Do you think Sleeping Patterns Reflect Marriage Status even after KIDS?

If you think this is another one of those Marriage Assessment articles that predict how your Marriage will be based on a couples Sleeping Pattern, you are wrong. Well, remember I have KIDS. It is a lifelong condition after which all predictions fail. Yes, its true.

Talk about a pattern, we have none. Where we sleep? Where we get up? Who we sleep with (I mean which kid of the 2)? Which pillow/ comforter we will get, if we get one?  Which toy car or teddy we will find under us? There is absolutely no routine, our life is so happening. Even in the middle of the night.

Our sleeping room feels like a scene from Paranormal Activity, here’s why –

Day 1, Kothari Residence, Master Bedroom. – 12:00 midnight

Dad and Mom sleeping peacefully bed with the younger one sleeping in the middle. Elder one is sleeping on the mattress close by. Suddenly someone is pulling my comforter, its all dark, no faces. And then there is a hush voice in my ears. “Momma my pajamas are all wet”.

Day 2. All well. Guess tired from previous night.

Day 3, Kids Room, 3 am

Hear the noise of some toy playing downstairs in the kids room. Too scared to go down and check myself, wake up the Dad. I have to keep the kids safe, so decide to stay with them. Dad takes out his revolver, I mean the cellphone. Slowly gets down the stairs and the toy is still playing. So he puts it off and even takes out the batteries.

Day 4, 1 am

Dad sleeping down on the additional mattress. Mom with 2 kids on the bed. Thud, a big sound. No points for guessing this one correctly. One down. I pretend to be still sleeping, I only do that when I am very tired.

Day 5, 2 am

Knock on the door. I pretend to be sleeping and now my husband is getting smarter, so he is pretending to be asleep too. Second knock, and calls out “Momma”, no choice left, getup and open the door. Daughter who was sleeping with grandpa wants Momma now. These monsters will make for their sleep in the next afternoon nap while we would be struggling the whole of the next day?

Day 6,1 am

There is a low mumbling sound, coming from far distance. I must be dreaming. So try to go back to sleep. The voice is now a little louder; my 5 yr old was sleep talking. Sometimes I think it is their evil plan to make sure they trouble us as much during the night as we had troubled them during the day. Both of us (not the kid, not means Dad and Mom) are wide awake and trying to make sense out of what she is trying to say. Next day while I was trying to tell my friends why I couldn’t sleep, again. Some enthusiastic Mom, no offence, overheard the conversation. And came and said, she must be upset over something or must have had a bad day at school. A new angle to the story, enough to lose sleep over.

Another night, 4 pm

Younger one gets up, sits upright and says “I want water” and starts crying. While I am trying to calm him down (no I wasn’t sleeping), Dad gets some water in a bottle. Now he starts crying even harder. “I want it in my glass”. Dad goes back down and gets it in another glass. Dad has no clue which exactly is his glass. So now he is crying uncontrollably and would not open his eyes to see anything. It been half an hour and we have no clue what to do. So we switch on the TV and bring all the glasses. Another half an hour he is now happily watching TV and I am making tea for the two of us. These kids may seem little, but they surely know how to get what they want.

Then there are nights when the kid is not well or vomit everything out in the middle of the night because they gobbled everything down or didn’t drink water or ate too much.

I think you now have a fairly good idea of our life after we go to bed. We might go to bed, but that doesn’t mean we are asleep. So when THEY say they can tell about your relationship from how you sleep means “How you plan to sleep”. Because now we have these god sent angels (as some people refer to their kids on Facebook) in our lives holding the strings like we were their little puppets.

Wish me Sleep!!

Are we raising Safe kids or Scared Kids?

After the recent incident at an upmarket Bangalore school where a 6 year old kid was physically assaulted, it has in some way or other impacted every household esp with a kid. Both the parents and the kids have been once again become oversensitive about the bone chilling and in human incident.

What do you first do when you read something like this in the newspapers? what is your first reaction when you have a kid at home the same age? How do you protect your kid at a place where they think there are no strangers, everyone is either a friend or a teacher? When we tell our kids its your school are we wrong, is it only the management’s school and not the parents or the kids school? What kind of person would do such a heinous thing to an innocent child, what kind of upbringing these monsters have, do they have a family or a mother? What happens to the girl during the criminal procedure and how to parents of the victim cope up? Do the parents of other kids at the same school ever be able to trust the management again or should the school be just plain and simple shut down? There are so many questions, that haunt you over the days and months to come.

Whenever something like this happens you tend to become over protective about your child and try to strictly reinforce all the rules and reiterate the ways for you child to tell right from wrong. I made sure that I find the latest videos for teaching “Good Touch Bad Touch” and make my kid see it every once in a while. I try to find out what are the classes that my kid can go and attend to safeguard herself. I try to keep my eyes open wherever my kid is going and practically stalk her everywhere. Everyday the first question I ask her when she is back from school is “What did you do in school today”. This question initially was meant to know what she learnt in school but now my prime concern is was she safe? I hope she didn’t have any bad experience in school. My God, I am so scared.

