Tag: kid

Feeding Your Soul

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Have you ever felt like you’re just living one day after another? Like it’s so filled with routine and getting from one place to the next? Is your goal every single day just to get through it? Does relief only come when the kids are in bed and you have that hour or so to yourself to relax and really connect with yourself (and your significant other)?

There is no getting around that we become our last priority when we have kids and school and extracurriculars and routines. Even when you find a free minute for yourself, what are you doing with that time? Are you choosing to feed your soul?

Recently, my sisters and cousin and I got into a conversation of things we would love to do again. Granted, it’s been about 10 years or more since the last time we did these activities and a lot, including our physical abilities, have changed. We don’t know if we’d even be able to do a lot of the things we used to be able to do.

But should that even be a factor? I loved taking dance classes and performing on stage in that particular dance style. Going to the classes would do something basic for me and my confidence that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish in any other way. It’s not something I have to be an expert at. I’m not aiming to achieve something great. I just want to participate in something that makes me feel good. I want to work on something personal that has no effect on anyone other than me.

I think we let this idea go too easily. When we talk about self-care, it usually results in massages and nail salons. While that is also fine and can work wonders (I absolutely love massages), there are times that we might need more than that. There is just something about taking a chance on something new (or old) that we can fall in love doing. Make your self-care really count.

Go sign up for something that you have always wanted to do. See how it makes you feel.

Watch Something Progressive

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Have you watched a kids’ show lately? Maybe if you don’t have children, you haven’t seen one since you were a kid.

My kids watch Sesame Street on a daily basis. I remember watching it when I was growing up and liking it. Now? I seriously love it.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m an adult and more aware or that our country suddenly has a serious number of issues that have been brought to light. I’m finding that kids’ shows are more progressive that our actual world seems to be.

Before everything got kind of crappy, I would have been proud that Sesame Street showed episodes about the Indian culture. Now I’m relieved. They also have episodes about other cultures (such as Chinese New Year and a South African exchange student), bullying, autism, and just liking yourself as you are. It’s amazing. They are teaching my kids (and myself) so many positive things that sometimes, I wonder if we are actually in this time frame where people are acting as regressive as they are.

The other 2 shows that my kids have been watching lately are Doc McStuffins and PJ Masks. While it hasn’t come up in the few episodes I’ve watched, both shows star children of different backgrounds doing awesome things. I especially love that my little girl is watching Doc McStuffins because I love the idea that she has a role model that plays doctor and isn’t just into a bunch of princesses.

I feel like there are plenty of adults that need a good dose of some of these children’s shows. They have fantastic messages and teach you a lot about the world. You can stream Sesame Street on HBO, Doc Mcstuffins on Hulu, and PJ Masks on Netflix. Take some time out of your day and learn something new.

Am I A Bad Mom?

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Today, I yelled at my kid.

Let me be completely honest.

Today, I have constantly been yelling at my kid and considering the day isn’t over yet, I’ll probably be yelling at her a few more times.

I tried having patience. I honestly tried to dance it out and be silly with my child. I love her a lot and can be so proud of her a lot of the time. She amazes me in so many ways and is a really great kid.

But, man, can she push my buttons! It’s like she knows exactly what to do and what to say that will really push me until I do get mad.

I don’t want to be the uptight, angry mom. I want to be the fun-loving laid-back mom. But I can’t seem to find a way to be consistent with my kids. No matter what my intentions are, I feel as if I’m going to lose by the end of the day. And then, I feel terrible. I feel like I must be the worst mom in the world. Who gets angry at their kids all the time?

I only feel like myself again after I either exercise or sleep. I do those as much as I can but the breaks don’t come often enough. There are some days I just want to give up altogether. It’s draining constantly trying to make a toddler and an infant understand that I’m saying “no” to them for their own safety.

I feel like I used to be a patient person….until I had kids.

I hope that this is something that I can improve on. I’m hoping that both the kids and myself will grow and it’ll help our relationship. I hope that I can prove to be a better parent to my kids.

All I know is that I will keep trying to be the mom my kids really deserve.

The Incredible Hulk Mom

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I’d like to think of myself as a patient person. I definitely thought I got more pissed off at people when I was in my teens and 20s and I grew past it and learned how to just let things be in my 30s.

That was before I had a 2 year old.

My kid can push my buttons like no other. I don’t know if it’s a phase or if it’s her personality but I become this super angry mom around her. And I hate myself for being that way.

I always thought I’d be this really cool mom. You know, like those moms on Pinterest. And when she acted up, I’d put her on timeout and that was the last time that behavior happened.

I can’t believe how mad I can get. I can’t believe a 2 year old can make me cry. Put her together with my infant and they can make me believe I need to be in therapy all the time.

I don’t know if this is something that will pass or I will learn how to deal better. I read other articles with the hopes of some major breakthrough so I can figure out how to deal with my toddler that benefits both of us. Because screaming at her doesn’t seem to help either of us. I want her to understand the things we ask of her are for her benefit. She also needs to learn how to deal with her emotions because I do understand that she is feeling all sorts of new things. It’s a unchartered, crazy path we both walk on together.

