Through The Wonder Years

It’s fun to see our children grow up but another truth of life is that childhood is a very short session. It also requires positive involvement of the parents to make the childhood sweet and successful.

Sometimes we get upset with the child’s behavior and immediately compare this with our own childhood. “Had we done something similar, there is fair chance that we wouldn’t be standing here right now” is a thought that crosses many a minds of our generation. The parent and child of some families even then acted like friends and were probably are the exceptions that prove the law. One of the leading topic of debate, I remember during my school days was “spare the rod and spoil the child”. This is key indicator of that our society was debating for a change. 

It’s not that we are survivor of a tyrant society but looking back it appears that we did miss some fun, some joyous moment with our parents and some exciting “high five” moments.

We try to be best of friends with our child and give them what we had missed as well as attempt to relive the childhood. It’s a different story that our children still considers their buddy parents to be tormentors for restricting their usage of the ipad or the TV. But children will be children and parents will be parents and the generation gap will always remain never letting the twain to meet. But we do a lot of things together that built a special relationship broadly practicing within the premises of the age old policy of “good cop and bad cop”.

Father daughter bonding is special and interactive activities can be taken to a new high with some creativity. Doing the weekly grocery together is great fun activity with its hands-on experience on shopping for the daily three meals. It starts with realization of the importance of being organized by having a detailed shopping list followed by a few tips on selecting the right fruits or vegetables. Normally we buy only when the stock of a particular item is running low but sometimes that principle gets defeated by the little one’s logic. Last time we went for shopping she picked up a box of cornflakes too early as kellogs had co-branded her favorite breakfast cereal with her favorite movie, “frozen”. She argued that it’s worth buying up in advance as this might not wait for me till next week and I had to admit that it is true.

Like many other matters our knowledge is not permanent and stays only while we practice. One instance of memory erosion is my knowledge of our planetary system. Recently the second grader gathered enough information about planets and stars to meet the challenge posed by the boy who she shared her bench with. Being a boy, he probably had been spending his internet time watching such science stuff while the girls focused on songs, dolls and makeup. Not willing to be outdone, she collected enough information to give me a lecture and revive my knowledge of stars at the same time believing that storms in the earth are direct outcome of the Neptune.

However the most creative and fun activity that brings us together is her video recordings. She loves to unpack boxes of toys and other gifts on our video camera while talking about the product all the way through. I got amazed to watch the six year old do that without any script and therefore get actively involved by setting the camera and shouting the conventional “Lights, camera, Action.”

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