parenting

“I’m suffering from the empty nest syndrome. Help!” A mother whose daughter has just left for university abroad commented recently on a Facebook group I belong to. In less than two minutes, there were other mothers in similar situations commiserating with her. Mothers with children who had just left home to attend college in another city or country; Mothers with children who had started working elsewhere or were about to take off soon, whether for college or work. As I read the comments, I realised that precisely at that moment, I was rather thrilled to have the children out of…

A friend forwarded me the link to a parenting blog recently. The blogger, mother of a seven-year-old, takes up the challenge of yelling less. She’s inspired by the blog famous among parenting blogs, Orange Rhino. For those who are not familiar, The Orange Rhino is the name of a challenge where the aforementioned blogger decided to go 365 days without yelling at her kids. All four of them. Yes. Four. And she succeeded. As for me, I prefer the Maun Vrat, the age-old spiritual practice of silence. Of course, I have my own version of it. Mine comes into application…

In a world of excess, how do you teach your kids to stay grounded? “Our last two vacations were in foreign countries, one intentional and one by chance. This year, when the vacation during summer was Coorg, our son asked us if we were going ‘abroad’ later.” Entrepreneur Supriya Kalbag laughs, but adds that the innocent query gave her a jolt. Was she raising a child who expected holidays to come with a foreign ticket and was taking for granted the hard work and effort that went into the comfortable life he had? Supriya decided to have a chat with…

The Supreme Court guidelines for school bus safety will come into effect from May 1, 2013. But it is no consolation for the family of the three-year-old who was knocked down by his school bus in June last year, or for the six-year-old girl from Chennai who fell to death through a hole in the floor of the bus.School bus accidents are so common in India that they often don't make more than a single column in newspapers. Yet parents are surprisingly silent about safety issues and reluctant to take on schools on this issue. Almost all parents I spoke…

So the hot topic of discussion in my seven-year-old's PTM recently was about bad words. One parent explained that his son had been using few unsuitable words off late and discussed the approach that he was taking. Soon all of us were talking of the same thing - the S word, the I word, the F word - that seemed to have made their presence felt in our children's lives, despite all our best intentions. Chiding children always is not the solution. File pic. Where do our children, mostly between 6 to 8 years old, pick these words up? Television…

If kids could learn their ABCs from mummy's smartphone, communicate with Talking Tom and hone their drawing skills with innumerable doodling apps, could this be far behind? An American firm has unveiled a new gadget at a tech meet called iPotty. Yes, it is very imaginatively named that, lest parents miss the point. iPotty is basically a potty seat with an iPad holder and waterproof cover, which gives the whole game of toilet training a technical spin. Using books to divert your toddler's attention while you make him stay put long enough to do the job? Or are you still…

Confidence. It is the one thing we want our child to possess in bundles, even if we sorely lack it in many areas. Confident enough to come down the slide in the park; talk to people without hesitating, confident enough to appear on stage; confident enough in thier swimming class, fearless when they steps into the pool even though we may be hydrophobic ourselves. The list is a long one.We may not get all ‘Pushy Parent' about this, but the truth is that we admire a confident child when we see one and wish the same for our child. Well…

A friend recently posted pictures of her daughter at the dining table attempting to demolish a cake all by herself. To say that she was covered in chocolate would be an understatement.I was feeding the younger child when I spotted the picture and laughed out loud. In a minute the slightly harried atmosphere around me - baby refusing to eat, older child whining about what was on his plate, turned lighter. A kid eating all by itself. Pic: Reshmi Chakraborty Sometimes in Mommyland, it does you a whole lot of good to laugh. It eases the situation when it seems…

He had seen the paper and started reading the headline before I had a chance to hide it. "M-O-L-E-S-T" he read, pronouncing it as ‘molet' before inevitably asking me the meaning. My six and half year old has developed a new love for reading and I had forgotten how trauma and disaster laden our news was, when I encouraged his attempt to read the newspaper.What do you do when all the media that confronts your child, the TV, newspapers and magazine, not to mention the internet, has nothing but bad news. Do you tell her as it is or do…