When we first told Chula’s class teacher(also the school founder) that we are planning to move to India, R’s first question was, ‘Of course only after she finishes her graduation ceremony with us right? Because you know how much she is looking forward to graduating’. When R found out that it was not the case, she was more upset than us. She said, ‘Its only a month, so leave her with me, she can graduate and then join you guys in India’, we both laughed it off and pretended that it was not a serious offer. Two days later she asked me again if we are serious about moving before the graduation. We were, with school starting in India on June 13th, I wanted a month in between to settle down. ‘Well, in that case’ said R, ‘Chula will have a graduation. A special one, a proper one, with all bells and whistles. Even if she is the only child who is graduating in this ceremony, we will not cut any corners. The child deserves it.’

So the school sent a letter to all parents that Chula will have a special graduation. From time to time they discussed in circle time about what would be a fitting farewell for Chula and Mieja. Ideas were pooled, teachers made a special graduation hat and the children practiced their songs. Chula wore the school’s traditional graduation attire, sang songs, recited a poem, did a special Indian folk dance and made a ‘WHO AM I?’ poster. It was a touching ceremony. Almost all the adults present cried. Who wouldn’t when you hear a bunch of children singing this?

Iam a child by child1

PS1: This is 1/5 songs the children sang.

PS2: Mieja wasn’t left out. G Is For Gold(And Silver) follows soon.

Since this is a mommy blog, I have to write about the kids, even if it is once in four months.

Chula, all of a sudden looks so grown up. She is all of her 6.5 years and a little more, if you ask me. The danger in this is, I start thinking of her as an adult and start developing adult level expectations and she has to grow up, even more than she is currently, in order to catch up! Constantly reevaluating every scenario and breaking this cycle has been my prominent job for the past one year.

She has certainly departed from the ‘child’ category, but yet to arrive as a ‘girl’. In this journey, she is opening her mind and assimilating the world, thanks to the zillion-gazillion books she is devouring, eyes that are constantly observing and ears that are always listening.

Parents have been aware of the phenomenon of adolescence for ages now. Even terrible twos get noticed by parents, thanks to the child. But the flux children get caught while moving from what Dr.Montessori would call the ‘absorbent mind’ to ‘concrete thinking’ does not get the attention it deserves. From the parents point of view, first comes the monumental process of child birth. You don’t even get time to count all the toes and fingers and feel confident about the health of the offspring, you have to jump head first in to understanding a newborn’s needs and establishing a pattern that works. You take a breather and terrible twos is staring you in your face, which quite frankly is a misnomer, because we all know that terrible twos starts before two and drags on till four! Through out this phase we input values, family and personal, observe the outcome and keep tweaking the limits till we have a self propagating control system. By the time the child is six we start thinking about curriculum, extra-curricular activities, schedules, the poor second born, if any and such. So the transition  from child to girl/boy gets least notice, even if the parent notices it, since this transition is mostly inward, they pretend that it does not exist and do not want to deal with it.

I get some clues to what Chula is thinking. Of her most recent fascinations – namely poverty, pain, meanness, good and bad, kindness etc, the top priority goes to jail. Do children even go to jail? Why? Why would some one want to punish children? Are there even children capable of committing punishable offenses? Baby girl, I will tell you the truth and promise to answer your questions, but when you ask me, ‘But….amma…..if I don’t put my seat belt on, YOU are the one going to jail. Right???’, it scares me a little.

By now it is clear to me that she has a very broad sense of time. I think this is it. It is not going to change and I can either deal with it or try and make her perfect. While I understand that she gets it from me, it is annoying to have two such people living under the same roof. Half the battles between me and Chula is because of the clock. She is constantly taking her own sweet time to do things and I am constantly micromanaging her. It is chaos and friends will vouch to that!

Her clarity of thoughts amazes me at times. The other day she told me, ‘Not because I like you amma, because I love you amma.’ One of the drives back home, she requested for Enthiran songs and I replied, ‘The iPod is in shuffle mode and one of these songs will be an Enthiran song. I cannot drive and DJ.’ The reply she gave me for that, ‘Amma, there are 7 songs in Enthiran. There are 273 songs in your iPod. So 7 out of 273 will be from Enthiran’. I did not make a squeak after that.

