Thanks To Halloween
Author: utbt3 Nov 2009
Conversation I
Chula: Amma, I am Princess Leia.
{Since I always hear about Cinderella-Binderella types, I am surprised she said Leia.}
Me: Who is Leia?
Chula: She is a princess.
Me: OK. Where did you hear about her?
Chula: E told me.
Me: Hmmm. Where is she from?
Chula: She is from Star Horse. E told me.
{She is nodding her knowingly.}
Me: Star HORSE? What is that?
Chula: It is a game that E plays with his sister and mamma and daddy.
Me: I see. Tell me about this Leia from Star Horse.
Chula: She is a princess. She gets very sick and she dies. Then her mommy comes looking for her and she plays with her mommy.
Me: Plays with her mommy? I thought she died already?
Chula: *Sighs*. Ammmmaa, she is not real. It is some one else’s imagination.
Conversation II
We are leaving to school on the day before Halloween. Chula is a butterfly and Mieja is a ladybug. We are late and I am on my millionth instruction for them to sit down and put their seat belts on.
Mieja: Amma, what are you dressed as?
Me: Seat belt.
Mieja: Amma, you don’t have a costume?
Me: SEATBELT NOW.
Chula: Oh, baby she is dressed as herself. She is she. Don’t you see?
Mieja: Yeah!! And she is scary when she screams.
Me: Uh….. *what the hell?! I am standing right here, have some courtesy girls*
[tags]halloween, kids say the darnest, star wars, Princess Leia[/tags]
Featuring On Our Bookshelf
Author: utbt24 Oct 2009
Featuring in our library are my picks for CROCUS2009 @ Saffron Tree.
The Journey Of Tunuri And The Blue Deer
This is the favorite corner of my home.
Our bookshelf.
I love it. From the curtains, to the rug, to the file holders, each thing was hand picked by me with my precious books in mind.
The previous owners had converted a bedroom in to a media room. So instead of a traditional closet we have shelves. This is the space that houses the books we have. The bottom most shelf for my school stuff and large books. The next two shelves from the bottom are for the kids books, arranged so that the whole front cover of the book is showing. These books are rotated every two weeks. Books that are piled with their spine showing, on the side shelves are placed in the central area so that the front cover shows. I rearrange the books with a theme in mind. After this I casually let the kids in to the room. They notice that there are new books and their comment is , “AMMA YOU PUT OUT NEW BOOKS!!!!” Most of the books we have had for the past two years, but by showing them only 10 books at a time, they have renewed interest. If a book that has been put out has not been touched in spite of it being ‘new’, they are retired to a storage box in the garage.
The rest of the books that belong to the adults in the house arranged in a certain order. As the shelf height increases the appropriateness(for Chula and Mieja) of the books differ. First comes Harry Potter series, LOTR, English and Tamil version of Ponniyin Selvan, Roald Dahl, R.K.Narayan etc. Above them are Catch22, Fountainhead, Alexander Maccall Smith, few Grishams, Robin Cooks, Douglas Adams etc. As the height increases the adult content of the books increase. The idea is Chula and Mieja will be a certain age, hmmmm 30 may be, by the time they are reading books with sexual content. So they better not climb on chairs or tip toe to get those books.
On the very top shelf are my ORACLE, C++, Operation System, JAVA books from my former jenmam. These are way high, not to keep them away from the kids, but to be out of my sight, so that I can be free of nightmares.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the books are grouped and sub grouped by categories like by author, height, chronology, theme etc. For example, all Tulika books are in one basket, starting with Tamil books arranged in height order(unless there are two books with similar theme, then the height order is sacrificed), then the bilingual books in height order, then the English books in height etc. The book HAS to go back in to the very specific spot that it came from, otherwise God forbid, a reorganization is in order. It takes me a weekend to reorganize the bookshelf because, I first draw a rough sketch, a flow chart, catalog, sit in a corner and read a book and then arrange them.
IF (in capital because most people who know me have stopped borrowing books from me) some one borrows a book from me, I almost make them sign a binding contract that lets me cut their right ear off if they accidentally took my book to the bathroom(yuck) or folded a corner or folded it open along the spine or spill something on it or crumple any page or…..okay the list goes on.
* ! I love my book shelf ! *
Okay folks, now march on to Saffrontree, read our reviews and leave comments. Only if we hear you, we will know what you are thinking.
[tags]books shelf, how to arrange books to keep kids interested[/tags]
Nine Days Of Love-II
Author: utbt21 Oct 2009
Contd from part I.
She is at home because her school is closed for Gandhi Jayanthi. She washed her hair, children stayed off from clawing each other, her best friend was going to stop by and the husband was on his way home…. a good day…an over all sense of elation is prevailing.
She opens the door to check mail and she sees a package.