Now we just figure out the way to go so that neither of us has a meltdown.

How To Chase Your Passions While Being a Mom

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Today, I was really missing dancing and performing. I’ve spent a good part over the last 16 years dancing on various teams and in shows. It’s definitely slowed down since I had my first kid. I have had a few opportunities to dance in between being pregnant and having baby #1 and baby #2 but it’s not as frequently as I would like.

I posted on Facebook about this longing I had for dance and a few opportunities popped up. I’m really excited to get started and do this.

But I can’t just jump into things the way I used to.

I have to remember that my first responsibility is my family. My kids’ lives and needs come first. They have their schedules that are more important that anything else.

So how does it work if my needs come second?

Somehow, I have to manage balancing my responsibilities with chasing my passions. I know I could just ignore my own needs and concentrate on my kids but if I did that, then I wouldn’t be giving them my best self. The only answer to this is to find a way to do both.

I find sections of my day to focus on the things I do for me. I wake up early to write (or write during a movie that I’m watching with my kid like I’m doing now). I work out during nap times. In order to be able to dance, I need the support of my husband.

He’s a great guy and we both believe in allowing space so that the other is able to do the things that will make us happy. We believe that if we are happy, our kids will be happy. So I have the ability to dance while my husband handles our responsibilities.

It isn’t easy to be able to chase your passions while being a mom. But if I want it bad enough, I’ll find a way to do it.

Why Do Indians Try To Change The Way Our Babies Look?

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I’ve mentioned that I’m a part of a few different mommy groups on Facebook, one of them being an Indian mommy group. There are so many great things about being a part of that group because you get to share ideas and things you’ve done and get help from others when you have questions.

But there is one big thing that drives me crazy every time I see it posted. There are Indian moms who ask how they can change the appearance of their child.

Here are examples of what I’m talking about (my version of examples since I don’t want to copy and paste things that are confidential to the group):

–My child was born with curly hair. If I shave it, will it come back straight? How can I      make it look better?

–My child in a month old and has hair on her face. How can I get rid of it?

–Will an oil massage help lighten my child’s skin?

And this goes on and on and on.

Why? Why are we trying to change the way our babies look? We criticize and try to change these children that are born after everything we go through to have them. We go through so much to get pregnant and then the stress of the pregnancy itself. These child are born perfect. Every single one of them. How can we judge the looks of someone so small and innocent?

And why do we think certain qualities are bad? Why is darker skin bad? Why is curly hair bad? I have curly hair and I love it. I know a girl who has darker skin than I do and she is one of the most beautiful, talented, and smarter girls I know.

Our goal in raising our child is so they grow up with great values and culture and become amazing adults. And yet, as newborns, we sit and criticize how they look. How are these kids supposed to develop good self-esteem and confidence with this type of parental attitude?

We are trying to get our babies to fit society’s standards of beauty. But here’s the problem. Society’s standards of beauty are wrong. Beauty shouldn’t be judged on one or two different physical characteristics. So if we try to change our children, what are we telling them? The only way to change what society considers beautiful is to believe that our children are beautiful just the way they are and teach them that.

I know I want my child to be confident in who she is as a person. I personally went through an ugly duckling phase when I was in school but I made it through. I think it actually made me a more grounded person because I haven’t relied on my looks at any point in my life. I had to learn to be social and to be able to relate to people around me.

I hope mothers will start appreciating their children for who they are and not what they look like. I hope they will start focusing more on how to raise their children and not how to improve their looks. I hope that these children will learn that your physical appearance has nothing to do with how beautiful you really are.

The Vaccination Debate Seems To Be A First-World Problem

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Yesterday, as I was scrolling through yet another debate about vaccination versus no vaccination in one of my mommy groups on Facebook, it hit me that I keep reading about this debate only in this particular group. I’m in 2 mommy groups on Facebook. One is Indian mommies only and one is a general group of mommies from all cultures.

Now while I usually turn to the general group of mommies for advice because we are all raising children within the same environment and are exposed to the same things, it seems as though this is the one place I can’t take seriously when it comes to this debate. The group with Indian mommies only seems to discuss how to deal with the vaccinations but not whether to take them or not.

I don’t know numbers and I don’t know if this is a general truth. This is only what I’ve observed. But it seems to me that not vaccinating your children is a first world problem.

Is it because most of us Indian people are either first generation in America or first generation born in America? Is it because we are still aware of how many advantages we have with medicine living here?

It seems as though people are taking vaccines for granted here. Until whatever disease become so widespread and affects so many unvaccinated people, it seems as though we are going to sit in the middle of this debate. I hate the idea that children have to go through these sicknesses that could be preventable in order to make the point that vaccines work.

We only have to visit India once to see illness that we don’t see in America anymore. So when we have the option, why would we allow our child to be exposed to that risk? When we know all it takes is one shot to protect our child, why wouldn’t we get it done?

Is it that people in America now have too much information at their fingertips? That our celebrity culture influences us more than it should? That we look for scandal and conspiracy wherever we go? Why can’t we just trust in the medical and scientific community?

Or is it that people questioning the vaccines because they are so easily available? Maybe people would fight for the vaccines more if it were a limited resource.