After Chula was born, I learnt the art of giving choices. If I put my mind to it, I can give a child choices and still get the exact results I want. But now Chula is in a stage where she wants a role in coming up with the choices. She wants to be more involved in me parenting her. My choices are to either try figuring out how a child can parent herself or learn this new art without any manual what so ever. Sigh.

Her sense of humor is developing really well 🙂

Mieja…..

Her current thing is to yell, ‘Don’t talk about me’, on the occasions I narrate something adorable she did/said. So here I am, writing about her.

She is still asking cyclic questions. Now her cyclic questions are scientific. Need I say that I have completely lost my hair?

We watched The Oscars and the poor child sat patiently asking, ‘Is this Oscar?’ for every human being she set her eyes on.

She likes school and she hates school. When ever she whines to me that she does not like school, I insist that she has to go to school to learn things and she makes it in to another of her famous cyclic conversations. On a particular day she went on a walk with YaadaaYaadaa, picked a dandelion and made a wish, ‘I do not want to go to school. Ever, never, never, ever in my life again. I want to stay home all days. All 8 days of the week.’ See! Case in point for me.

We were going for R’s colleague’s son’s birthday party. YaadaaYaadaa asked her, if she knows the child from school/dance class/tamil class/swim class. The answer was, ‘YY aunty, you don’t come to my school. You are not my teacher. You don’t come to my tamil class or my swim class. But I know you right? That same way, I know this child.’ People, I have to say there are V.E.R.Y few occasions in which YY has been rendered speechless, any one who has know her will vouch for that. This was one such occasion.

Her favorite thing to do while riding in the car is to play games with me. So far name, place, animal thing; find the odd man out are super hits.

This 5 year old is forced to constantly catch up with her 6.5 year old sister. Sometimes I have to physically stop her from doing that.

The MPDs….how can I forget this? She has 3 different personalities. Bawawdi the cat – she licks you, holds your leg, meows and pretends she cannot talk English. Gaggiga the baby elephant – she hits you with her trunk and crawls on the floor. Diggie the dog – she barks and bites. Her big sister is her owner.

Finally a joke from Mieja, of course she got it from a book, but I was surprised she understood it.
WHAT IS A MUMMY’s FAVORITE MUSIC?
Wrap music.

Until later….

So we are M.A.D about fairies at home…..

Rainbow Magic series, thanks to the recommendation of the lovely ladies at SaffronTree, has served us well. One thing that Meija seems to have nailed down is that there can be fairies for everything and every occasion. She goes around the house, doing whatever she is doing, mumbling

Sopa the soap fairy
Slippera the slipper fairy
Marmala the marmalade fairy
Pencila the pencil fairy
Lunchella the lunch fairy
Sandella the sandbox fairy

….you get the idea.

Cut. Scene change.

I was on the phone requesting the husband to make a quick stop at Target, on his way back from work, to pick up some much needed feminine products. I gave him a bunch of keywords to narrow down what to choose and what new fairy we have at home?

Overa the overnight fairy.

Questions. Of course there are always questions…

Why do I need protection in the night?
Am I going to be attacked by some kind of monster?
How exactly her Appa is arranging for my protection?

Now some one please explain to me, how a child can totally glaze over/ignore/fail to notice/do her own thing for specific, in the face (this I mean quite literally), direct, instructions about cleaning up, finish her food, get ready for school in time etc, but can absorb a vague conversation on the phone and introduce it in her pretend play?

Theorem I: It is easy to fool your child.
Theorem II: In the circle of life, you are the real fool.

I am on the couch reading a book. Mieja is walking around the house with a cup of milk. I see her walk in to the bedroom. I hear a thump sound, a ‘gluck’ sound and there is an ominous silence. I am still on the couch, but I say, ‘Get the cleaning rag and clean up the spilled milk please.’ She comes running to me and says, ‘How did you know that I spilled the milk?’ I put on my most serious look and say, ‘I can see through walls. No matter where you are, what you are doing, I know exactly what is going on.’

Fast forward a few weeks.