Her mind races at the speed of light. Books from Amazon? Nope. She didn’t order any. Besides why would Amazon gift-wrap it like this? Gift from India? Yeah right! Dream on greedy person……
She picks the package and looks at the ‘from address’ Wait a min….. Tharini from Winkiesways? Package from T? She has a rough idea as to the ‘why’, but the ‘what’ is still throbbing in her head.
OMG, she loves surprises. She loves presents. She loves opening presents. In fact she loves it sooooo much that as of a year back, she was opening all her kids’ birthday presents. This is like….this is like….pure joy. She feels like a small child. She is shaking and sniffing the package trying to guess what is inside.
Ok, she gives up. Inside her head a voice is screaming ‘OPEN AND OPEN IT ALREADY.’ She runs the tip of her car key at the corners of the box, opens the package and wrapped in a newspaper is ……..
A throw cushion with hand made embroidery
showing a mother and her two children, all three,
full of glee,
under a tree,
not any tree,
but a Banyan tree,
with the Sun all shiny
and the grass dewy,
for it is the blog banner of yours truly 
With the package is a hand written letter taped to a thank you card. The sight of the neat script, that is so precise and beautiful, some how completes the experience. She is thinking ‘Aren’t hand written notes the best?’. She is scanning the notes from top to bottom, savoring the feeling, making the sense of completion last a bit longer.
All this kindness for what? Because she advised T to take it easy and relax?! Apparently yes. T says in her note, “I wanted my ‘Thank You Loads’ gift to be a gesture of the permission for the relaxed time you enabled me to sanction myself and here is the fruitful endeavor.”
All that is running through her mind is, ‘I must be truly blessed. Not just for all the love and kindness that is bestowed on me. But also to be able to recognize, be aware and appreciate the kindness that comes my way.’
[tags]kindness, thankful[/tags]
CROCUS 2009
Author: utbt19 Oct 2009
As my children started showing interest in books, found myself in a tight spot. There was no dearth of books, don’t get me wrong. I found it difficult to pick the right kind of books. That is when I discovered Saffron Tree, every contributor so unique in their tastes, but all bound by the same thread – parents from India with a love for books.
After following Saffron Tree for eight months, I was asked to join the group. This invite, I felt, was an honor for a sporadic blogger like me. On Oct 23, Saffron Tree is celebrating its third anniversary and I am still happy to be a part of this group.
As a special treat we have our book festival ‘CROCUS 2009 – Around the World in Seven Days’ in which we will be reviewing culturally unique books from all over the world. Its not just reviews, we have author interviews and games.
Folks, hop over and see for yourself. Its a fun ride and as Praba says, you don’t need a passport or a plane ticket
Nine Days Of Love
Author: utbt5 Oct 2009
Navarathiri has come and gone. Our golu dolls have been packed and tucked away in plastic boxes. For those who are wondering what I am talking about, navarathiri “means nine nights”. Golu is arranging dolls on steps in one’s house.
So why do South Indians display dolls for nine days during navarathiri? The belief is Goddess Durga, in order to slay the buffalo headed demon Mahisha – who was the embodiment of evil, meditated for nine days in order to gain strength and focus that was required to perform this deed. So dolls of gods and goddess are displayed on the steps. These dolls are considered the durbar of Durga and must not be moved/disturbed for the whole nine days. Special offerings are done very day in order to appease these various assortment of gods and goddesses in one’s home.
Not all South Indians celebrate navarathiri with golu. What used to be a matter of choice in the olden days became a family way of doing things. Growing up, golu was not the norm in my house. So as a child I have made sundal vists and dodged requests to sing. It is believed that people who come to golu have to sing in order to please the gods. But me singing would probably be in direct violation of the first premise that the dolls must not be disturbed. So I have always evaded the requests to sing with my trademark ‘asattu sirippu’. Who ever came up with the theory that all women have singing capabilities and those adhigaprasingi people who think that they can just say, “You have to sing. Otherwise you cannot leave my house.” *Rolling my eyes.* I always felt like answering, “Fine, I will move in….and will sing 24×7. Now THAT will teach you a lesson.”
In R’s house golu was celebrated in flourish. They used to be a joint family with all brothers, their wives and children living in a huge house. So golu was an occasion for the women in the family to express their artistic abilities. They made their own dolls, they created miniature parks and towns using what few things were available around the house. I am talking about 1960, when art and craft stores were non-existent. What with dressing up the kids, welcoming the visitors, golu was a major social thing for them. After R’s grandfather – the patriarch of the family died, the joint family arrangement slowly disintegrated and some how my MIL stopped the golu affair altogether.
I wanted to start golu at home, in order to show Chula and Mieja that we have a cultural equivalent of the Christmas tree. The understanding in the house since Chula has been 2.5 is, ‘You have a Christmas tree in your school. Your friends have a tree at their homes, because they are a tree family. But we are a step family. Every year around Oct we make steps and keep dolls for nine days. This is how our family does things.’ We waited for Mieja to turn three, so that she will not bring the steps down.
