MOTHER-DAUGHTER CONFLICT

A mother brought her daughter to a counselor. The mother’s grouse was her daughter spent all her pocket-money on purchasing cosmetics and also spent a lot of time dressing up. She was fed up of advising her daughter and wanted the counselor to help her find a solution.

The daughter is a teenager and so it is natural to keep preening. She is at a stage in life where she wants to experiment with makeup. She is also into dressing up always. This is natural for her age as many teenagers are always looking at themselves in a mirror all the time.

When this was pointed out to the mother, she said she understood this concept but she felt her daughter was overdoing it. In fact last week the daughter’s face had broken into a rash due to inferior quality of the cosmetic products. She also said her daughter was spending all her pocket money only on cosmetics.

The mother was asked how she knew her daughter was spending all her money on cosmetics, she said her daughter was no longer buying any gifts for her friends or even greeting cards. This she felt was not right as the deal was her daughter would use her pocket money to take care of these things. Earlier she used to save up and buy books, or small jewelery trinkets, but now she did not.

She was worried about the effect of all that makeup on the tender skin. Moreover she felt her daughter was spending too much time with dressing up and this was eating into her academics. She said the young girl had scored good marks, but could get better percentage if she devoted more time for her studies than standing in front of the mirror. The mother came across as a very loving and concerned mother. She understood the need of her child for dressing up, but she was also worried with the change in her daughter’s behavior.

The counselor asked the young girl if what her mother said was true. The young girl admitted she spent money on cosmetics, that an inferior quality face cream had produced rash and that she had no money for gifts. But she qualified this by saying she was interested in painting, so she would gift her friends one of her paintings.

She was asked why she needed so much make up since she was good looking? Her answer was all her friends tried on make up, they would discuss intelligently about the products available in the market and so she did not want to be left out. She also said she was over weight and to avoid teasing, she would spend more time with makeup and dressing. She wanted to look good, to distract attention from her weight.

So her body image was not good and she needed to have her self esteem boosted a little. When she was asked if she could concentrate on losing weight, she reluctantly agreed. She was asked what her favorite form of exercise would be, she said cycling. When she was asked if she would cycle to school, she readily agreed.

It was suggested she could tone up her diet a little and coupled with her exercise, she could really shed all that puppy fat. She appeared mollified and realized it was important to lose weight in an intelligent manner and this can be achieved only through hard work.

It was explained to her how her mother was anxious about the cosmetics and whether she could contribute to removing her mother’s worry. She agreed to stick to branded products. Her mother wanted her to reduce her purchases, this too was agreed by her daughter.

Asked about her studies, she agreed she could do better, but her grades had not fallen. The counselor wanted to know what her hobbies were. She said fashion designing and jewelery making. She was asked if she wanted to learn and go for a class. She agreed and said she would love it. The mother was asked if she agreed to this step, and she agreed. She was aware of her daughter’s passion, so she was only too glad to send her for class.

Her mother then sprang a surprise. She told her daughter that if she adhered to her part of the bargain, and after a review in a month’s time, she would take her daughter for a pedicure and manicure. The daughter was happy and agreed to stick to her part of the bargain. If they both stuck to their part in the bargains, there would be obvious peace at home.

The counselor then asked them the consequences if the daughter tripped up, the mother said she would have no choice but cut the pocket money in half. She would be forced to do it, even though she would not enjoy it and the beauty parlor trip would be canceled. If the mother did not stop picking on her, she would have to give up watching her favorite serial for a week. The daughter felt the consequences were fair.

So the visit resulted in getting the daughter to realize that her behavior upset her mother and this in turn led her to yell at her daughter. So to maintain peace at home, she had to conform to certain behavior and change certain behavior. And since she had agreed to the changes, she had to stick to it, otherwise face the logical consequences.

The mother daughter duo left promising to carry out their part in the bargain for a month, it was win-win for both, and they both were aware of the consequences of sliding. They were no longer bickering, instead decided to take in an ice cream on the way home.