I don’t know the answers to why people don’t just get their kids vaccinated. All I do know is that a lot of us younger generation Indian parents seem to have more faith in medicine than a lot of our non-Indian counterparts.

Someone I Love

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In my last post, I talked about passion versus validation. Now I want to talk about something related but in a different way.

When I was dating, I figured out something: 1) I could either be the person that I thought the other person would be attracted to or 2) I could become the person that I would have found attractive. I know that, growing up, we focus a lot on what makes us cool and popular. We want to be wanted by the person we are attracted to (and maybe even the people we aren’t attracted to). We like the things that we think others will want us to like and we do the things that everyone else does. But is this really us? Do we respect ourselves? If we were on the opposite side, would we want to date the person we are?

This is something that even relates to my life today as a wife and mother. Stepping into that role really messes with your self-esteem in some ways. I mean, doesn’t long-term get boring? Especially after you’ve had a kid? Now, you’re tired and have gained weight and don’t have the same social life going anymore. How can you get your significant other to even notice you?

My insecurity levels have definitely gone up after having a kid. I feel like my husband has continued to move forward career wise and can do a lot more things than I can at the moment. Being stagnant hasn’t been the best place for me. The feeling was worse right before and after I had my baby. A few months after the pregnancy, it started getting better. But I still felt really dependent and kept wondering if he was still even attracted to me or if he still loved me.

I hate that feeling! I don’t like questioning how he feels about me and I really despise myself for thinking negatively. I realized that the problem wasn’t him. The problem was myself. I haven’t been attracted to myself. Not necessarily looks-wise only but also my personality. If I was someone else, I would never look twice because I’m emitting qualities that I am not crazy about.

So I’m going back to my dating mantra. Become the person you would be attracted to. Do things that make me feel good about myself. If I ever question how someone else feels about me, I know to tell myself that I’m being the best person I can be because I really do like who I am.

The only person that is responsible for making me feel good is myself. And I deserve to be with someone that really loves me. I’m lucky that I also have my husband and family and friends but the only person that is required to love me all the time is me. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Be someone I love.

FOMO

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FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out.

All my life, I’ve felt (and still continue to feel) like if I don’t attend every social event out there that I’m going to be missing out on something. It’s gotten worse with Facebook because then you know what you’ve been invited to or what events you’re missing out on. You see pictures of these events and it looks like everyone had such a great time and you are nowhere to be found anywhere. I’ve run myself into the ground to make sure that I’m able to be at every event there is. There was a time in my life that I would volunteer for every dance performance, go to every party, be at school, be at work. Needless to say, the only way I realize that I had to stop overextending myself is when my body shut down on me. That’s when I realized that my health was more important than being everywhere and took more time in taking care of myself.

Why do we do this to ourselves? The world isn’t going to stop if we don’t attend everything. I think part of it is (at least for myself) that I feel like people will forget I exist. That comes from a fear of not being important enough that people will remember me. If I always put myself in front of others, then they can’t forget me, right?

It’s an insecurity about who I am. This fear can extend not just my friends, but my family and my husband. It shows the lack of confidence I have in myself to know that I am important to someone. I have to say yes to everything so that these people always see me. And the only way to change it is to really start finding some confidence in who I am as a person. It’s knowing that no one is truly that easily forgettable. It’s knowing that if someone loves you, that no matter what you miss out on, you will get another chance.

I think this fear of missing out also applies to the fact that if I don’t attend something, will I regret it forever? Will it change something in my life that I can never get back again? The truth is probably not. I have missed events before and yet, my life continues on the path that it does. What didn’t happen can never happen, if that makes sense.

Now, my kid comes first. I will miss out on a lot of things. Events like parties at clubs, bars, movies aren’t things that I can go to at this time. I have to just hope that I matter enough to people that they will still try to spend time with me when we can.

What Is Too Much When It Comes To Parenting?

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Parenting has become such a big thing. I am constantly trying to schedule activities for my baby daily so that she’s stimulated and doesn’t become bored. At the same time, I keep wondering if this was the case 30 years ago. Did parents back then constantly entertain us? Or were we left to our own devices? Sometimes, I wonder if we’re doing too much.

I keep trying to figure out if all of this makes sense. I met someone recently that has flash cards with pictures and words for their 7 month old. It seemed a little overdone to me but considering my baby has recently started getting bored with the same old stuff, I wonder now if it’s something that we need to be doing to keep our children entertained. Did our parents do this?

Do we need to let our children kind of figure out how to entertain themselves? Or should we be planning every minute of their day? Is it bad if I let my child sit in her crib and babble to herself? I know I need time to just be on my own so would she need the same thing? Or should I be doing something with her as soon as she wakes up? What are the lines and boundaries? What is too little and what is too much?

I remember when I was a kid, I did play a lot with my siblings or by myself. I didn’t constantly have someone trying to entertain me. We used our imagination and created things. Now, I don’t know if this was the case when I was just a baby. I want my kid to learn how to use her imagination and be able to play on her own. I want her to have patience and be independent.

In a time where so much is done with the focus on our kids, what exactly is the best thing to do for them?