Year 2009 marks the first year that we formally start celebrating golu in our house. We did a five step golu and invited very close friends home for vethalai pakku. The idea is to keep the jing-bang relatively small and simple, so that I can sustain the tradition of golu for many years to come.
What one of my friend’s mom told me made a huge impact on me, in fact this was a driving force behind this post. She said,
“Devis, in olden days wore sarees had weapons and went on animals like lions or tigers in order to remove obstacle and to make the world a better place for every one present and for the future generation. You Devis, now a days wear pants, drive cars, but you are still doing the same. You are making the world a better place for your family through your love and you do everything in your capacity to remove all obstacles for your children.”
At that point I started thinking about all the Devis in my life. The more I think of all the support I got, the more I am moved by the love that surrounds me.
My chithi(my mom’s baby sister), who made a trip from Boston, to stay with me for two weeks, because this is my first golu. Though she is my chithi, she is only 12 years older to me. We grew up together and for all practical purposes, as sisters. We skip an entire generation, I call her by her name and Chula and Mieja call her chithi. For every major mile stone in my life, she has been there physically contributing her best. How can she miss my first golu? She did not make this trip to help me, she knows I can very well handle the golu and much more. But she said that she made this trip so that she can keep an eye one me, make sure that I don’t chew more than I can swallow and end up tired and all golued-out( pardon me for the expression ). Every step of the way, she was with me, bringing me back to focus when I spent half a day decorating and redecorating the golu backdrop, urging me to keep things simple, helping me make the prasadams, making kolams with the girls and clearing away the sink at the speed of lightning.
My mother, MIL and my SILs, though they were in India, I know for a fact that their hearts were in my house. Every moment of the nine days, they spent fanaticizing what the children would be doing, how I had arranged the dolls, how many people I would be inviting, how will I balance, work-home-kids-school-golu-visiting friends. Earlier this year my MIL and SILs visited us for about 6 weeks. Before their trip, my mother, my MIL and my SILs combed Chennai with a fine toothcomb in order to get dolls for my golu. How difficult is it to get a specific doll at off golu season, only they would know!
As I looked at my steps, I look at the different dolls I have acquired over the past years. Every single doll that has been displayed has a history behind it. Some highlights are
The electric silver lamps that my mother walked the whole of T.Nagar to buy, the pseudo banana tree that she looked for and drove my father crazy, the marapachi she sent over so that Chula and Mieja would know what kind of dolls she played with when she was a kid, the sandal wood Mahalakshmi my parents bought for our fifth wedding anniversary.
The foam Ganesha that YaadaYaada gave that reminds me of Meija. Something in the innocent hepless eyes or the way the Ganesha manages to loose his bindhi inspite of me super glue-ing the bindhis….
The chettiyar bommais that my first SIL bought. Mieja ALWAYS mixed the head and the body of the male and female and I would walk in to my living room and go, ‘Hmmmm something looks odd, but I cannot quite put my finger to it’.
The last step was for the kids. I gave them full autonomy as to what goes on it. They put all their Perler bead work on the last step. I have to point out to picture 15 in the slide show, the way the cups are hidden behind the house. When I suggested moving the cups in front of the house, I was rightly reprimanded by Chula, “Amma, the cups are not behind the house. They are IN the house. The people are having tea IN the house.” She walked away shaking her head disappointed that her mother couldn’t get this simple perspective.
Picture 16, the gold plated car R got from New Orleans when he went for a conference by himself. The first souvenir he bought back home without me asking ?
And for the laughs, when I asked the girls to get books from the bookshelf for Saraswathi Poojai, they got Twilight as MY book. I pointed that we must keep educational books and Twilight was fiction. They both echoed, “But, but you read this ALL the time?!”. Now you know of my reading tastes and why R calls me ‘thirty year old teenager’ ?
And then there was one act of supreme kindness a good week after navarathiri, that basically taught me that love is omnipresent and omnipotent. I will adjourn it for my next post, because I want you all fresh and alert when you read about it.
Now to my smilebox. Thanks for reading. LOVE, LAUGH, LIVE.
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[tags]navarathiri, golu, nine days[/tags]
Sibling Mush
Author: utbt1 Oct 2009
I am currently dropping Chula’s classmate at her house on the way back home from school. This child’s mother is travelling and hence she requested I do the pick-up-from-school-and-drop-off-at-home service. This other child, let us call her X, is the same age as Chula. She is a mellow, sweet kid and gels well with Chula and Mieja. All three were having a conversation in the car that I was privileged to listen to.
Chula is narrating the events of last weekend to X. She is talking about the navarathiri trips, golu visits and the friends she meets only when there is an occasion. At this point she says, “…and I was crying in S’s house.”
This piques X’s curiosity and she asks, “Crying? Why were you crying?”