I am in the kitchen cooking. I am calling Mieja. I am just trying to locate her and find out what she is doing. There is no reply. I do not want to drop what I am doing and run around the house. So I repeat her name enough number of times to compose an ashtotharam. Finally I give up, walk to the child and ask why she did not respond. She says, ‘But why Amma? You can see through walls, so I thought you can see where I am and what I am doing.’

Gandhiji’s birthday is a big deal in our school. We start with International Peace Day on Sept 21, then we do Pennies For Peace, then we talk about Gandhiji – the peaceful warrior and end the peace/non-violence theme by celebrating United Nations Day. Our school is closed for Gandhiji’s birthday every year.

This has been our routine for the three years we have been with this school. But the girls are growing and this Oct 1st and Oct 2nd we had a lot of talk about Gandhiji at home.

Mieja’s questions:
Did a english man shooted Gandhiji?
An Indian man did? But, why Amma? Gandhiji is the father of India. Why would the ‘goat person’ kill his own dad?
Did Gandhiji die in the darkness or something? What time of the day was it?
When he was shooted, how did he fall?
Why is he dressed like that? He has no shirts? Was Gandhi poor? He had no money to buy shirts? Is that why he is naked?

Chula’s questions:
Why do you say Gandhi Jayanthi Amma?
Is it like Krishna Jayanthi? Does Jayanthi mean birthday? Chadurthi is Ganesha’s birthday too. So why are we not saying Gandhi Chadurthi?

Chula had her shower almost by herself and dressed up in a pattu pavadai. Then she came running to me and said that she was ready. When I asked her ready for what, she replied that she is ready to celebrate the jayanthi or chadurthi or whatever it is, demanded why I haven’t set up Gandhiji’s picture, decked it with flowers and wanted to know what special Gandhi food I had cooked.

I promised her we will do something special in an hour and quickly planned some art work, books, songs and special food.

The food part was the easiest – peanut sundal and milk. One more thing to love about Gandhi, it is so easy-peasy to prepare his favorite food. Chula wanted to sing Ragupathi Raghava, so we did that. We read Marching To Freedom By Pratham, (special thanks to Chox aunty for sending  special books to the girls) and Dandi March is making quite an effect in Mieja’s mind. I can sense questions brewing. We also have Picture Gandhi by Tulika, The Story Of Dandi March by Tulika and Gandhi: His Life In Pictures. We thumbed through all the books.

I have to admit that I was a little lost for the art part. Then I decided to talk about how simple lines can form a drawing, profile vs front view. I showed then the famous question mark profile drawing of Gandhi, how such simple lines can be representative of Gandhi. Mieja wanted to draw and Chula wanted to write an essay. So this is what we ended up doing.

I had been wanting to introduce the liquid water colors that I had purchased a few weeks back. So I did white on white crayon resist and told them that if they paint the canvas they will discover a surprise. They were kicked when they saw Gandhi on their canvas.

They wanted to experiment on crayon resist and this is what they came up with. They can draw themselves with long hair and long curly eye lashes even when they cannot see what they were drawing. LOL!

“Involve the kids in everyday activities.”

Whoever said this did not have kids, that I can be sure of.

It works well in a school setting. I have scrubbed chairs, watered plants, gardened, done nature walks – all with kids. But a home is not as structured as a school. There are certain things that are a routine like loading/unloading the dishwasher, line drying the clothes, folding laundry and putting it away. We do these jobs together. At times when I am making dishes like soup, sandwich, cookie, cake etc, I involve kids. There have been days on which I have made them sit at the kitchen table with a slice of bread to butter or a tomato to be chopped or a cube of cheese to be grated, even if I am not using any of the above in my dish, just to get them out of my hair.

The thing about involving kids is that it needs some degree of planning. One must know the steps in order to delegate. Even better, the delegator must have done the chore at least once(with the delegatee in mind) in order to comprehend the exact skills essential to complete the chore.

