Reflections of a mother under lockdown

I am mother to a 12 year old and an 8 year old. Both boys – both boisterous, both needing attention. They have been taking online classes from schools, I have been conducting online classes for my clients and my husband has been conducting online meetings. Our day begins with us getting ready at 9.30 am, pushing to 4 corners of the house, getting back together for lunch, then pushing to different corners again for work and then meeting in the evening – together for a couple of hours – real time as a family.

 And this is when conversations begin! All kinds of conversations – sometimes about the mundane – food, cleaning, hair styles and stuff; sometimes about the ‘here and now’ things – how many more days of the lockdown, how online classes are shaping up etc; and a lot of times about things that truly matter – life choices, roles of men and women, stereotypes, growing up without social interactions, the world order and how things would look in a year, how world economies will withstand this, how humanity stands resilient. And every night I realise that to my young child and my soon-to-be-teenager, I am no more just a parent, but also a friend, a guide and an educator. They are missing their school gossip with friends, their educational chats with teachers, their senseless banter with neighbours – and in some ways, I am filling in all those roles. Suddenly, there has been a role expansion and I wonder if I am ready for it.

 And guess what, it's going to stay this way for a long long time. And my kids are in such formative years in their lives, I know my interactions will leave a deep impact on them and thus, my role becomes crucial, very crucial.

 So, the last few days, I started digging deep to understand what it is that I must do as a parent and as an educator (I define the myriad roles that I play beyond a traditional parenting role as one of an educator – the meaning is not to be taken literally though!). I did the first thing that most of us do when we need to dig deep about something – I googled. And most results I got were just too prescriptive and preachy. Everything was amiss. I tried reading parenting journals and books and found them to be a little shocking. I cannot put my kids into a 2 by 2 matrix, neither can I flex parenting style with careful analysis and mapping – its unnatural and insensitive!

 I struggled for a few days, caught up in this whirlwind of analysis paralysis, till I gave up. And that’s when it emerged – beautiful and serene – profoundly simple like great things always are. I was always a parent and an educator – I just have found time to be more reflective about it, more mindful about it. There has been no role expansion, it’s a role awareness. And now that there is an awareness, there is a struggle in me to assess myself and to grow as a parent. And a struggle for growth always creates a series of expectations. And expectations really are the beginning of a a vicious cycle called ‘the unhappiness trap’.

 And thus, this really is the time to first accept myself as the parent that I am, and just be who I am with my kids. Because just being who I am with all my imperfections allows them to be who they are too – authentic, unsure and insecure. But at the same time, confident, aware and happy.

So our conversations now have more passion and less precision, more laughter and less prescription, more fear and less grit – and it feels bloody good!