To this Chula replies, “That’s because my sister left me alone in S’s room and closed the door. She was holding the doorknob tight from outside. I tried to open the door, I tried and tried and I got scared. So I started crying for my mommy. My mommy was sitting in the couch with P chithi and P aunty and A baby and N uncle. She heard me cry and started wondering where I was and what happened to me. So she walked through the kitchen, listening to where my voice was coming from. She walked down the hallway and came to the room I was standing and crying. She removed Mieja’s hand from the door knob and opened the door and kneeled down on the floor and hugged me tight and asked if I was okay. I said yes and started crying and my mommy helped me go to my heart and calmed me down.”
Yes, she does not talk in sentences, but in pages. There is no period, only ands and commas and the narration goes on and on. She was shut inside the room, but she had vividly imagined how I would have reacted when I heard her cry, how I reached the room ‘listening to her voice’ and removed Mieja’s hand from the doorknob before I opened the door. This is my Chula.
As to Mieja, she must have felt left out with S and Chula jumping and having fun. She must have tried her best to talk the other two girls to include her in the play. I can totally picture her drawing her to her full 30 inches of height, hands on hips and saying, “Hey, but I want to play with you guys too”, for I have seen her do it only a billion times. She must have gotten frustrated that words were not making an impact, she must have been more angry at her sister than at S for not including her, so she must have taken it out on her sister. I am positive she would have waved her right index finger at her sister and would have said, “Then, I am not going to play with you any more. I am walking away from you.”, this I have seen a kabillion times, and closed the room door. One thing Mieja knows, if her sister storms out of the closed door, she would come out and express her displeasure physically. So she stood outside the door holding on to the doorknob, so that Chula cannot come out. While I understand what she did, I do not approve of it, disclaimer in case these kids grow up and get to read this and accuse me that I take sides, this is my Mieja and she is like this only.
Anyways, where was I? Yes, in the car driving to X’s house. X being an only child is mortified. All this locking out drama appalls her. But X adores Mieja, she probably thinks that Mieja is innocent, helpless and is not capable of such an act. So turns to Mieja and asks her, “Did you do that?” I am looking at Mieja through the rear view mirror. She is looking out of the window as if she is the only passenger in the car. It looks as if she never heard the conversation. At this point X appropriately draws her breath in sharply and in her most disapproving tone says, “That is so mean of Mieja”, Chula nods her approval. X says, “Mieja is so mean. Let us not play with her anymore.” For this Chula replies, “Okay, but I have to play with her in the afternoons*.” X is puzzled and asks her why and Chula replies, “Because she is my sister and I love her.”
At this point, Madam-pretending-not-to-listen turns to her sister and says, “Akka, I love you too. I want to be your friend too.”
I am smiling. I grew up as an only child I am not sure of all the sibling dynamics. When my children are constantly in each other’s face, I wonder if this is normal and if they will turn out to be tolerant and loving to each other in the future. But instances like this give me reassurance and satisfaction.
The Art Of Eating –II
Author: utbt16 Sep 2009
First of all thanks to all those who read my previous post on my anguish over the food battle ‘under the tree’. Also advance thanks to all those who successfully complete reading this detailed post.
Tharini asked me the dreaded ‘How?’ question. I was dreading this because it was quite vague in my own head. For the past ten days, I have been trying to crystallize the ideas in my head. Hopefully this post where I will be putting things in print will help me process my thoughts.
I believe introspection is the first step towards a solution in any problem. Because, in many situations our reactions are a direct consequence of the believes, values, judgements and labels that are embedded in our subconscious. So when we know what we are made of, we can pro-act and not react to the situation. When I am doing something, be it cooking for Chula and Mieja’s birthday party or even day to day dinner/lunch I always do it with great secrecy. When friends offer help I turn it down and when the R asks me what my plans are, I invariably bite his head off. This has created unpleasantness between R and I in the past. My intentions were definitely not to hurt him and keep him out of the whole jing-bang-jix. Introspection revealed that I am person who keeps improvising things till the very last minute or wait for inspiration to hit me and do things the very last minute. So when he asks me whats up and if he can help, I get irritated with myself for not having anything solid to offer and misdirected anger lashes out. OK, now that I have illustrated the value of introspection with a suitable example, let me move on.
Introspection in this situation led me to believe that:
(1)I believe food is the gateway to culture. My kids growing up away from India only made me more determined to offer them proper South Indian food. My ideas of a culturally consistent lunch boxwent down the drain long time back. I compromised and send pasta and sandwich for lunch 3/5 days. But while eating at home, I wanted to stick to the traditional kootu, sambar, morkuzhambu, poriyal types. When Chula and Mieja say no to South Indian food, I get agitated because I equate it as ‘no to food’ = ‘no culture’ = ‘people in India criticizing me as parent’ = ‘failed parent’.
