Love
A stream of benediction that flows without pause:
That gives of itself without conditions or cause;
For the lowliest of beings it evens all odds:
And elevates humans to the level of the gods.
It brings beauty to the world; it makes the heart sing:
No wonder, they say, ‘Love is a many-splendoured thing’!
“Come Back!”
“Come back!”
He continued to walk towards the front door, pretending not to hear.
“Come back at once, I say!”
The handle of the front door turned. She clutched at her chest and let out an agonized shriek:
“You’ll cross that threshold over my dead body, you hear me?”
He paused and turned back, consternation on his face. She continued to clutch her chest and moan:
“You can’t walk out on me for your girlfriend. What has she ever done for you, compared to what I have done?”
He looked at her intently, and suddenly, his face cleared.
“Nothing.”
“Well? Then?”
“She hasn’t birthed me, or brought me up.”
“See?”
“And she hasn’t always tried to impose her thoughts on me. Hasn’t tried to own me body and soul.”
“What do you mean? You’re going to stay with me, aren’t you? Forget her, son…”
“You don’t understand, mom. I’m not going to her. I’m going away from YOU. In fact, I’ll be staying with friends at their PG, till I get some place of my own.”
“But why, if you’re not going to her? What happened all of a sudden?”
“It’s been building up, mom. And last night was the last straw. I’m earning enough to support myself and pay for my studies. I cannot go on like this. Believe me, it’s better this way.”
She clutched her chest even tighter and wailed:
“Even if it costs me my life? even if it breaks my heart?”
“Your heart is supposed to be on the left, mom – not the right … “
When parents abuse
Abusive parents, unfortunately, are to be found all over the world. However, while in most parts of Europe and North America there are stringent legal and social provisions for dealing with reported cases of parental abuse, in most Asian and other ‘traditional’ societies, children are often regarded as possessions of their parents, to do with as they please, on the loose premise that “Parents know what is best for their children”. Here, we often forget that parents are human too, and giving them unlimited power over their children, without any fear of repercussions, can sometimes have highly undesirable consequences. And here the reference is not to sexual abuse which, perhaps the most heinous, does have legal consequences, as does physical abuse. The reference is more to mental, verbal, emotional and psychological abuse of unformed minds and psyches by those whose responsibility it is to nurture them.
Krishna (name changed), the only son of a world famous academic stalwart, was given everything his famous father could buy for him—and brutally denigrated and ridiculed every time he got a less than perfect score on any of his exams or assignments. Living in constant dread of his father’s whiplash tongue and sick of repeated public humiliations, he fell in with his father’s plan to pull strings and have him placed at one of the American universities after school and made his escape from his parents’ clutches. Once in the US, he promptly took up part time work at restaurants and laundries and dropped out of college, and his parents’ lives. “I worked my way through college much later,” he confesses, “after I had managed to get over the trauma of having to live upto my brilliant father since early childhood”. At 45 years he is married to his English college sweetheart and lives in Noida, working at a middle level position in a multinational firm, happily far from his parents who are old and alone in South India.
As a child comes into the world, his first consciousness of himself is shaped by those who give him birth and raise him—his parents. Thus, the child’s sense of identity is usually a reflection of how his parents see him and relate to him. Taking physical action such as flogging in case of mistakes or wrongdoing by the child, constantly putting him down and eroding his sense of self-worth, emotionally blackmailing him or other kinds of mind games and controlling behaviour, are all various forms of abuse which go not only unpunished, but also unchallenged in our society. The scars of such covert abuse, however, can run much deeper than those from more obvious or acknowledged forms of abuse. The sad part is that often the perpetrators of such abuse do not even realize that they are damaging their children and laying the foundations of dysfunctional relations with their children who might not be inclined to look after them in their old age because of the childhood hurts they are carrying.
In an essay in the New York Times, psychiatrist Richard Friedman writes that the relationship of adults to their abusive parents “gets little, if any, attention in standard textbooks or in the psychiatric literature.”