Do you want to know what is even more difficult than delegating to kids? It is a mother delegating to siblings who are close in age. Imagine child1 and child2 sitting in their respective carseats all strapped up. After reaching the destination, child1 wants to take child2’s seatbelt off and the mother agrees. Child2 is deeply insulted. She wants to take child1’s seat belt off. So the mother comes up with the solution where child1 takes her seatbelt off, then takes child2’s seatbelt off and gets on to her carseat and straps herself. Child2 now proceeds to take child1’s seat belt off, every one is happy, calamity avoided. But hell no, the children being highly skilled torture specialists come up with the supreme question of who goes first. Now the mother has two choices, to bang her head on the steering wheel hard enough to do some damage to her brain or to calmly tell her children that this is an egg and chicken problem in which she does NOT want to be involved and walk away. Trust me, they do come up with some creative solutions, because they are clear that the enemy is not the sister but the parent and when the parent is not involved, they do tend to save their energy.

PS: This is not an isolated incident. All chores are now viewed by the children as ‘Why can’t I do that?’, ‘Why can’t I do it ALL BY MYSELF?’, ‘How else can I show off to my sibling?’, ‘Are there any other ways to establish MY territory?’.

PPS: The mother is secretly anguishing over the fact that  she was stupid enough to read to the children that the free tiger trial issue of  GloAdventurers where it describes in detail how tigers establish their territory by peeing. She is hoping that they do not connect two and two, end up with twenty two and pee all over the house.

PPPS: Double thumbs up to GloAdventurers. Do try them.

Its been a while since I did updates about the girls. So here it goes.

Chula:

She loves to dance. She can dance gracefully and keep decent beat.

When she is focusing on something she bites her lower lip.

She is REALLY good in reading between lines. There are 56 children in her class and new kids join her class all the time. I do not remember all her classmates names. So if I address them as ‘honey’, she pulls me aside and says, ‘Amma her name is [x]. You called her honey. Is that because you don’t know what her name is? Do you want me to introduce her to you?’ This is only the tip of the iceberg. She goes much deeper as to rationalize lots of things that it is actually scary for me.

She has an amazing sense of direction. Considering that I am still working on my left and right, this she definitely got from her appa. This coupled with her fluent reading there are constant requests to go through a specific street to her school. If she mentions a street name and I draw a blank, she promptly says, “Don’t worry amma, just follow my directions. Go past X street. Then slow down. After J make a left on to W Ave. Remember, W Ave does not hit F Ave. So you have to make right on S Ave and then a left on to G. You know G, so you can manage from there amma.” When I ask her how she knows this, she places both her hands in parallel-perpendicular-parallel fashion and explains that A street and B street are parallel/perpendicular(in action, she does not know the terms parallel and perpendicular yet) and hence forth so it all makes sense.

She has an amazing perspective. When she has just turned four, she colored a Caillou print out and next to the it she drew a pair of shoes much bigger than the boy. I made a flippant remark about Caillou’s big giant shoes, she calmly explained that in the frame, Caillou’s shoes are much closer to us and Caillou is standing far away from us and hence the difference in size. She still has this perspective, sense of depth/distance and I see it in her art work.

She is the queen of procrastination. This she gets from me. When I ask her to put a book away in the shelf, it almost invariably goes like this: puts the book away->gets another book->starts reading the book->wants to draw something connected with that book->comes to get a pencil->gets distracted by the easel on her way->starts drawing something on the easel->goes to get the camera to take a picture of her drawing->gets distracted on the way to the technology shelf->goes to her room and starts picking her clothes for the next week of school…….. Me: “No fair, there can be only one procrastintor in a home and that position is taken.”

She thinks her sister loves her, but is not always kind to her. Her fantasy is to have a ‘Mieja tree’ in our backyard, so that there can be many many many more Mieja’s in our home. (More than one Mieja? The very thought makes me shudder.)

She takes poetic license when explaining facts to me and hence my nick to her ‘Dubukku’. Her other nicks are mylapore mayil, annakili, smathu chellam, seeni sakkarai, pokkiri.

She follows rules to the T. While on walks, she reaches intersection and waits for me to cross the road. When outside, she always asks me very politely if she can do something. While in public library, she always tells me before she leaves her spot. While crossing roads, she mumbles to herself, ‘STOP. Look left, Look right. Look left. Make sure it is safe. Now cross, quickly, but no running.’