(2)Children have to eat what was cooked for that particular day. Something that I clearly remember from my childhood is my father’s voice booming, “This is not a hotel. This is a home and you may not ask for a particular food in the very last minute and expect your order to be serviced.”
(3)I label children. There…. I said it and it is out in the open now. While I am at it I must also admit that I also judge adults. With adults and the children in school, these labels are okay because the relationship is non-personal in a certain plane. Actually at work these labels make my reflexes sharper and I am more efficient. Where as I treat my children as extensions of myself or even worse as versions of myself, UTBT Version2.0 or something. So I tend to be hard with the labels because the latest version must be devoid of all bugs, it has to be perfect right?!
(4)In my previous post Yaadayaada commented that I have patience and I made some generic quip. Actually, I do have patience. Unfortunately it is misplaced patience so it is hard for me to be consistently patient. Most of my patience is quantitative and not qualitative.
(5)I don’t know to ask, even if it is myself, for food. I eat when it is convenient not when I am hungry. I have always thought of it as flexibility, but no. It is my disability to perceive that food is for hunger. So inadvertently I have modeled to my children that food is a leisure activity. If you are too busy involved in some activity, food can wait. All along I have been thinking that they get in to one activity after another to avoid food. But it is not the case. They haven’t given enough importance to food to make a plan to avoid it. They have a list of exciting things in their agenda and food break is just an inconvenience. I have to thank COS for this thought process.
(6)I feed them because it is in my to-do list. I look at it as a chore to be done before I have to go on to the next bullet item on my list.
(7)Last but not the least, I over analyze things. Some thing you all are aware of by now.
So the problems are/were not enjoying the food, tantrum for poori or something exotic in the last minute, food shoved in while the said children were distracted with TV etc.
Some of the problems self solved and I had to put my foot down for certain things. Watching TV while eating went out the window and in to the trash during summer vacation. For a while TV lunches/dinners were perfect because they would eat by themselves. Then it came to a stage where I had to pause the TV if they forgot to take the next spoonful or if they just sat with mouthful of food forgetting to chew or to swallow. Before I knew, I was feeding them with TV on. If I am doing the feeding, I might as well do it without TV! So I said no TV while eating. Initially there were cries of disappointments, but it quickly died down because we started doing family style sit down lunches/dinners or picnics in our backyard(it was summer an was perfect for picnics). Chula and Mieja are used to family style eating at school. The kids set the table with table cloth, placemats, napkins diluted apple/orange juice, water, silverware, plates, centerpiece from their garden, salad from their garden, bread and invite other children to eat. So we did the same at home. They would set the table/picnic mat, run out to the garden and get some flowers, place them in a vase for enjoying while eating and we would make some lingonberry juice(from IKEA, yum!).
This culture of the whole family eating together has primarily taught me to respect my food. Hopefully it would do the same to my children. I am trying to model that food is a not just an extrenal need, but to some extent a bonding process that brings the whole family together. This addresses introspection#5.
Also they started getting involved in food preparation over the summer break. I would plop one child on the counter or put a step stool over the sink. They helped/watched/played but whatever they did, they did get a vague sense that food does not magically appear. It takes time and effort to cook. So Chula now changed her request from, “I want poori now” to “Amma, can we make poori for dinner on Sat?”. This works well with my introspection #2 and tantrums for exotic food.
With respect to introspection #1, I had to make compromises. I still offer them South Indian food, but the twist is I offer it like they like it. They like their rice plain, white with ghee on top, no nonsense mixed in. So plain white rice it is with veggies on the side and a teeny serving of sambar kind of stuff in the teeniest cup you have ever seen, also on the side. This plate comes with the condition that they cannot say no without tasting the food. They have to take one taste for every birthday they have celebrated so far.
As to introspection #6, all said and done, for a mother feeding the children IS a duty. It would be ideal if it is not a chore. Right now I am not doing anything to address it directly, but hoping the other things will indirectly contribute to this.
I am working on making my patience qualitative and consistent and on taking things on their face value. If they say no, it is just a no with no strings attached. It is nothing personal. I simply have to travel back in time and remind myself that I have had days when the food simply wouldn’t go through my throat and the mere thought of it made me gag. As to the appreciations from people from India, well, I know that my close relatives have confidence in my parenting skills. So, I must not bother about the ramdom comments from people who meet me in passing. Sometimes people say stuff just for the lack of things to make a conversation. In this ear, out that ear, makes the world a much better place at times.
If the food is on the plate for more than 45 min, it is dead. It is my cue for asking them to clean up. I try encouraging them to finish their plate, but if it is not done, its better to end it in the best of terms. I get “Hey, I called it quits” kind of silly closure.
