On Raising Kids ...

My mother was right.

Ummi told me, many many times, its very difficult to raise kids, in fact it’s the most difficult job in the whole world, raising kids. I don’t think I believed her much. She would remind me of this when I did some ‘badtameeze’ with her. She would especially remind me this when I came back from work and fell onto the couch in front of the idiot box. She felt that I wasn’t doing much at work and occasionally if she asked a certain favour, which involved working in the kitchen almost all the time, I should get up my lazy bum. My mother doesn’t understand the difference between a mother and a boss.

My father is a retired Naval Officer and his tenure got us moving from city to city and I missed witnessing the arrivals of all my cousins into this world for this reason if nothing else. I am the eldest in both my maternal and paternal families and when my siblings came along, I was very young myself. This is why I hadn’t seen any newborn babies or toddlers for that matter, for the last 15 years easily.

Then my mother decided that she had enough of me and soon I was packed off to a city in land down under, with an overzealous husband leading the way.

The first thing that hit me after arrival in Melbourne was the cold. The second was the number of kids. Although hubby had warned me that all his friends with young married couples with kids I wasn’t prepared for this. No way. Hubby’s friends were kind enough to have us over for a welcome breakfast of delicious food of the sorts. There were five odd kids there in ages from a few months to a few years. (That’s the best I could decide then). The only thing that kept me from bursting into tears was the fact that I thought it would be over soon.

Was I wrong!

Since that frightening day, I dreaded meeting with more couples and more toddlers and that didn’t help much. Because that’s exactly what I did. Meet more kids. Can you even imagine how much sound a few months old can produce? Do you even know the extent of damage two energetic few years olds can do, how much mess they can create? I look at the kids and I look at the parents and I can see my future. Hubby loves kids and myself? I’m still thinking it over.

I have always been low on patience and this is one thing you need when you become a parent. Bucket fulls of. My younger sister just finished her Montessori Training course. How on earth someone chooses to be surrounded by screaming, running kids with runny noses for work is beyond me. But she tells me on e-mails that that kids she works with are adorable and there is this one kids in particular who always finds reasons to be by her side. He too seems to have bitten by love bug.

Just yesterday we were invited for Iftar and dinner at hubby’s friends place. Hubby’s friends have four kids all under 5. You can imagine the scene there with their own and 5 other kids. The conversation among the ladies never left the topic of ‘my kid’ theme. The gentlemen ate first in true Pakistani fashion while the ladies babysat and then the roles were reversed. Surprisingly for a recently married ..huh… young woman (I still can’t get used to calling myself a woman), I am never without a kid. Some woman ultimately dumps her kid on me while she finds something else to do. (and these kids remain content with me). And it takes energy to just look after a squirming child for 5 minutes. That’s a fraction of what these parents have to do, you have to feed this bundle of joy, change, bathe and rock to sleep. Come to think about it, all these people look sleep deprived, not that the wives fail to remind me.

Its extremely difficult raising kids, especially in a foreign land. You don’t get any help and you have to look after the house, the cooking, the cleaning, the kids and the bigger kid. Heaven forbid if you even thinking about some time for yourself. Another couple just had their second son in less than 18 months after their first. I applaud their courage, for their first one can put any tornado to shame. When he feels he is not getting enough attention, he comes running over, scratches the newborn and runs as fast as he run smiling triumphantly while everyone just sit stunned. The husband’s mother came over from Pakistan to help and she is leaving soon. The poor woman already looks exhausted.

And then there are moments when all thoughts for studying further of work flee my mind and my maternal instincts take over. It surprises me because frankly speaking I didn’t think I had any. I see these children looking huggable for most part of the day, talk to each other in their own private language that only they can understand, and behave like perfect angels for ten minutes. But these ten minutes are enough to make one forget the last half-hour episode where the child was brawling at the top of its lungs and looked and behaved nothing short of a monster.

Bringing kids into the world is a miracle, raising them is even a bigger one. Everyone should be exposed to toddlers being brought up to fully appreciate the misery they put their own parents through. Otherwise one remains clueless till you have your own, like I did till I got married and went to the land of cold, kangaroos, koalas and kids.