However, numerous studies all over the world show that just as an emotionally warm, intellectually stimulating childhood is typically a springboard for a happy, healthy life, an abusive one can cause a litany of problems. One doesn’t just leave such childhoods behind, like outgrowing a fear of the dark. Abuse victims are more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, broken relationships, chronic diseases, and even obesity.
Unresolved Issues
An abused childhood, however, does not necessarily inhibit worldly success. In fact, there are a number of famous people all over the world who had abusive parents. These ‘successes’, however, often struggle lifelong with their unresolved emotional issues with their parents and cannot be truly happy or contented in spite of all that they have achieved.
Abraham Lincoln couldn’t stand his brutish father, Thomas, who hated Abraham’s books and sent him out as a kind of indentured servant. As an adult, Lincoln did occasionally bail out his father financially. But he didn’t attend his father’s funeral.
Warren Buffett the world famous American business magnate, often regarded as the most successful investor of the 20th century, remained distantly dutiful to his mother, who had subjected her children to endless, rabid verbal attacks. On the occasions he visited her at the end of her life, he was a “wreck” of anxiety, sitting silently while his female companions made conversation. He was 66 when she died at 92. His tears at her death were not because he was sad or because he missed her, he said in his biography, The Snowball. “It was because of the waste.”
Bruce Springsteen’s frustrated, depressive father took out much of his rage on his son. When he became successful he did give his parents the money to buy their dream house. But Springsteen says of this seeming reconciliation, “Of course, all the deeper things go unsaid, that it all could have been a little different.”
A child’s sense of self and identity is shaped, first and foremost by his interaction with his parents, the beings who give him birth and mould his early life. We all accept that there is an enduring bond between parent and child. One of the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament is to “honor your father and your mother,” while in our Indian scriptures it is said “Bhoomi gariyasi mata, swargaat pita gariyasi”, i.e., a mother is greater than the earth and a father is greater than the sky. With this kind of conditioning inherent in all the cultures of the world, the loyalty of children to even the worst of parents makes perfect biological sense.
However, when abuse from a parent, whether physical, sexual, mental, emotional or psychological, crosses the child’s limit of endurance, this conditioning crumbles to the dust. After that it is truly “as you sow, so shall you reap”. Those parents who raised children less than lovingly are putting their own dependent old age at risk for being well and lovingly cared for themselves.
Anger Management Tips for Verbally Abusive Parents
It has been established by studies all over the world that parents who have no control over their anger if a child thwarts their expectations, or those who are inclined to vent their frustrations on their children by means of verbal or physical abuse need to consult therapists or counselors on an urgent basis, both for their children’s well being and their own relationship with their children.
However, for parents who are aware of their own lack of control and wish to take constructive action to stop verbal abuse, here are some practical tips approved by professional therapists. In fact, whether you are the abuser or the abused, use these eight steps for coping and put an end to the abuse. You can also use these same steps if you are emotionally or physically abusive.
1. Identify the first sign of meltdown.
To begin to cope with your behavior, you have to identify the first sign that indicates you’re beginning to spin out of control. It may be dry mouth, red ears, flushed face, butterflies in your stomach or heart palpitations. What signals the start of your meltdown? It is imperative to identify this sign, because it is part of a chain of behavior to which you’ve become accustomed. Your first sign can lead to the second link in the chain, which is where you can make an important decision.
- Consciously choose to cope.
You can use your first sign of meltdown as a cue to cope, rather than as a cue for meltdown. When you feel the sign you’ve identified in step one coming on, you can make a conscious decision to use it to begin your coping sequence.It finally boils down to ‘mind over matter’. Once you have made up your mind to break this behaviour chain, it is only a matter of time and practice before you achieve your goal. - Make an incompatible response.