Lastly the bribes. Of course there are bribes. Sometimes I read a book for them while they are eating. Sometimes I tell them stories. Sometimes I tell them that we are going to eat how I ate when I was a child and was no summer vacation and mix the food, make it in to balls and put it in their palms and add a story to go with it. This spiced up with plenty of “Oh! my goodness, you muscles look very strong. Did you finish all your veggies by any chance?”, “Oh! your eyes are so shiny, look at your skin it is glowing, did your hair just grow?”….and the likes of it.
BTW, should I categorize this as mommy development instead of child development???
[tags]children eating, preschooler eating, children love for food, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, picky eaters, children eating nutritious food, cultivating good eating habits, making eating a happy experience[/tags]
The Art Of Eating
Author: utbt5 Sep 2009
It is a classroom setting. There are about 8 children between age 14 months – 28 months, boys and girls and of different ethnic backgrounds.
On the table is a warm, ready to eat main course, cooked by one of the parents – a simple nutritious meal consistent with culture of the family that cooked the meal. The second course is a salad with two raw vegetables of different colors, some of which are picked from the school’s organic vegetable garden and prepared by the children earlier in the morning. Dessert is organic fresh fruits – two fruits of different colors picked by the parents from a local health food store. There are two pitchers one with water and one with milk.
In the cupboard next to the eating table are place mats, plates, bowls, spoons, forks and glasses for drinking. One teacher is standing next to the cupboard. The other teacher is standing next to the bathroom sink monitoring the hand washing routine.
After washing their hands the children come and pick up one of each item from the cupboard in order – placemat, plate, bowl, spoon/fork (as directed by the teacher depending on what they are eating) and lastly the glass. They carry these items one thing at a time, coming back to the cupboard for the next item and if there is already a child in front of them they wait patiently till the other child is done.
After set up, they sit at the table with their hands on their lap. Because they are taught to keep their hands on their laps when there is no food in their bowl. As soon as there are four children all set up and ready, the teacher fills their glasses with water and serves them one small portion of the main course telling them the name of the main course and from whose house the food is from.
The children eat the main course. They are served the main course till they express interest in their food. When the children are done they put their bowl to their right side and wait for the salad. Most of the time the whole table is done with the main course at the same time. There is also very little food wasted. The teacher then serves the vegetables naming each vegetable. Milk is served with the vegetables. The fruits are served in the same manner.
The teachers constantly ask questions like, “Would you like some more rice?” or “Would you like milk or water to drink?”. The children respond with a polite “Yes please” or “No thank you” and if they are done quickly they ask, “Can I have some more rice please?”.
If there are very young or new children, there is a teacher sitting directly behind them helping them scoop the rice, assisting the child to eat and settle in to the calmness. For good eaters, believe me, it is not even necessary! The children use the tools they are born with namely their fingers to scoop the food from their bowls in to their mouth.
After they are done eating, there is a whole clean up routine they are adept doing, but our main focus is how much these children love eating, so let us not go there.
This is the description of a typical lunchtime in the room I work. Any one who has witnessed the lunch routine would attest that not one word is exaggeration. The children are calm, they are secure that they will get what they want and not one extra morsel will be shoved down their throats. Even picky eaters whose parents worry that their child never eats vegetables starts eating raw vegetables within four weeks of being in the program. In fact he/she demands fresh peppers or raw carrots. It is such an awe inspiring experience to any one who witnesses the lunch routine in our room.
If you still don’t believe it, I wouldn’t blame you. Because the very first time I was in the room during the lunch routine, I refused to believe what I saw, inspite of being there and fully knowing that children that age are too egocentric to put on a show for the benefit of other people.
It was everything opposite to what I have experienced in regards to feeding my children. My experience with the children in my class only shattered my belief that it is easy to make the child an independent eater when you are serving them western food. When you are serving typical South Indian food like rice, sambar/rasam/kootu with a vegetable and curd rice to top it off, I always thought that the children needed assistance. But the kids in my room were able to handle any kind of food, no matter what they were served they were adept at eating it. The reason being the love for food.
When it comes to the feeding routine at home, I had my own theories, mostly based on the way I was bought up. Two of my personal values that influences lunch/dinner at home are making sure that my children get a well balanced meal and not wasting even one morsel of food. Couple of things I didn’t want to carry forth from the way I was bought up are running around behind the kids and feeding them (I didn’t mind feeding them, I just wanted them to sit at the table and eat) and dumping all the left-over food from my children’s plate in to my plate. If my value was not to waste food and if I was not going to eat the left-overs, guess where the food went? Yes, in to my children’s system. Because of my value #1 of providing them a well-balanced meal I did not feel guilty by shoving food in to them. This coupled with not knowing exactly how much food they need per meal and life getting busier and not having hours to finish a meal only made life worse for all of us.
I had known a change was in order for the past year, but the dinner on Aug 30th,2009 was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. I had made gongura+paruppu masiyal, rasam and paneer+red and green capsicum sautee to be served with white rice and yogurt. Chula was picking on the food like it was her punishment. She had swallowed one spoon in 45 minutes – this inspite of her having an active day with lots of fresh air and running around. So I took the plate from her, asked her to finish her grapes and go to bed. Of course I didn’t do it calmly and gracefully. I made quite a scene that she cried herself to sleep.