If our adult mind can be so scared what does a child go through if we keep iterating that there are bad people out there and you have to be careful. You should not talk to any strangers, they may harm you. If you are not feeling safe or someone tries to touch you in a wrong way you have to Run and Shout. What would be the impact of this is on a tender mind? Now my kid is so scared she would not go alone to the park or would not go to a next door friend’s house alone. Is this the society we want, the society of Scared ot the society of Bold and Confident.

I know I have to tell her Safety Measures once in a while, but I am so scared that I tell her everyday. No matter how I tell her or how strong I make her. She is only a small child. While we should be making effort to make our society safe and the school laws and background checking more strict, we are making our kids more Scared. Is this what we want from our Schools?

Not so Nice Lice Story

The following has been based on a True story. Some details have been changed to protect the innocent –

One upon a time there lived a King and Queen with their beautiful Princess. They were living a very happy life, but the fate had something else in mind for them. One day when the Princess was playing with her friends, a wicked Lice jumped from nowhere and landed on the Princess hair. The Princess came to the palace to complain of her discomfort to the Queen, she was a little itchy and scratchy.

The Queen could not believe her eyes, her world collapsed, she could not breathe, what she had seen was completely out of lines for a Royal Princess. The Queen was very angry, she cursed the day she had sent the Princess to play with her unhygienic friends (so she thought). The Queen didn’t know what to do, so the Queen escalated the matter to the King. The King had a good laugh about it and the best he could come up with was “It happens”.

Is it True, Does it really happen? Now the Queen was one of “them”, one of those parents who didn’t care and neglected personal hygiene. And to make the matter worse, the King said “It happens”.

So the Queen called the witch to help her out. The witch suggested, for the peace and happiness of land and its innocent subjects, the Princess should cut her hair or else would be sent to a far away Land.

The Princess had long, beautiful hair and did not want to cut them. The Princess cried and cried and couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. But the Queen was very unhappy and embarrassed. The King held the Queen’s hands, trying to calm her down. He tried to talk the Queen out of sending away the Princess, he wanted to help in every possible way. But he didn’t know how.

So the Kings men drove the Princess to a faraway Tower with the witch. The Princess was sad and helpless. One day a Prince drove to that faraway land and saw the sad Princess standing near the window. The Prince wanted to make an acquaintance with her and asked her to drop her hair, so that he could climb up. Princess was very happy, she dropped her hair down, as soon as the Prince was about to touch her hair, the Lice winked at him. The Prince shocked, shouted out LICE!! LICE!! Help!! He laid there unconscious.

That day the Princess understood that she had to cut her hair and let the witch do her work. The War was on. It took one whole month for the witch to clear up those tiny ugly blood sucking vampires out of the Princess head.

Now her hair were short, tidy and very neatly combed back with a Tiara adding to its beauty. She was a Princess again and returned to the Palace to reunite with her Parents. After it was all over, even a very long time after that, they could have a good laugh about it. But they had to keep their fingers crossed at all the time, as there could be "Revenge of the Lice", or "The Lice Returns", "Lice Reloaded". 

The Princess

You told me to Hit Back

Initially when my daughter used to come home crying saying some kids in school had hit her or pushed her, it used to break my heart. So every time she cried I told her, “Be brave and stand up for yourself. If you keep crying, other kids will have more fun and they will want to hit and tease you more.” I think I might have told her to hit back, ok yeah I teach my kids Violence. But I am only trying to teach her how to fend for herself.

That worked and she didn't come home crying and complaining from school, atleast most of the times. But (of course there is a but, there is no Happily Everafter), she also has a little brother. She is now applying her success mantra at home too.

“Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet”, this quote has a new meaning for us now. In our home it means they are inseparable and are always at a distance where they can hit each other. I constantly feel that I live in a boxing ring and am the Referee of an endless match, only difference being that I don’t signal the start of a fight and count when one of them is down.

My Life THEN

Big Sis – Mom lil bro pushed me and took my toy away.

Mom – Don’t keep complaining. Lil bro give her toy back, there are so many toys, can you play with something else.

Lil Bro – Keeps throwing the toy till it breaks.

No one gets it, since it broke. Lil bro gets a good one since he broke the toy. Big sis very happy because she managed to score one.

My Life NOW

Lil Bro – Cries like he is testing his lungs (or my sanity)

Mom – What happened there Big Sis, why is the lil bro crying?

Big Sis – He took my toy away and pushed me. So I pushed him harder.

Mom  - Why didn't you come and tell me. Why did you have to push your own little brother. Look how badly he is crying, did you hit him too? Lil bro quiet now and has a finger pointing towards her sister.

Big Sis – You told me to hit when someone hits you. He hit me once and gave him back two. She had the sparkle in her eyes like a victorious warrior waiting for the chief to acknowledge and praise her.

Now what do I do. I am still evolving and learning as a mother. There should atleast be a certification test (if not a course) before you can apply for motherhood. You should know all the answers and should have done all the case studies beforehand. Nobody prepares you for such a 24/7 – overwhelming – always cleaning but ever dirty – diaper changing – feeding and cooking – night waking – keeping calm on the exterior phase (I could go on with this). Nobody tells you the real TRUTH.

Feel much better venting it out. So where were we, yeah, what do I do now? I think I need to teach her the difference between a healthy squabbling and bullying. This would be a good lesson for her social skills aka Emotional Quotient. I’ll tell you how it goes in another post. Wish me Luck!!