She is scared of movies, even kid’s movies. The only movie she has seen in theaters is UP and that too she closed her eyes after the first 30 min. Not sleeping, just closing eyes and ears. All she watches is PBSKids programs.

Mieja:

I thought it was a fad. But it has lasted for the past five months and she is still going strong. Chula got a face painting kit for fifth birthday in Dec. Mieja of all people, who hates anything on her face has taken an unusual liking to it. However it is not ‘face’ painting per-se for her, but body art. So the routine now a days is, come back from school -> shower -> face painting body art. The routine hasn’t wavered for the past five months. R thinks his daughter must have been a temple elephant in India in her previous jenmam and this fascination is affectation of her previous jenmam. So far I have painted rainbow, cloud, dolphin, flower, heart, frog, star, butterfly and the list goes on. Even on weekends, when she is dressed in something fancy, she insists that her ensemble is complete only with hand painted bracelets, anklets, necklace and such. R and his temple elephant jokes apart, I am seriously praying that this is not a window in to Mieja’s future in which the said child is covered with tattoos.

The children have taken to Kandhasamy songs, which, I would like to clarify, has absolutely nothing to do with me. It is the husband’s idea of exposing them to the real world (*rolling eyes*). I banned Meow Meow, so I am happy that I have had my say. Mieja in particular loves singing, ‘naan pattu pattu pattu pattu pattu sundari’ in her baby voice and it is quite adorable.

Her current nick names include, but are not limited to Pipi Longstockings, pattu sundari, minor kunju, lord labakkudaas(labakku in short to match the dubukku)

Last month when her patti forced her to say something in Tamil, she said, “Soap-le face podatheenga patti” (Don’t put my face in soap instead of the other way around). She got mad that we laughed, stormed out of the bathroom, closed her naked self in her bedroom and refused to open the door.

The child has emotional blackmail encoded in her DNA. She goes ahead and does something 100% unacceptable, which makes me mad and what does she do? She turns on the water works. Here I am using every ounce of self-control and I ask her, ‘Why did you do that?’ and she has the nerve to answer, ‘Only because I love you amma. I love you, love you and love you. All I do is love you with all my heart and you are mad at me.’ But she is beyond any kind of blackmail. Once my chithi pretended to go back to Boston  because her feelings were hurt by the said child and the automatic response that was uttered was, ‘Stop, you forgot to take your jacket and suitcase. Take everything before leaving.’

She wants me to have another child. When I told her that two is my limit, she offered to move to Antartica and live with the penguins, so that I can have another baby.

She is very particular about her clothes. By the time she gets ready her room is strewn with clothes ALL around. I have learnt not to interfere with her clothing decisions and not to question her methods.

She has definitive idea of the concept of time. She carries on her daily routine without much repeated instructions from me. She is adamant that she will keep her own time and is offended if some one tries to manage her time.

If I tell her that I am not feeling good and ask her to take care of me, she makes me lie of her lap and pats me very gently and sings songs for me. Ever since I fell and broke my tail bone, she has been very protective of me. “Amma, don’t sit on the hard chair. I will get your cushion. Amma be careful, you cannot bend like that. You might fall again.” Every morning begins with Mieja asking me how my tail bone is feeling. Her favorite thing is playing mommy and baby game with me, where I am the baby and she is the mommy taking care of me. Today morning, armed with a rubber sheet, body towel, spray on starch container she insisted on changing the baby’s diaper and I had to declare that we are done playing.

She honestly believes her sister knows more and seeks her for advice, ‘Oh-oh. Chula I have a problem. How do I do this?’ and can tirelessly repeat the same question till her sister throws her hands up in the air, rolls her eyes and agrees to help her.

Dear Mieja:

I have never written public blog letters to you and your sister. I had my reasons. Now, Mieja, this is my letter to you. My first public, blog letter to you. I have my reasons.

If I ever write your biography, the chapter that covers 3.5 years – 4 years of your life will certainly be titled HEART ACHE. To call the past six months as turbulent will be an understatement.

