Part 1 of 3 here.

(Part 2 of 3 follows)One fine day, at school, the teachers talked to the children about Afghanistan. They talked about the devastation, lack of schools, necessity to educate the children and things like that. They also showed a short movie clip and images being powerful than words, the movie really drove the point home. At home I heard stories about how the children do not have classrooms, they do not have food, some times they don’t have mommies or daddies, and how some mommies and daddies are building schools and how we can help Afghanistan by giving them our pennies. The seed was sown.

On a Saturday morning we went on a coin hunt and dug out all the coins stashed away at the most unsuspecting places. Chula and Mieja have loosely heard the term money, but do not know much about it. So I had a sudden spark to teach them the various money denominations. So we made different piles, one with pennies, one with nickels, one with dimes and one with quarters. Chula was able to pick up a coin, read the denomination and put it in the appropriate pile. For Mieja, I first showed her how to compare the coin in her hands with a coin in a pile and when she placed it in the right pile I said, ‘That is a penny’ or whatever was appropriate.

I noticed that Chula made two piles of every denomination – two piles of pennies, two piles of nickels, two piles of dimes. When I asked her what the two piles are for, she said that one was old and the other was shiny and she proceeded to tell me that she was going to throw the old pile in the garbage because…well they were old. So I had to explain to her that we could still use the old coins because it has VALUE. She was puzzled. As luck would have it, we had a bake sale by our junior high students in our school. They lay out their goodies at 2.30PM sharp and target the kids skipping out with a parent and ‘stressed-out-I-need-sugar-N.O.W’ teachers. I strongly suspect that they make more by selling to the latter category! Okays, at the bake sale we bought two pieces of banana bread for fifty cents each. I gave Chula five old pennies, a shiny nickel and four shiny dimes. She handed it over and got a slice of banana bread. I asked her if they accepted her old pennies or asked her for new money. Even if she only kind of got that concept of value, I was sure she wasn’t going to throw money in to garbage *whew!*

One of the days that followed, we were a late for school and I was getting in to my irritable self and I snapped at the kids and Mieja reminded me in her usual loving and kind manner, “I am not your friend. I am not listening. I will scratch you and run away with appa and akka and go and live in a different house.” So I launched a lecture on how it is my job to be in my classroom at a precise time, we are all working for money, without which we will not be able to buy anything, even for this other house she was going to live in her appa has to work for and he needs to be ON TIME for that work. Okay not the best way to teach that money does not grow on trees. But soon, I will find a sensible way to make them understand this concept.

Now, HOPE accepts donations in our neighborhood on a regular basis. I give away things like the children’s books, toys, puzzles, clothes etc. I have been doing this for the past three years. All of a sudden, Chula made a connection and asked me if all this stuff is going for Afghanistan. I clarified that people in need are all over the world, not just in Afghanistan and we help in some degree that we can. This she hasn’t completely understood because she has seen images of Afghanistan and none like that in the US. So she continues to believe that the donations we are making for the holiday toy drive our school is doing and the canned food we buy for second harvest are going to Afghanistan. Every day she wonders loudly, “May be teacher X will go to Afghanistan to give the children without mommies and daddies the toys/soup.”

Pretty soon, there will be questions about poverty most importantly, ‘what is poverty?’, ‘why are some people poor?’ etc. I do not have an answer for them right now, but I am sure, I will come up with one at the time of need.

Correlating my thinking process and how the children responded I could come up with a web, that roughly looked like this.

Disclaimer: This was mentally mapped in 6 minutes and by no means a comprehensive list. It varies much with the personality of the adult and the personality of the children.

But the point is one simple seed like Pennies for Peace has lead to something called a ‘curriculum web’.

Links

Pennies For Peace

Part 3 of 3 on teaching styles, learning, broad learning Vs deep learning, how children for associations.

Technorati Tags: Pennies for peace, Afghanistan, Curriculum web, teaching children the value of money, preschool curriculum for money

(This is part 1 of 3)

Mieja neatly polished off the entire plate of ribbon pakoda, masala peanuts, maida biscuits I made for Diwali, in record time. This is a child who will stare at food on plate for days together and claim that she didn’t eat it because the food was not her friend. So I was naturally surprised and as a reflex I checked under the table. Finding no eatable of any kind stashed under the table, I asked her, with my eyebrows raised, “Oh, wow, you finished everything!” I had already offended the said child by looking under the table. So she replies to me in a very condescending tone, “Yes amma. We don’t waste food. Do you know people in Afghanistan are starving? They don’t have any kind of food to eat.”

Why Afghanistan? Will do a post on that later.(Part 2 of 3)

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, pennies for peace, people starving, wasting food, preschooler eating snack

I am the proud owner of an iPhone. The process of acquiring the device itself will fill a post, but this post is not about that. It is about how the iPhone is doing what exactly I wanted it for.