Thinking hard that night I found that I don’t have the energy to battle two children three times a day. I didn’t have the heart to let go either. To be truthful, I had let go out of frustration quite a few times before, but I always came back and started from where I left off. So I have to hold on without being overly passionate? Honestly I don’t know what to do, but I am hoping that this awareness brings about a significant change my attitude and reaches out to the children.
I know that it is not the food but the experience with food that matters. I also know that its is going to take time for all of us to establish trust in order to create a calm and peaceful dinner/lunch time. All I pray is for patience to get through this time. Hopefully announcing my resolve to everyone I know, I don’t know, barely acquainted and to googlebot, which seems to hit my blog more often than any living person, will keep me from going back on my promise to myself.
To healthy, happy meals and good memories.
PS: Even though I am not required to, I cook for the children in my class once a week, just a simple rice and kootu or vegetable kichdi, just to watch them enjoy the food I made. I can’t even put in to words how much satisfaction I get when all the food I cooked is gone and the little ones are still scraping their bowls asking for more. The next time I make a little extra, but it is still gone
[tags]children eating, preschooler eating, children love for food, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, picky eaters, children eating nutritious food, cultivating good eating habits, making eating a happy experience[/tags]
Death & The Circle Of Life
Author: utbt1 Sep 2009
“…and then he was dead.”
“The knife cuts your hand your blood will pour out and you will be deaded.”
“Shoot you.”
(mimicking karate chop with her hands)“chop, chop, chop you. Cut, cut, cut you.”
“What is dead?”
“Kill kill.”
Well these are some pearls of wisdom that are dispersed by Chula and Mieja now a days. My first reaction was shock. I had never talked about the concept of death to the kids. Even while I tell them Hindu mythological stories demons always receive time outs. My MIL has never completed a mythological story, she gazes at me uncomfortably when a god/goddess is at the verge of destroying an asura and stops the story abruptly. When the children ask questions about R’s father who passed away when R was 15, the answer is either, “He is with Ganesha” or “He is floating in the universe watching what we are doing.” My aunt tells them only stories like Avayaar or Karaikaal Ammayar because these stories have no violence. The school they go to has peace education as a part of its curriculum. The school has strict policy against characters of any sort in their lunch bag/shoes/clothing/personal item. Super hero play is highly frowned upon. In spite of shielding them from violence, the girls getting this kind of language blew me apart.
The thing is, how much ever you strip their environment of realities such as death and violence, they some how get an idea that cutting, chopping, killing, death exist. They hear it used by other kids who in turn have heard some other child/older sibling use it. They are so fascinated by this new concept. They aren’t sure if people at home are aware if things like these exist. They test the waters by letting one or two words slip and judge the reaction of the adults. If the adult freaks out, they make a mental note of the reaction and they decide to investigate it by themselves behind the adult’s back or they deliberately use it again and again till they fully understand it. Chula would go with option I and Mieja would most definitely choose option II.
I remembered reading about a Reggio Emilia teacher who introduced a gun curriculum – gun/rifle/shooting for preschoolers, because she noticed increasing gunplay in her classroom. She brought an old gun/rifle to classroom that the children touched and handled, pictures of the internal mechanisms of how a gun works etc. The teacher allowed the children to explore and learn about guns in a safe and supervised environment. After a month, pretend gunplay went down. After much deliberation I decided to try something new. When I heard words like shoot or kill or dead, I asked Chula/Mieja what they meant by that. As I guessed they didn’t know much.
“Dead is dead amma”,
“Kill? To be deaded?…..I don’t know….*giggles followed by more giggles*”,
“Cut? Your hand will get chopped and it will fall off and your eyes will also fall….may be we can throw all that in the garbage can.”,
“When your hands get cut a new hand will grow, just like your hair and nails. We can keep chopping them, its okay.”
So when I hear violent talk, I respond to it in a calm tone,
“Why do you want to kill me? I will go away and will never come back. Is that something you would like?”(Yes, they do want to kill me at times, looks like it is something they like. When I say I will never come back, it seems to open endless possibilities to them ) or
“Yes, when your sister’s hand gets cut, the blood vessels will get cut and there will be lots of blood. We have to go to the hospital immediately. Your sister will be in unbearable pain and appa and amma will be very sad. What do you think of it?” or
“That would hurt my body” or
“It hurts my feelings when you pretend that you are shooting me”
Few months back we found a dead mourning dove under our lemon tree. I took the girls and showed them the bird. I pointed out that the bird was no longer moving. I told them that it could never see its mommy/babies. The girls observed that the bird is not chirping, they also pointed out that its feathers were starting to disintegrate. Chula noticed that ants were eating the carcass and wondered if it would hurt the bird. We talked about the dead bird for a good amount of time. R took the bird and threw it in the garbage can while the girls watched. Over the next few days there were questions like,
“I see a bird in the tree there, is it the same bird we saw under our lemon tree?”,
“Can the dead bird come as a new born baby in the nest in front of our house? (There was a family of dove reproducing in a nest in our front porch)”,
“Where is the dead bird now?”,
“Okay the bird is dead. What happens then? Okay it is with Ganesha, what next? Okay, its spirit is floating in the universe, what comes next?”,
“When you are dead you go to Ganesha. So aren’t you doing a good thing by killing? You are sending people to Ganesha.”,
“How does a bird’s spirit look like? Will it look like the bird? Will my spirit look like me?”