You need to get past your impulse moment. In order to do so, you must make it impossible to abuse your child. What should you do? ‘Count to ten’ may sound like a clichéd response, but does make sense by giving you a time out to get yourself under control. Other options could be to leave the room. Go outside. Do whatever it takes that guarantees you will not abuse your child. - Write down and evaluate destructive thoughts.
Have a book that you use specifically for your coping sequence. After you make an incompatible response, write down and evaluate your destructive thoughts. Instead of verbalizing a destructive thought to your child, write it in your book. Then read it over, and realize you almost said this to your child.Most of the time you will be so appalled that you will control yourself better another time. - Tell your accountability person.
You are abusive because you can be — you have no accountability. In order to stop, you have to take responsibility. Choose a friend, a family member or someone else to be your “Accountability Person.” Your spouse, your child’s other parent is usually a wise choice. You will be accountable to this person. Every time you write down a destructive thought or avoid an abusive situation, call this person. Read him or her what you wrote in your coping journal, and talk about how you feel. - Reward yourself for control.
Most likely, you’re as hard on yourself as you are on your children. You feel guilty and say bad things to yourself when you are being abusive. Remember, you need to love yourself when you make the conscious decision to cope and not abuse.When you feel good about yourself, you will also feel good about your children. - Engage in positive interaction.
When you’re through the impulse stage, go back into the room with your child. Give your child a hug, pat him/her on the back, do something positive. - Long-term: get counseling.
You need to see somebody on a regular basis to deal with what’s happening inside you. You can go to a counselor, a pastor or a social worker; somebody who will listen and continue to guide you in the right direction.
The quality of a family
Why is it that some families, even while having limited time to spend together in today’s fast paced world, remain deeply connected and are there for each other through thick and thin, while others simply exist together in a common space and are unable to forge very deep bonds despite spending a major portion of their lives together, under the same roof? Relationship experts and therapists say it is not the amount of time you spend together as a family, it is the quality of the time you give to each other, especially to your children, that makes for true bonding and support as a cohesive family.
The phrase ‘Quality Time’, which has been around since the 1970s, refers to time that is set aside for paying full and undivided attention to a particular person/s or issue. This concept is of special significance in the context of the parent-child relationship, because it is the quality of time that you spend with your child that gives her critical mental and psychological inputs and shapes her emotional intelligence and personality. It is also crucial in forging close family ties which give the child a core of resilience and inner strength to grow into a balanced, happy and successful individual.
Says American entertainer Brandy Norwood: “Your children can be around you all day, but if you don’t spend quality time with them and you don’t pay attention to them and talk to them and listen to them, it doesn’t matter that they’re just around you”.
What is ‘Quality Time’?
‘Quality time’ is time spent doing an activity that is meaningful to the parent and child. It is time when family members really get to know each other. Quality time is spent focusing attention on each other and sharing thoughts and feelings. It is like creating a storehouse of emotional support and mental strength, which will be a bulwark to strengthen the family members in bad times and a heaven of inner peace, love and security in good times.
The concept of Quality Time assumes added significance in today’s world because busy lifestyles and high stress factors are tearing families apart. Says Delhi based psychiatrist Dr. Vimal Kumar, “A family that has omitted to create close bonding amongst its members is highly likely to fall apart under the manifold pressures of contemporary lifestyles. This is where we need to understand the crucial necessity of taking out quality time for the family, even in the midst of punishing schedules and deadlines”.
Why Quality Time?
Children need to know they are loved unconditionally. The cry of children today is, ‘Love me for who I am, not what I do. Love me for being who I am, even when I am naughty, not winning, placing, and showing’. This does not mean that parents have to approve of everything the child does. What it does mean however, is that even though the child misbehaves, we still love and accept the child and provide support. We help children develop positive self-esteem by communicating the value we feel for them. Words of encouragement and love help provide children with the courage to try new things without worrying excessively about not being able to do them. And spending quality time with them is the most effective way of giving them this feeling of being cherished.
