If you have a child way past preschool which means you are very much into the hustle and bustle of motherhood, you’d like to think you have at least mastered some of the elements that make up the art of good parenting. Let’s face it: we live in a world where mothers are no longer just that and are probably juggling multiple roles as a seasoned professional, caretaker to elderly parents, super-efficient homemaker and a highly supportive wife to an equally multitasking husband. This means we are 24/7 at the mercy of a practical formula where work has to be distributed, delegated and disciplined. Pardon the alliteration but we do not live in an ideal world and Murphy’s law almost always swings positive in a mother’s case. So if your child is so much as sniffling, chances are she will come up with a fever the next day and you will bunk work because she is at home. If you have that important meeting the next morning, of course your husband will not be able to drop the children to school that very day and just when you want to give some time to your child’s study before dinner, your food processor will choose to call it a day.
If our lives weren’t so challenging by themselves, we have a cluster of people surrounding us who obviously always mean well but have a bundle of expectations to saddle on to our already bending backs. Here are my most popular gems:
So have you enrolled your child in gymnastics, aerobics, contemporary/classical dance, foreign language classes, swimming, singing, football, cricket, no? And God forbid if you do in all of them, you are a compulsive pushy parent who is crushing her child under the weight of all that ambition, some of them means you are never doing enough and if you don’t do any, you might as well disqualify yourself as an able parent.
Once you have done the good deed of signing up your child in a respectable size of extracurricular activities, who is going to drive her around? Of course, you darling. So if you don’t know your accelerator from your gear, which century were you born in mate?
Birthdays, how can we forget this one. So if you haven’t planned a theme party to go with the celebrations, what were you thinking and does that mean you can’t afford one or you just don’t care enough to know what your child’s favourite animation character is? Duh, loser.
And while we are on birthdays, are you one of those negligent and couldn’t-care-less lazy mommies who buy cake from a bakery for their child’s birthday? So basically your daughter’s cake isn’t homemade? Whaaaat? No baking skills? Awww, that poor, poor baby! Eating cookie-cutter, branded, baked, fluffed up, inorganic trash in the name of a cake.
Are you bilingual? Because by the time your child can say “hungry” she better know how to say it in both languages and whatever else they are teaching in school. And if you have multilingual roots as parents, hahahaha! Multiply that by 3,4….and I pity you. That is why you should have just stuck to your roots and married within your religion, community and linguistic borders like Molly Aunty suggested.
The most popular as my mommy pals suggest is checking on milestones. This one is of course centuries old. So if your child hasn’t started teething, been toilet trained and been able to recite the national anthem by 3, are you sure you took enough vitamins and almonds and did the right breathing exercises or whatever it takes to achieve above-mentioned feats?
And before I end this tirade, how can I end this post without mentioning the Malaika Aroras, Kareena Kapoors, Jessica Albas and Beyonces of the world. Yes, they all have kids and look at those hour-glass figures my friend. Never mind if you never had it even before motherhood. That love handle in the middle and those thunder thighs aren’t really going well with the shift dress that is rebelling against your bottom post childbirth. So if you haven’t found the ‘fat exit’ button in good old power yoga, zany zumba or the gym, well, what are you waiting for- the next lunar eclipse?
I know, I am back to my ranting ways but hey, don’t blame me. I am a full-time mother in COVID-19 times, home-schooling a child who believes I can play the role of a full-time teacher apart from all the other things I am trying hard to keep up with. Of course, the teachers have a swell job at this time, enjoying a pupil-free stint while we scramble to ensure our kids don’t lose a precious year. Arrrgh fine. I know no one wished this on themselves but how about reducing the syllabus by half considering that parents cannot be teachers and considering teachers are often parents themselves? Oh wait…I just realised my child is in kindergarten. Oh-my-God.
