Skip to main content

Insanely trying to raise a kid

While we drive to and from our designated destinations my five year old girl likes to listen to songs. She particularly likes the rap songs. Now I don’t mind her listening to songs I believe children should listen to music all the time. But come to think of it rap songs are hard to digest. While we wait patiently to cross the traffic light the lyrics burst out ‘I want to spank that big fat ass’. One fine day my daughter hummed ‘spank that ass, spank that ass’ and that was a standalone speech, she didn’t say anything further. I wasn’t appalled. I just didn’t know how to react because she has blurted out many other words that I cannot mention here.  

Now, I am not proud of what my daughter blurted out – I am trying. I couldn’t say anything in defense. I waited and I explained to her those words aren’t something she should repeat, not everything we hear has to be repeated. I have also tried erasing or skipping all the rap songs that almost always have profane lyrics. Poor kid she is confused. She is baffled. She now knows that songs aren’t always nice and they are bad too. For the past three months I have set a new rule in the house. The rule is she watch TV only on Saturdays. She asked me this morning if it had to be only Saturday. I reassured her while we were both brushing our teeth; yes it had to be only Saturday. She asked the reason and I didn’t have any better answer but as smart as I am I thought about our load shedding schedule and assured her because we get lights on Saturday.

You can see I am smart. You can also see that I am trying – trying to raise a good kid, who watches TV once a week and who has to read a couple of books in a day but is exposed to profane lyrics a minimum of 6 hours a week. I am not good at calculations but I reason will 6 hours a week of good music with profane lyrics hamper my child’s behavior. Absolutely not. So this morning while I dropped her to school we listened to Sugar by Maroon 5 on repeat. This is now her favorite song but without the profane lyrics – see I am making progress here.

We have all heard of the famous proverb, ‘no parenting is bad, each to its own and mothers know best.’ I don’t know if I know what’s best but what I know is that I hate when teachers lecture parents about good parenting. Earlier this week I attended a teacher parent meeting while my daughter was sitting the entrance test. The parents were asked to introduce themselves and were asked to say one thing their child pleased them. All parents said they were pleased with their children no matter what they did and I couldn’t agree less – they are cute, they ask innocent questions and they try our patience which we never knew existed within us. At the end the teacher read a note from her file stating ‘parents should raise their children in an acceptable environment’. She was kind to elaborate and stated, “We like everything about our children now but we may not like the same things they do when they are adults so their behaviors have to be acceptable. If we don’t correct them now then they will get confused when you correct them later.” Agreed.

What I don’t agree is that teachers’ responsibility isn’t about lecturing parents on how we should raise our children. I would have liked to personally send a note to the teachers and tell them a parent teacher meeting shouldn’t be about parents feeling they are not doing something right – it should all be about how the school can foster a child and what role parents can play strategically. If I had the skills and the patience I would home school my child but what I don’t need now is some teacher telling me how to raise my child.


On the contrary I hadn’t prepared my daughter for an entrance test. I didn’t want her to feel the pressure – I wanted her to be herself. I told her to rock the test just like how we rock to the rap songs. Oops!   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two sides of a holy matrimony

Men are polygamous by nature – a fact reinstated by my Biology teacher in grade seven has made such an impact in my life; I am usually biased when matrimony ends in divorce. While I was still in school, I remember every other girl in my class had come from a family that still followed the norms of society – both parents in a blissful union. That was back in the eighty’s. Today our society has taken to the western civilization where divorces though still frowned upon happen more in real life than in a western soap.  The saying ‘give women a skill and the whole family is secured’ a development term so true can also be the reason for the westernization of the Nepali matrimony. Give women education and a holy marriage no longer seems holier. Back then, I wondered why so many men and women divorced in the western countries and took pride in the way our families functioned. Had I known the reasons behind a divorce I would have never blamed any culture or influence.  Men...
1 comment
Read more

It's OK

Here is what I learned inside the classroom between grades 1-10 – reading and writing. Grades 11-12 are simply a blur. Here is what I learned outside my classrooms – effective communication, team building, sharing, making friends and being there for them when they needed us the most, watching each other’s back and learning to fend for one another. What kind of learning do we expect to happen for our own kids? Quiet frankly, until the pandemic led to the school closure, I worried if my daughter was learning enough. I know that sounds quite foolhardy. But then, I would hear my friends and colleagues talk about how smart their kids are and how far they have come in math and science and the many kinds of extra curricular activities their kids attend. I could not help but compare.   As a school administrator, I would scroll every school profile in social media and the list of extra activities never ending.   The collaborations with different organizations offering learning opti...
Post a Comment
Read more

No country for us

I can be anything. No. No one ever said this to me. I understood. I was a girl. I couldn’t be anything I wanted to be. I knew that because I have been vehemently practical. I knew my limitations yet let my expectations run wild. I grew up with many siblings. My brothers drove cars when they reached grade 8 and when I turned 14, I demanded that my father taught me how to drive too. My father happily obliged. I was obviously excited to be behind the wheels, when I steered and hit the gas I knew there wouldn’t be any boundaries for me. Little did I know being practical and driving a car didn’t mean life’s road will be rosier.  Past the next generation. I have a baby girl. She is going to embark on a new journey come August and I couldn’t be more excited. She is graduating to grade 1. More so often we converse like any mother and daughter duo would. I am usually either yelling at her or showering her with love. I tell her constantly she can be anything she wants to be. I re...
1 comment
Read more