Children learn about families from the time they spend in their own families. They learn about birth and caring for another person when a new baby comes home from the hospital. They learn about loss when a family member dies. They learn about marriage and relationships by watching their mothers and fathers interact. They learn about trust at home from their parents, and from being trusted. By living in a family that spends quality time together, communicating these values through actions, children learn to share, how to stand up for their own rights, and how to love another person.
Adding Value and Quality to Family Life
Spending time with our children can be fun and educational for us and for them. The activity does need not be costly, but rather one that satisfies both the parent and the child.
Much of the child’s basic learning takes place in the many informal situations that occur daily in the life of the family. These informal occasions for learning include all the times the family members are together doing ordinary things, such as getting dressed, talking over the day’s happenings, dealing with problems, interacting with people outside the family, taking baths, eating, and so forth. To help children grow and mature well, parents need to help children learn about life and living in today’s society. Thus, the quality time that parents spend with a child becomes all the more important.
As the world becomes more and more aware of the importance of quality time with the family, a recent ‘happiness poll’ in UK shows that the largest proportion of respondents consider ‘quality time with the family’ more important for happiness than material possessions, money and career goals. In fact, for most parents, spending time with their children was even more important than relaxing or luxury holidays.
New research reveals an overwhelming 95 per cent of parents actually believe the key to happiness lies in spending quality family time together. The new research study of couples pre- and post-parenthood has found that mothers and fathers are shunning sports cars, jewelry and posh clothes in favour of what they say is the ultimate luxury—spending time with their family.
Balancing Priorities: Career and Family Commitments
However, research also shows there may still be some way to go before parents are really able put aside work related guilt and spend more time with their families, even though they yearn for it. While they overwhelmingly agree that family time with their children is the key to happiness, two-thirds admit that they had worked hard to achieve financial goals at the expense of it. This proportion is especially high (more than 65 per cent) among high profile professional fathers in urban areas who feel under greater pressure to work hard at the expense of time with their children.
A strong family finds that opportunities for quality time emerge from quantity time: The more time you spend together, the better chance you have of sharing quality experiences. Eating meals together, talking about the events of the day, sharing joys and defeats, doing household chores together and spending some evenings popping corn and watching movies are examples of shared activities. Some families even schedule one evening every week for special family activities. Doing things a child or spouse wants to do also sends a strong message of love.
How much time?
Healthy families keep a good balance between ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’ time together. They spend enough time to satisfy all family members. Children learn to bring balance to their lives when they see their parents setting aside time for what they value.
Where should you start if you’re not spending enough time with your children?
A family meal is a good place to start. ‘A family that dines together stays together’ may be a time-worn phrase, but bears repeating. Having a meal with your children away from distractions such as the TV, video games and cell phones can help start those conversations that you would like to, or need to have with your children.
Ways to Spend Quality Time with Children
The most precious gift that parents can give their children is time. A personal investment in children is much more important to them than any toy, video game or electronic gadget. Some wonderful and creative ways for parents to get together with their children for quality time can be as follows:
1. Help with the homework and school projects
It is the ‘done thing’ today to hire tutors and helpers to help children with the homework and school projects, because parents are simply too busy to be able to spare time for this. However, in some of the most closely bonded families, helping the children with homework and projects is an important part of the quality time that parents give to their children. Says Tanuj Agarwal, a high profile employee in a multinational corporation and father of a 16 year old son and 14 year old daughter, “I always make it a point to take out time over the weekends to catch up with my children’s studies and help them with their weekly projects. I really cherish this time we spend together, and so do the children. My wife prepares a favourite meal and we all connect over food, jokes and the children’s projects.”
When children are young, stories are one of the best ways of forging mental and emotional connects. They fire the child’s imagination, have great scope for role playing and make-believe, and are an excellent avenue for transmitting values and a sense of connectedness and cultural identity to the children. They also open the doors to broader horizons and forge abiding bonds between the parents and children.
