Tag Archives: stay at home moms.

March 13, 2008 · 3:10 am

When do you move them out to their room?

I’ve been good about putting my daughter in her cot, and she loves to sleep in it. The next phase of moving her to her room, however, is going to be difficult.

In India, it’s kind of normal for the kids to sleep in the same room as the parents till they are five or six, sometimes even later. I am not sure how I feel about it. I mean, I know it’s good to move them out sooner rather than later, but when I actually do it, would I be worried about her at night? Will I go to her room five times at night to check on her? And I am not even getting into how she’ll take to it, or rather not take to it, knowing my two-year old!

It’s easier when there are two kids, I guess. I have two siblings and we used to sleep in our room as kids. I, being the youngest, was always happy to be with them, we’d joke and laugh (and fight!) at night and I loved it. But, in the case of my daughter it’s going to be different, since she’s the only one, and, because I’ve been a stay-at-home-mom, she’s quite clingy.

But thinking about it, I’ve realized that it’s as much about me as it is about her. I first need to be ok about it and only then will I be able to convince her. Kids are really smart about knowing how serious their parents are about something they want them to do. If she detects uncertainty, or even leniency, in my voice when I tell her, she won’t do it. She knows when I mean business and when I don’t!

So I have to think about it a little more, and then break it to her only when I am sure. But, I have to say, I will miss her at night (see what I mean??) – miss peering into her cot to see if her blanket is still on her and to see her angelic sleeping face – aren’t they so very angelic when they sleep!

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March 1, 2008 · 1:23 pm

My greatest fear is getting bigger..

I’ve given up work for my daughter, now two. It’s something I wanted to do, but also, it’s not like I really had a choice either. I could hardly leave her to a maid for the whole day, since none of her grandparents, for some convoluted-yet-understandable reason or the other, could baby sit her. In India, let me add, it’s very common for the grannies, especially, to do so. But in my case, it was not to be.

So, I quit work and sunk deep into domestic life, and you know the thing about that, it’s like quicksand, once you’re in it, you only sink deeper – you’re at home, so you handle everything, there’s no escape. Before you know it, you’re up to your head with all sorts of home-running issues, you have no time for yourself, you don’t care about your appearance and life runs you by.

Then, one day, you meet an old classmate who heads some firm or the other (everyone heads divisions in companies these days, makes you wonder where all the followers are??) Anyway, you meet this all tip-top (Indian phrase for someone nattily turned out) person who tells you how hard she’s working, but how great the money is, and all the rest of it. That’s when you look at yourself and wonder where your life is heading, and that thought does not lead to anywhere good, you don’t like what you see in your future. It’s when your mother’s words ring loud in your ears and you try and brush them away – that in a few years your kid will be grown up and would not need you that much, but by then you’d have been out of the race (it’s all about being in the race, unfortunately) too long and people would politely tell you that, sometimes not so politely.

But what can I do? I am not sure. What I know is that I am going down a path I never thought I would, and my biggest fear is that a few years down the road, it’ll hit me and I’ll lose it..it’s my fear and, what’s worse, is that I know it well might happen, yet I keep walking down that road..

Men don’t understand it, they never will, because they never face it. It’s not fair.

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