Relaxed parenting, happy childhood.

                                 

     

Is this the house? Even the garden looks so small. We lived here for eleven years and I have walked again through the rooms and garden many times in my dreams. I was a year old when we moved in here. Being so tiny myself, I viewed the world around me as enormous with the house spilling into the garden. My parents worked hard in the garden to loosen the rocks and coax the soil to relent and let the profusion of green thrive.

I don’t want to feel disappointed. The trees and flowering bushes have gone. The dry hard soil looks unyielding and dirty. It is my fault, returning after thirty three years, foolishly hoping my childhood home has remained unaltered. Maybe returning oftener would have gently altered my expectations and I would not have told my children repeatedly of the lovely garden and ‘spacious’ house.

It is still a tiny two bedroom house made of stone blocks with a symmetrical twin house attached on the kitchen side.One of the many in the officer’s colony. The small gate has remained and I open it to step back in time.

The strong guava tree on the right side of the gate was also where the rope swing was fixed. Thick rough hemp ropes were bandaged with strips of old bed sheets to make soft handles. More old bed sheets and a cushion for the seat. I read most of my story books perched up in the tree, hidden, biting into oval yellow green guavas with the pink flesh inside. My legs still climb the tree in my dreams and I am sure they retain the memory of the strong branches.

The pigeon pea plant outside the kitchen gave us generous supply of the fresh pods that were shelled to be added to upma or rasam. We children ate it off the plant like monkeys. The curry leaf tree stood tall and lush nurtured by the sour buttermilk we poured regularly.

Chrysanthemums, roses, jasmine, hibiscus, crossandra, leucas, marjoram, milkwood, garden balsam, butterfly pea, bougainvillea filled the garden with colour and fragrance.

Some plants my parents grew to educate my brother and me. We watched the growth of a pineapple from the discarded crown of a delicious one; sour grapes on a few vines; onions; beans; and groundnuts. Since we made the compost from kitchen waste we were often rewarded with a good crop of unexpected tomatoes or bitter gourd clinging to the fence. Banana plants, a small jackfruit and mango tree provided the shade when I sat on a mat in the garden. My grandmother loved to clean the cotton from our cotton tree readying a year’s supply of wicks for the lamps. The Henna bush prospered with every cut we made to share it with our neighbours. Monkeys,frogs, snakes, beetles, butterflies and centipedes passed through our garden peacefully and a tame brown fox accompanied our maid to work! She asked us permission to let her ‘dog’ sit in the garden while she worked. We learnt a whole lot about nature without books, charts or ‘educational CDs’.

My father taught my brother and me to spin tops, play marbles, fly kites and make our own catapults. He taught us gilli danda and football too. He managed all this with a six day working week. My mother drew concentric circles on the side wall and fashioned bows and arrows from broom sticks for her skinny archers to practice. She also made us our first paper windmills. She was a busy housewife who found time to cook, read and knit as well.

I hit old scooter tyres chasing them down the roads and often ended in a tangle of wheels and legs trying to cycle my brother’s cycle, crossbar.

Somewhere in those carefree childhood years we learned the important ability to entertain ourselves. Without the television, computer and other gadgets ‘teaching’ us, we filled our time with fun activities getting to know and love the outdoors.

I carried this learning and love for improvisation into my own parenting days.

When my children were younger, we converted wooden fruit crates filled with clean sand into sand pits in the balcony. Chapatti dough was given to restless kids to fashion watches or anything else while dinner was underway. Old saris were converted into tents and we drank real tea from the little tea set. My daughters regularly brought home interesting looking twigs and pebbles. The living room floor always had a project in progress. I never minded.

A mother of teenagers now, I see young mothers ferrying their children to various classes, organising activities and worrying over the progress their children are making. Childhood is not about shiny floors and tidy apartments; not about performance and organised activities; not about certificates and badges; definitely not a time for stressing a child. Believe me, it’s perfectly okay to have untidy (mind you, not unclean) homes when children are small.

Children will always bring indoors, a little of the outdoors and carry it with them for the rest of their lives.