3. Plan an outdoor activity/ picnic or a vacation
During the spring and autumn breaks, when the weather is pleasant, it is the ideal time to plan outdoor activities in parks and at popular picnic spots. These could be as simple as playing badminton or cycling in the neighbourhood parks, or more ambitious, such as get-togethers of extended families in gardens open to the public, visits to popular monuments or cultural centres, with a packed fun meal thrown in to enhance a sense of adventure and break the monotony. There is also no dearth of family vacation venues where families can spend time together doing fun activities and connecting with each other.
4. Turn off the TV and spend the evening together
It is frightening how important the television has become in some families. Sitting together and watching TV is entertaining, and sometimes educational, but it doesn’t foster quality together time and interaction. Explore the interests of the entire family for what to do when you turn off the TV and focus on your family. It can be a good idea to set aside at least one night each week for the family and only the family, when you do something that you enjoy. It could be a story night one week f or the younger children, or guessing games/ hobbies for teenagers one week, or even cooking a favourite dish together with mom sometime, or creating a garden or a terrace garden together.
Ultimately, say experts, it is the quality time that you give your children that will figure in their memories of you, and shape their perceptions of happiness and success in their own lives and families.
Ready to explode
We live in a violent world today. And while we might argue that violence is the way of nature, to enforce ‘survival of the fittest’, and that the history of human ‘civilization’ is strung on a thread of violence, we cannot get away from the fact that the incidence of unreasoning, senseless, psychotic violence is increasing at alarming speeds the world over. Road rage resulting in murder, disgruntled students stabbing or shooting teachers or classmates, psychopaths blazing a trail of corpses at random—why? Therapists say that the behaviour of most aggressors in such cases of random violence has its roots in unadressed anger issues in their childhood. To ensure that our children do not grow up into angry, aggressive, destructive adults, as well as to help them live out a happy, healthy childhood, parents need to be vigilant about signs of anger issues developing in their children and address them expeditiously to minimize the damage.
Eleven year-old Harsh Kapoor is always angry. Fights with classmates in school, fights with kids in the school bus, fights with the colony kids in the playground—it seems to his parents that their son is going through life armed with a large club of aggression, ready to bash in the head of anyone who crosses his path. “There is just one person who can ‘manage’ him,” says his mother, Malti. “He goes for Maths coaching to a neighbour’s place, and his teacher can really make him calm down. With everyone else, he feels that they are out to harm him, and he should strike first, before they can get him. But with Mrs. Dutt, he is a normal, happy child. I don’t know how she does it.”
Says his Maths coach, Kavita Dutt, “Harsh is an angry, misunderstood child, and he has major aggression issues. All I do is try to give him unconditional acceptance, love and praise for whatever he manages to do right. And so, he has no reason to feel angry or victimised.”
Identifying children with Anger Issues
How do you know when your child needs help handling anger? Look for these signs.
- They can’t control their aggressive impulses and hit people; this behavior continues past the age of five.
- Frequent explosive outbursts, indicating that they are carrying a ‘full tank’ of anger that is always ready to spill.
- They are reflexively oppositional (and they are older than age 2).
- They are unable to engage in constructive problem solving and do not acknowledge their role in creating the situation, instead feeling constantly victimized and ‘picked on’.
- They frequently lose friends, alienate adults or are otherwise embroiled in interpersonal conflict.
- They seem preoccupied with revenge.
- They threaten to hurt themselves physically (or actually do so).
- They damage property.
- They repeatedly express hatred toward themselves or someone else.
- They hurt smaller children or animals.
When anger takes over, it can come in different forms, from a verbal outburst to being physically aggressive and causing damage to furniture. Anger can sometimes make children act in a way that’s harmful to themselves or others. For example, punching walls or hitting out. Try to make the surrounding environment as safe as possible if this happens. If you’re concerned that anger is taking over your child and your family, don’t hesitate to talk to a psychologist.