It has crashed five times in the small two month time window I have owned it. In fact this is the second iPhone in two months. I had to return the first one and get a replacement because the first one simply died and didn’t want to wake up. As fate would have it, I had it in my pocket and was lying on the floor with partial weight on the phone for a good five minutes. I thought that I had crushed the phone to death and had nightmares of Apple voiding the warranty. But the Apple genius(?!) assured me that it was not me but the phone. But, crashing and giving me heart attacks, that is not I wanted the iPhone for.

Of course I must mention that as a cell phone, the voice quality sucks. I always think that the person calling me is underwater or travelling through an unending tunnel. It has dropped calls or sometimes it would directly go to voicemail and the voice mail notification would come a good three hours later. The tops was the time I was standing in our school lobby talking to our receptionist holding the phone in my hand. My colleague calls me from our playground, she was a good 10 feet away but we were within each others eyesight, to ask me to get something from the classroom before I joined her in the playground and I did not get that call. So she had to yell loudly, ‘Hey, you with the phone that does not work. Get X from the class.’ That sure did the trick. (That said, my colleague also owns an iPhone and she swears that she prioritises her pay check as rent, iPhone, kids, food.) But, to loose calls and be out of reach while owning a sophisticated 3G piece of technology, that is not I wanted the iPhone for.

I do my homework on the phone while my class kids are napping, I save my drafts and email it to myself and make the corrections while at home. I take pictures of my Chula and Mieja (also small video clips) and send them immediately to extended family, which is greatly appreciated. During extremely dry class lectures, I whip the phone out and secretly browse the Internet, thaks to open wireless connectivity in educational institutions. I also do the physically-present-but-mentally-disappearing routine while some one is boring me to death. I get the phone out to check something and when people have shifted focus, I slowly walk a couple of feet away. Voila escape from the harrowing situation! Me being an direction challenged person, the step by step driving directions and telling me exactly where I am is extremely convenient. Definitely pluses and yes some anti social behaviors, but yet these are not what I wanted the iPhone for.

I am checking email and my blog stats all the time. I go in a non stop loop-> yahoo -> nothing -> gmail ->nothing -> blog stats, who is on -> nobody -> yahoo and so on. But the problem is I neither get that many emails nor blog hits a day. So it is kind of a bummer. But giving me the realization that I am not that popular, that is not what I wanted the iPhone for.

I teach Tamil in a language school on Sunday mornings. It is Aug – June school, once a week on Sundays for 90 minutes. It starts at preschool level and goes all the way up to high school level. It is a well run outfit and has ties with the school district and the high school students get foreign language credits for the Tamil classes they take with this organization. I teach first grade and my class has six children between the ages 9 – 12. The first class the only word I heard was B.O.R.I.N.G. It was boring to read, it was boring to write, it was boring to make conversation, it was boring to open the book. Mere existence was sooooo B.O.R.I.N.G for these kids. Of course come class three, all but one were totally in to it, they were eagerly participating doing home work and playing along. Yes all but one 🙂 I repeatedly got the answer from the said child that the parents did not get my email updates and hence the child was unable to perform the quota of homework. Initially I would note down the mom’s email ID again and come back home to check for typos and by the time the next Sunday comes it was still, “But my mom did NOT get it”. After the iPhone, I heard the story about the mother not receiving email, I asked child to write down email ID on a paper, I whip my iPhone out and check the email and ask child to explain what ever is going on. The said child’s jaw dropped, not because of being caught red handed but because of the iPhone 🙂 Ahhh my coolness coefficient, it just sky rocketed in seconds! That is exactly what I wanted an iPhone for and it is working :)))

PS:
Said child still does not do home work. “I lost my hand writing note book” is the recent excuse.

The Apple genius swears that the new software on my iPhone WILL take care of the call dropping and battery problems. At the end of the s/w upgrade, I lost my data yet again. But I am skeptical about the improvements I was promised.

I live in constant fear of dropping the phone or spilling water on it.

I wear clothes without pockets to force myself to leave my iPhone in my purse in order to cure myself of the iPhone addiction.

My right index finger is slowly becoming a hook, thanks to typing papers on the iPhone.

I have promised myself that I will not touch that iPhone other than to check directions while I am driving.

But COOL, that I am baby!

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone problems, Tamil class, dealing with pre-teens

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*

Technorati Tags: halloween, kids say the darnest, star wars, Princess Leia

Featuring in our library are my picks for CROCUS2009 @ Saffron Tree.

Mamma Do You Love Me?

Muskrat Will Be Swimming

The Journey Of Tunuri And The Blue Deer

Whoever You Are

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.

Technorati Tags: books shelf, how to arrange books to keep kids interested

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.’

Technorati Tags: kindness, thankful

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 🙂

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.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Technorati Tags: navarathiri, golu, nine days

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.

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???

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