With experience you realize that the best gifts you can give your children are values of kindness, compassion and confidence. I feel happy that my kids never bullied any other children, they have stood up for their friends who didn’t have the courage to sand up for themselves. It makes me happy when my kids offer their seats to an elderly, help in carrying bags of others, and I am equally happy when they have the confidence for standing up for themselves when they are wronged. It didn’t happen overnight. It took years, it took efforts and implementing the values as parents. It’s imperative to raise kind children, as we can see lot of unkind grown-ups around!

Why am I not surprised by the disgusting incident in Bhuj college where girls where asked to remove their underwear to show that they are not menstruating? I have seen the discrimination and how many so-called educated women get offended whenever I have tried to reason menstruation with biology. I have personally gone to temples, touched pickles, do housework, touch everyone around me and no one is harmed! Religion is taken more seriously than the dignity of women in our country. What makes one think that menstruation renders girls/women impure, even in 2020!! It’s a simple biological process. Gone are the times long, long back when these rules were made to give women rest. Rules have been bent, women humiliated, and this was just unbelievably cruel and disgusting.

But I know nothing’s going to change if women themselves don’t respect their own clan and stop being scared of God, rather respect God and girls/women both.

The other day my daughter and her friends were playing football in the vicinity.  My daughter said a gentleman stopped by and taught them some moves and gave tips about playing football.  My daughter said, “It seems uncle used to play football at some point.”

Doesn’t it so happen that the talent or passion we had as a child or as a teenager takes a backseat when we are forced to face the worldly realities?  Someone was a talented singer, someone a gifted painter, someone an avid athlete/sportsperson, but career and later family responsibilities buried these talents somewhere deep within.

Few are fortunate enough to pursue their profession and passion both, but in most cases the talent or passion takes a backseat.  Some days that hidden desire tries to come out and just as the gentleman showed the football moves we all show that spark again.

We all have the inner child within us who once was passionate about the talent and worked hard towards it, but as an adult most of us buried that passion deep within.  I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen with our children.  I hope they are able to balance their profession and passion well and who knows some might be fortunate enough to pursue their passion as profession!

Never let your inner child be dormant..

It seems that the decade just went by, but is it so?  A decade means 10 years and 10 years is a long span.  When I look back, I realize that I have indeed changed, not a lot, but quite a bit.

In 2010, there I was handling 2 small kids, trying to balance it with my work from home profile.  I believe I took parenting a bit too seriously back then, as it was in the back of my mind that I was responsible for shaping my children as individuals.  I was too worked up with everything.

Last decade I had started writing again.  I remember I used to write as a kid but with time and responsibilities writing had taken a backseat.  Writing simply started with me sharing my parenting stories and experiences in various platforms.  Soon, I began to blog about it more seriously.  Yes..I could have been more aggressive and marketed myself better but for me blogging is more of sharing my experiences than gaining any kind of stardom or winning awards.

Also, the last decade taught me how people can be fake and selfish.  There are many women/writers who claimed to be my friends or wanted my help and once they were done with it they wouldn’t even bother to acknowledge or keep in touch.  I have now become more wary of term “friendship” and “sisterhood” as I have seen these terms being used very loosely.

Present day, I am a 40 plus woman who is much calmer, much wiser, a little less accepting.  I have stopped trying to fit in.  I am happier with my family, my genuine friends and appreciators.  My son is now on the verge of adulthood and my daughter on the verge of being a teenager.  I have raised them well and that gives me immense satisfaction.  The last 10 years took a lot of hard work in raising them, shaping them and I today I can relax now that they are good individuals.

We learn with experience, with time, and sometimes we women are too hard on ourselves.  The decade that went by taught me to be more accepting of myself and forgive myself for the mistakes that I did, unknowingly.

So, I tell myself and every other woman out there. “Forgive yourself for what you didn’t know”.

“This post is a part of ‘DECADE Blog Hop’ #DecadeHop organized by #RRxMM Rashi Roy and Manas Mukul. The Event is sponsored by Glo and co-sponsored by Beyond The Box, Wedding Clap, The Colaba Store and Sanity Daily in association with authors Piyusha Vir and Richa S Mukherjee”

Read somewhere “It is more difficult to raise teens than toddlers.”

Well..kind of agree and disagree to it. Both stages have their own set of challenges. By the time our kids are teens or tweens, we tend to forget the challenges that we faced with them when they were toddlers. The major difference is that by the time the kids are pre-teens and teens they are able to voice their opinions more, they are their own individuals by then who can clearly convey their likes and dislikes and have developed a personality. There is a generational clash at times too. The best way to handle this stage, like any other stage, is communication and tweaking the parenting style. What worked with them as toddlers won’t work with them when they are teenagers. As a parent, step back and look back at your own mistakes and rectify them. Nurture this phase with care too as it is as delicate as the toddler stage where the mind of the child is still developing albeit a little differently. I learnt from my mistakes, so do all parents. There is no rule book as each child is different, even siblings are different.