Helping the child to overcome anger issues
When a child has ‘anger management issues’ it means that they are terrified of those pent-up feelings under the anger (fear, hurt, grief). Here are some useful tips from therapists all over the world for parents to help kids learn to manage their anger:
- Remember that all feelings are allowed.Only actions need to be limited, such as hitting.
- Set limits.Allowing feelings does not mean we allow destructive actions. Kids should never be allowed to hit others, including their parents. When they do, they are always asking for us to set limits and help them contain their anger. Say “You can be as mad as you want, but you cannot hit. I see how mad you are, and I will keep us all safe.”
Some children really need to struggle against something when they’re angry. It’s fine to let them struggle against your holding arms, if that’s what they want, but take off your glasses, and don’t let yourself get hurt.
Similarly, don’t let kids break things in their fury. That just adds to their guilt and sense that they’re a bad person. Your job is to serve as a safe ‘container’ and ‘witness’, to listen to what your child is telling you.
- Never send a child away to ‘calm down’ alone.Remember that kids need your love most when they ‘deserve it least’. Instead of a ‘time out’, which gives kids the message that they’re all alone with these big, scary feelings, try a ‘time in’, during which you stay with your child and help them move through their feelings. You’ll be amazed at how your child begins to show more self-control when you adopt this practice, because they feel less helpless and alone.
- Stay near and connected when your child is upset.If you know what’s going on, acknowledge it, “You are so angry that your tower fell.” If you don’t know, say what you see, “You are crying now.”
Give explicit permission, “It’s ok, everyone needs to cry (or gets mad, or feels very sad) sometimes. I will stay right here while you get all your sadness and anger out.” If you can touch them, do so to maintain the connection, “Here’s my hand on your back. You’re safe. I’m here.”
If they yell at you to go away, say, “You want me to go away. I will step back like this. But I am right here. I won’t leave you alone with these big and scary feelings.”
- Stay calm.Yelling at an angry child reinforces what they are already feeling, which is that they are in danger. You may not see why they would think they are in danger when they just socked their little brother, but a child who is lashing out is a child in the grip of deep fear. Your anger will only make the storm worse. Your job is to restore calmness, because kids can only learn and understand how to “do better” when they’re calm.
If you are in the habit of yelling at your kids, know that you are modeling behavior that your child will adopt by the time they are a teen, if not well before.
Kids need to learn from you that anger and other upsetting feelings are not as scary as they seem – after all, mom isn’t scared of them. Your presence helps them feel safe, which helps them develop the neural pathways in the brain that shut off the “fight or flight” response and allow the frontal cortex, the “reasoning brain,” to take over. That’s how kids learn to soothe themselves.
- Give your child ways to manage their angry impulses in the moment.Most kids resist punching the pillows on the couch, which feels artificial to them, but many love having a punching bag to beat up. You can teach your child to stomp their feet when they’re mad. With an older child, you can suggest that they draw or write on paper what they are angry about, and then fiercely rip it into tiny pieces. Teach them to use their ‘PAUSE’ button by breathing in for four counts through their nose, and then out for eight through their mouth. Grab two squishy balls; hand them one, and demonstrate working out annoyance on the squishy ball.
When your child is calm, make a list with them of constructive ways to handle emotion, and post it on the refrigerator. Let them do the writing, or add pictures, so they feel some ownership of the list. Model using the list yourself when you’re mad, “I’m getting annoyed, so I’m checking the list. I think I’ll put on some music and dance out my frustration!”
- Help your child be aware of their ‘warning signs’. Once kids are in the full flush of adrenaline and the other ‘fight or flight’ neurotransmitters, they think it’s an emergency, and they’re fighting for their lives. At that point, managing the angry impulses is almost impossible, and all we can offer is a safe haven while the storm sweeps through them. If you can help your child notice when they’re getting annoyed and learn to calm them self, they’ll have many fewer tantrums. When they are younger, you will have to know their cues and take preventive action – offering some snuggle time or getting them out of the grocery store. As they grow older, you can point out, “Sweetie, you’re getting upset. We can make this better. Let’s all calm down and figure this out together.”