so on and so forth.
But how much ever one tries, can death be full demystified to any one especially to preschoolers?
[tags]death, sorrow, loss, explain death to preschoolers, children talk about death, what do children understand about death[/tags]
Size Matters
Author: utbt26 Aug 2009
Just for the heck of it, I typed “size” in google search. People are concerned about the size of their class, keyboard, home, car, body part ( top most concern ai-yai-yai-yai-yai ), font, tire, database and the list goes on and on. But no mention about the ‘size’ I have on my mind.
When I was pregnant with Chula and Mieja, this is something I obsessed about every single day. My first two pregnancies came to an abrupt end in the first check up at nine weeks and at both times the doctor said, even before confirming a heart beat, ‘It is small. The sac is small and so is the fetus.’ So something in me started associating big baby = healthy baby.
At birth Chula was 6 pounds 11 ounces, 19.5 inches. A normal weight considering how petite R and I are. Owing to her serious spit up episodes and me believing Enfamil’s unrealistic suggestions, Chula was force fed and she was big. When Chula was six months, another desi mother whom I was seeing for the very first time at the park, blatantly asked me, “What do you feed her. She is huge”. This was her opening conversation, no niceties such as hi, hello, which apartment do you live! Oh….how I cursed that woman I seriously considered getting the dirt that she stepped on and do some old fashioned hocus-pocus to remove her evil eye on my child. At Chula’s 12 month well baby check up, the doctor said, “If she continues growing like she is right now, she will be 6 feet by the time she is 15,” he paused, looked at R and I and said, “but that may not happen. She most probably has your genes. She will slow down.” And she did at two years!
Mieja gave us a scare. At the first check up at 6 weeks, the doctor couldn’t see a sac, he thought it might be another ectopic. Two days later we saw a small sac, two days after that we saw a tiny fetus and four days later we saw a heart beat. During the 18th week ultrasound, I could sense the doctor wondering about Mieja’s size. When I pressed him, he said, “She is a good two weeks smaller than her 18 week size. Other than that she is perfect. Why don’t we schedule another ultra sound for 30 weeks and see how she has grown?” And at 30 weeks, she was still two weeks behind. I was busy running around with Chula who was only a year old, I had only put on 12 pounds in 30 weeks, can you believe that?! On top of this Mieja came 15 days early. I was thankful that she was 5 pounds 11 ounces and 18 inches at birth. Whew, that was a relief….I was sure that I would pop a lizard.
With all this history every well baby check up, I would anxiously look forward for the height and weight check up and consider the markings on their height/weight chart as an yard stick to my parenting skills. Even now, I obsess about size, but not in the manner I used to. I see size affecting caregivers in a different aspect.
At home, Chula being and looking like a normal 4.5-year-old looks much bigger than Mieja who is three years and four months, but can easily pass for two. When the sisters stand together there is a good 12 inches of height difference. That coupled with the last child always being a baby in the parent’s eyes, Mieja gets babied a LOT. The same thing continues in school too. Mieja started school when she was two years and four months. When she started, she was the youngest AND the smallest in her class. Currently there are other children a good eight months younger than Mieja, but she is still the bottom 5 percent of her class size-wise. The little devil knows her potential and takes full advantage of that. She would open her eyes wide, shake her arms up and down and say, “But….but, I don’t know how to do it. Can you do it for me?” and the unsuspecting victim would end up doing every thing for her.
Okay, I am digressing, my point is, yes there is one, children come in different sizes and shapes owing to their genetic pools. I have to constantly disregard their size, bring the age of a child in to focus before I ask the child to do anything. School can be tough on children who look a lot bigger than their size. Adults around them, including their parents can at times place age inappropriate expectations on the child. So the mantra now is, “Don’t believe what you see. How old is this child? Not yet two, though he/she looks like 3.5. So asking this child to wear this pair of shoes with this kind of loop straps…. forget it. Okay, that one is two though he/she looks 14 months. So may be its time this child can get dressed independently.” And so the obsession about size continues, only now that I am forcing myself not to rely only on what I see
[tags]caregivers of young children, age appropriate expectations, developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood[/tags]
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