“Parents are teachers, guides, leaders, protectors and providers for their children”

Parenting is in my opinion the most beautiful phenomenon that can happen to someone. I never had any lifetime plans of I’ll get married by this age, kids by that age etc..so after my first year of marriage I was immensely surprised to be given this bundle of infinite beauty that was my daughter. I gave her my all, from sleepless nights to hurried meals to vanishing career aspirations, she was my world and I was hers. Submerged in moments of peaceful beauty, a chubby cheek waiting to be kissed, dimpled knees and whispery eyelashes, I could have stayed in those early moments of motherhood forever. Transfixed in time, I had found true happiness and everything else was not significant.

But kicking and screaming I was brought down to reality. I was a parent and this child of mine needed to be guided and helped through life. Some internal mechanism in myself sprung into action, an invisible code appeared on the surface of my parental DNA, so to speak, it was coded that as the mother I had to do right by my child. I had to teach her about life and how to live in it. As she got older I had to teach her about respecting other’s despite her opinions, manners, the importance of school, the need for aspirations, the requirements to better oneself always. Society accepted the fact that I had produced a child, and therefore society required that I bring my child up to meet societal expectations. As my need to do right by my child grew over the years and with the introduction of more children, my parenting lost its wonderment and became all rules and regulations. A typical day in our household, is that children are up a certain time, breakfast, get ready for school, then after school, lunch, homework, activities, dinner and an early bedtime so I can once again march the kids on to do the very same thing the next day. How did parenting become a regulated day in the army, I dish out orders and my children ruefully follow them with blank stares. In a normal parenting day, which is everyday, my mind is never at rest, the day is planned rigorously with every free moment finding me thinking what is next on the schedule.

In the middle of this chaos, especially this week, with kids in the middle of exam drama, it struck me that these days spent bringing up my children are cherished golden moments. They are moments in time I will never get back. I would never have them all rolling around at home up to some mischief at every turn. Sooner than I can imagine they will be grown men and women and there will be little I can do to hold them back as their need to explore the world grows and they are lost to me forever. Therefore in these formative years is this how I really want my children to remember me. Drilling out orders, demanding explanations and enforcing ultimatums. I, who carried them the first nine months of their lives and who accepted them with an all encompassing love from the second they took their first breath. But in my children’s eyes all they see is the person who they call their mother, constantly annoyed, constantly exasperated and constantly at battle with them.

Therefore the relevance of my musings on parenting today is to once again reinforce what we as parents knew all along, that is we are losing out on the true meaning on parenting. Even though we fight it, we do get carried away in the rat race of living. But we might think we are doing all the things right, yes the kids are fed, healthy and doing well, but do you think they can be happier?. Parenting doesn’t essentially mean that the children have eaten all their vegetables, got “A’s” or a specimen in courteous decorum. Maybe if we eased off on all the things they had to do, took a day off and JUST enjoyed each other, lived in that moment and danced in the rain, they would at the end of the day finally see the beauty of our love for them. These moments of happiness are like bouts of rain on the desert of everyday parenting. Your children and yourself will soak them up and bask in their happiness. Leave your worries aside, reschedule meetings, forget tennis practice, close those laptops, forget time and commitments and just surrender to your children. It will be the best decision you ever made.

By Mayuri Jayasinghe