- Help your child develop emotional intelligence. Kids who are comfortable with their feelings manage their anger constructively. Some kids, unfortunately, don’t feel safe expressing their uncomfortable feelings. Sometimes they have parents who discount or even ridicule their fears or disappointments. Sometimes they have been sent to their rooms to ‘calm down’ and never received the help they needed to handle their upsets. Sometimes the pain or grief just feels too overwhelming and they fend it off to survive.
They try hard to repress their fears, jealousies and anxieties, but repressed feelings have a way of popping out unmodulated, as when an otherwise loving preschooler suddenly hits the baby. These kids live in fear of their feelings. Fending off this reservoir of fear, grief or other pain causes these kids to get angry – and they stay angry.
When this happens, a child needs professional help.
Eating like a power mom …
It is one of the stereotypes of our modern lives that a ‘good’ mom – a mom who is vigilant and pro-active on every aspect of her kids’ lives – is an exhausted mom! She is usually visualized as this harried woman, rushing from pillar to post, handling the housework, supervising the older kids’ classes, picking after the younger ones, growing more and more exhausted, finally to collapse like a wrung out dishrag! And unfortunately, you do see moms around you who do just that.
However, this need not necessarily be so. Being a mom is one of the most rewarding experiences of a woman’s life – nurturing your little bit of creation and guiding it through the growth process is a deeply fulfilling aspect of life. Like all good things, it is fraught with pitfalls and conflicts – difficult behaviour, negative influences, tough choices and emotional traps that are physically as well as emotionally draining. However, the wrung out dishrag is not every mom’s reality. You do see moms who seem superhumanly energetic and manage to do it all without turning the proverbial hair. And how you hate them!
Well, instead of being futilely envious of them, why not try to see how they do it and take a lesson?
When the chick is ready to leave the nest …
So, your kid is off to college. Away from home, and your constant care, pampering, and yes, nagging too! He’s high on achievement and a sense of ‘growing up’ and probably somewhat transparently excited at the thought of snapping those apron strings. You love him to bits and are proud of him growing up. But the separation anxiety is beginning to manifest, along with a wee bit of hurt that he is so excited to be going away from you! Right?
Also, if your ready-for-college child happens to be a girl, the anxiety increases exponentially, with a whole new set of safety and discretion related concerns. So, how do you deal with it? And even more importantly, how do you help your child prepare for the change and the pitfalls that you can see so clearly, but which she is too young and inexperienced to perceive?
Sunday Morning …
Sunday morning, the city sleeps in
And blessed silence abounds,
Softly tempered by the hush of a breeze
And Nature’s soothing sounds.
The fluttering fronds of potted ferns,
The restless rustling trees,
The orchestra of the warbling birds,
The buzzing busy bees.
The parrots come to peck the grain,
Gazing with benevolent eyes;
The mynahs quietly wait their turn,
The crow, impatient, cries.
The koel’s melody casts a thrall
From its perch in the mango tree,
While ‘neath the largestronium
A peacock strolls majestically.
But all too soon, the humans stir:
The enchantment fades away;
I’ll be back another Sunday morn
When the magic again holds sway.
अमलतास की छाँव में
कच्ची पीली पंखुडियों से
हरी मुलायम पल्लवियों से
छनी भोर की धूप नरम सी,
छू जाती मन को मरहम सी.
अमलतास की मधुर छाँव में
मन की कुछ उन्मत्त उड़ानें;
याद आये कुछ स्वरणिम सपने,
उम्मीदों के ताने बाने.
आज छिटक कर कहती कलियाँ:
भूल भी जा अब टीस पुरानी;
कलम उठा जीवन अनुभव की,
लिख फिर से इक नयी कहानी.
At Random 