Clues for Parents

It isn’t easy being a parent. I still remember not too long ago, the helplessness I felt when the nurse plumped the squirming bundle on my hands and to my utmost horror, left the room. That was about four years ago, since then, I could say that I have improved…a lot I think. But even then, each day undoubtedly still brings me my lessons in this parenting 101 class that anyone who has a child in this world have (willingly or unwillingly) signed in. I bet I still have a lot to learn and I'm taking it a page at a time. This past month, I did get to peg down one lesson I am thankful I got. And the lesson is this: Watch for the clues. Closely. If I need help on figuring out what to do as a parent, I need to pay attention to the clues my child is giving me. In her own way, in her own language, in a form that I need to learn to speak and understand.

As with most parenting advice, this is quite logical and pretty obvious but as I have realized, knowledge doesn't necessarily translate to application. Not always. Not immediately. It takes time and a deeper realization to sink it in, not to mention a widened neural pathway that remembers to use it at the right moment and right time amidst the high pitched and often dizzying chaos of a pre-schooler's world.

For me the realization got cemented, when my husband told me of a recent incident of a friend of his, who has a four year old son as well. Early this year, she had enrolled him for pre-school mainly because she was influenced by her cousin who told her about all the good things that pre-school had done for her son. His friend's mom was against it as she saw that the child was still not ready for school. However, his friend went and enrolled him anyway. Now, they’re having problems in getting the child to go to school. He doesn't want to. After weeks of transition, he still is not getting the hang of it and only got worst with time.

As my husband and I talked about it, we realized the great importance of knowing one's child and having the confidence, as a parent, to know when you'd bend in to external influences and when you'd rather follow your instincts and judgment instead. It is never easy.

With Julia, what I found challenging these days is in knowing what I need to be teaching her and when. In an ideal world, I'd like to dump her with all my/and the world's knowledge (and whatever wisdom I've gained over the years) as soon as and as much as I can. Isn't it every parent's dream of having child prodigies of their own after all? But that isn’t how it works though. Everything takes their time. Prodigy or not, as a parent, I realized I needed to keep the balance; the balance between having the string too tight and too relaxed, between too much stimulation and too little, between total freedom and choking limitations. Where that balance is depends mostly on Julia. And so I have to watch for the clues. Like Sherlock. My ears peak when I hear a phrase that she mentions out of the blue or sentences she utters just before she goes to sleep or after waking up. I watch her every move to see any change in interest. I constantly learn the art of parental interrogation to get through the invincible wall of "nothingness" - What did you do at daycare today? "nothing." Did you go somewhere? "no." What did you eat? "nothing." I learned to pick clues from anything printed that she brings with her when she gets home from daycare, studying them and doing some "experiments" to prove or disprove a hypothesis, I research existing literature and eventually come up with theories which I then validate. Parenting, sometimes it feels like doing scientific studies or solving mysteries. Much much more than that actually, as it is different with children. Our heart hangs out there.

Nowadays, I very much depend on the clues she gives me. Nowadays, she's scribbling a lot. She scribbles mazes, figures, shapes, and letters. She forms the letters into alien words which she asks me to read (and which I have great trouble reading). See picture. But I figured, maybe this is one of those clues - that she may actually be ready to spell, write words and read simple ones. (I didn’t think that it would come this soon. I thought this would come in kindergarten or much later.) So even though I was sounding like an alien from Mars, I read her strange words for the sound. Maybe this is where the concept of phonics started…with children writing the language of aliens.

And so with that theory, while she is concocting her own words, I slotted in words from planet earth which I asked her to write and read too. It's a two way street after all.

There is never a single way to learn; no single path to an end. The best path is one that suits the parent and the child. All we have to do is figure out the clues and go from there.