Your motto has always been Vini Vidi Vici – you came, you saw us all and you conquered us all with your laugh, love, expression and attitude. You make me laugh like there is no tomorrow. When I hug you, I feel this sense of contentment swell inside of me. You have multiple facets, all of which I enjoy. Heck, I enjoy even your ‘padagamani'( adamant and aggressive ) side. You have always gone by ‘naan oru mudivu pannital, appuram nane yen pechai ketka maten’ (Translates to: If I decide something, then I will not listen to me convincing myself to change my decision.) and in the past I have found it awfully cute. The thought that this child is my last child softens parents in many ways. It is an abstract feeling that  can only be experienced and cannot be explained.

Any thing goes is definitely not what flies in our house. Your appa and I believe that discipline is not a dirty word. We view it more as setting safe limits within which you and your akka can explore. It will be false to say that we do not have any expectations on you and your akka. Though the two of you are young, we do have expectations, age appropriate expectations on you both. We are not new, inexperienced parents any more. Tantrums neither scare us nor embarrass us. We are level headed to view it as mismatched expectations and  are willing to work through it.

Now, something happened. Or may be many things happened….. I am not sure, but I can only make educated guesses. May be you moved from what Dr.Montessori would call ‘just existing’ to ‘conscious existence’. May be you are trying to learn your limits by pushing our limits. May be you delicate digestive system is still in the process of maturing and you are suffering from the same lactose intolerance and acid reflux that made you scream in pain 24X7 the first two weeks after you were born. May be you are trying to define your niche in house and in school. May be you are trying to run with the top dogs too soon. May be you are competing with your sister. May be you are competing with your self. May be you found that by screaming you get my attention sooner that anything else and decided to take that short cut. May be you are feeling insecure…..

As a result of this, the past six months have been non stop crying and plain unhappiness – mostly for you. What shocked me was the rage, the anger that emanated from you and that you blamed me for your unhappiness. It was not just me, but your teachers also noticed it. What started as hugging my legs and refusing to say goodbye to me when I drop you off in your classroom, only worsened over the past three months. You regressed in certain areas I thought you had already mastered. Your teachers were surprised that you were having separation anxiety after being in same classroom, with the same teachers for the past two years.

We had a conference and discussed certain things that have been sending red flags right, left and center in my mind. Most of the red flags, your teachers said, were ‘preferences’. Strong, rigid and to some extent eccentric, but they did put my mind to ease by saying that there is no cognitive dissonance.

The real slap in the face came to me, when the head teacher of your classroom, the director of your school, a very patient, kind and nurturing soul called me aside and gave me ‘the note’. After an unhappy good bye in the morning, you were sitting with your teacher and she made conversation with you. After long probing you told her that you were MAD at me. Your teacher suggested that you write a letter to me. You dictated. She wrote. And I am holding the note that says, “To mommy, Mommy, I am having fights with you. That makes me sad.” Slap. End of story.

Since then, I have been trying to get a break. One thing I strongly believe is that, when you are desperate for something, the universe conspires to give you exactly what you ask for. It may not be packaged in the way we want it. But you get it. The challenge is to recognize it and make the most of it.

The break I have been asking for came as a real break…. in my tail bone. I fell on the stairs and broke my tail bone. The positive aspect of it is that I get to stay at home and spend some time with you. Real, quality time that is not measure in minutes but in love. I am able to slow down and give you the focus you need without cutting down on the time I spend with your sister.

You will be four in a week. Hoping that the chapter about your fourth year will be titled CONTENTMENT.

More love than you can ever imagine

Amma

Am I done with the language development series? Honest answer, I don’t know if I will be done with any of the series posts I do. As the children grow, I find something interesting to add. But this post has been in my mind for a long time now and potty humor is one of the important stages of language development and humor development in children, so I have to record it.

Some time around two, children realize that words are not just sounds that come out of us, but they are powerful tools. They realize that what they say, and at times what they don’t say, can affect the environment around them. You hear your child using the word NO a gazillion times? That is the indicator that the child has made this connection in her brain.

