit at the dinner table, we are taught and then told to take up all these responsibilities to be ‘sanskaari’ women or wives, to nurture healthy families in the future. As much as these are just life skills that need to be learnt by everyone regardless of their gender, women are made to do all of them more like we are training for a job rather than just the basic life skills.  I...

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, most of us have adapted to new and unprecedented scenarios. We went from socializing, working and eating in three different places to doing all of them in one, and sometimes, doing them simultaneously. Over the past two and a half years, multitasking has become an important skill to acquire. Adults have to cook meals and work at the same time, parents have to pay equal attention to office projects and school assignments, children have to study and not balk under pressure. While this in itself is praiseworthy, some of us are also taking it a step...

In times like these, young children look at the behaviour and words that parents use. If you’re anxious, it’s likely that your child is picking up on it and getting worked up as well. Making it a point to speak to your children and communicating what is going on in as simple a manner as possible, and reassuring them that as long as they’re together and inside, they are safe can help a great deal. –Help your child to create and adhere to a daily schedule. It will help the child exercise some form of control in this time, and...