Some time around four, at least that is what some books say, but I started noticing this phenomenon in our household when Chula was 3 years, may be because of the mixed age school setting….where was I? Yes, some time around four, children notice that some words cause unusual behavior in others. These are called impact words. A child says these words and the environment does not respond, but it reacts. The young child senses the unrest and unease these words cause. Even if she gets the literal meaning, she has no clue why in the world the adults are making such a big deal of fuss about it. Some example of impact words are poo-poo, pee-pee, other potty related words, words that signify private body parts, words related to death and violence etc.

3 year old Chula used to say poo-poo or pee-pee and she would burst in a fit of giggles. This was the girl who still couldn’t differentiate between a good smell and a disgusting smell. So she must be clearly copying the older kids at school. By four years and a few months, she totally got the concept of disgusting/offensive/unpleasant, so I was hoping that she would outgrow this phase by 4.5 years or so.

But I did not take in to account Mieja, who is 18 months younger to Chula. When Chula entered this phase, Mieja was 1.5. She echoed her sister and giggled. She being the clown that she is purposefully repeated potty words to get her older sister to giggle. Now Chula who is supposed to have outgrown this phase, is still locked down to this phase because Mieja is smack in the middle of that phase. The girls feed off of each other and there is perpetual giggling going on.

I did what is sensible. I was mildly amused at first and ignored it later. I do not want to sound like a fuddy-duddy, but if your children sat in a restaurant and sang a top pitch chorus, to the tune of Old McDonald had a farm

“Maran thatha poo-poo paar,
pee-pee, poo-poo-pee.
Avar pannayil yirukkum pasuvinai paar
pee-pee, poo-poo-pee.
Ange poo-poo, yinge pee-pee…”

Won’t you be embarrassed? We are talking about the Saravana Bhanvan in the Bay Area and almost every one knows Tamil.

(The poem roughly translates to, “Look at Maran grandpa’s poo-poo, look at the cow in his farm, look at the poo-poo, there is poop there and pee here….” Now, I would like to say that we do not know or have a Maran grandpa. He is a fictitious character and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. In their Tamil school, to inspire the children they have a set of Tamil rhymes to the tune of catchy English rhymes. And yes the rhyme has affected them deeply.)

So ground rule#1 was quickly concocted by the parents and was thrown out, ‘No potty talk at the dining table’, which was closely followed by rule#2 ‘No potty talk in front of company’. Now, as a parent, it is a tough job to set limits and ground rules. Because one must not over react and make a rule of everything, then your child will not follow any rule. Or if you try ignoring everything, then once again you will be faced with the scenario of your child not following any rule. So one has to make rules only when you know that the rule will fly and you will never know if a rule will fly unless you make a rule of it. Complicated stuff, I say! Potty talk = offensive talk = socially unacceptable being purely an adult concept, is not very successful at home, I have to admit. So currently, the adults are the only ones who follow it at home.

One bright sunny day, Chula very properly told me, ‘Amma, I understand that poo-poo and pee-pee talk upsets you. So Mieja and me will not do that any more.’ I was in seventh heaven, naturally, not because potty talk was abandoned, but because of the sincerity with which she approached me and the maturity she portrayed, but I was duly grounded when she finished her statement with, “We have a new word. FART.” And ran off singing, ‘FART, FART, FART, FART, FART, F, F….’ of course to the tune of A,B,C,D,E,F,G….

Mieja: Amma, AG says they call it gusu in their house.
{Yes, there is a whole army of tomorrow’s good citizens out there discussing such important stuff.}
Chula: R says gas. Gas is a English word Mieja. What language is gusu?
Mieja: Well, AG speaks Tamil. So gusu must be Tamil.
Chula: Really amma? {She stops mid sentence, because she instantly recognizes the look on my face. So turns and whispers to her sister}, We will ask our Tamil teachers in Tamil school.
Mieja: Yes, teachers know everything. We can ask M what it is in Spanish and J what it is in Chinese.

Mieja even made observations like, ‘When children make gas we make a sound ‘pa-da-pa-da’ and we all laugh. Then we say ‘excuse me’. When adults do it, we can’t hear it, but we can smell it. They do not say excuse me.’

So unless you are prepared to face the question,‘So….. how do you say fart in your language?’ avoid our house for the next few years.

So here is the song in the girls’ voice.

TisAGift2BSimple