Baby Eats Glass! Mother is Incompetent!

That is the headline I'll be waking up to in the morning. It's a cheery one, don't you think?And yes, the baby in question is my baby. And yes, she did in fact consume some glass.

I think you'll remember that we put our Christmas tree up this weekend. Why, you ask? Because this was our one chance between now and the week after Thanksgiving.

We finally got all of the ornaments placed nicely on the tree. It looks gorgeous. Seriously, it's never looked so beautiful. I even took a bunch of pictures of some of our most special ornaments for the blog that I'll post on some night when Baby doesn't eat glass.

So tonight while I'm busy listening to Bal read his homework to me in our living room, I hear the teacher calling, "Help!" from the front room. I arrived to see him holding Baby in one arm and a busted glass Christmas ornament in another.

"She bit it", he said in explanation.

Still staring at him, I said, "Bit what?"

"Bit the ornament. She took a bite out of it and now she's eating the glass."

Now let me take a moment to clear a couple of things up.

• Baby is well-fed.
• We discourage our children from eating glass.

I rushed over to them and told Baby to spit out the glass. She smiled and began crunching the glass between her teeth. Seriously, is this child demented or what?

"No!", both the teacher and I shouted at her, which had no effect. Meanwhile Bal and Nod are dancing around the Christmas tree singing, "Baby ate glass...Baby ate glass", at the top of their lungs.

I finally pried her mouth open expecting to see a scene of carnage inside. But there wasn't anything. She hadn't cut herself at all. There were a few paint flecks on her tongue, but nothing else. Just to be sure,we used the sink sprayer to spray out her mouth. Then we checked her all over again to see where she'd cut herself. There weren't any cuts anywhere.

Then I called my mom. Now it's very normal for a woman to call her mother when something goes wrong, but my mom has the extra burden of being a nurse. She gets called a lot by me and is expected to dispense immediate medical advice over the phone at no charge.

To talk to my mom, though, you have to get through my Dad and, of course, my Dad had to know what was going on. After I told him, he had the audacity to LAUGH! The man laughed that his granddaughter had gleefully eaten glass, and then handed the phone to my mother.

Mom was more understanding. She calmly assessed the situation, (via phone) and determined that either Baby didn't really ingest any glass, or ground it up so finely that it will be fine. She assured me that it wasn't the first time something like this had happened to a toddler and that Baby would be fine. She gave me a list of symptoms to watch out for, and asked me to remember that I'm not a bad mother because my baby ate glass. Shows how much she knows.

The Great Indian Mother-Daughter Switch. Or not.

My mother has been attending a Teachers' Training Programme for the past couple of weeks (or more). And with every passing day, she is becoming more and more convinced that it is a great deal easier to be the teacher than to be the taught. She's been in the teaching profession for over 25 years now- she's never really had to write examinations ever since she completed her Graduation. And it's weird how over the past few days I've relived my examination weeks so vividly, through her. I have heard the same panic-stricken outbursts, have been subjected to the same crankiness, and have had to deal with the same kind of nervousness that I generally make an oh-so-conscious effort to conceal.website

She has been studying Educational Psychology. I tried helping her with some of the topics- like Motivation, and Classical Conditioning (including Pavlov's experiment). I also downloaded pictures of Jean Piaget, and graphical representations of his theory. I was surprised to find that I still remember some of the things we were taught in school. But then, Robert Baron is a brilliant man, and his text book, is perhaps the most comprehensible Psychology book I've ever read.

She had her first written assignment today. It was on Motivation. I was playing basketball in college through most of the afternoon and early evening, so I had forgotten to drop her an SMS wishing her luck. When she returned, however, she was grinning widely. She said she had grown out of the habit of writing long answers within a limited time period, as a result of which her left hand (yeah, both my parents are lefties) was aching. Through most of dinner, she calculated how much she needs in the final test that she will have to take this weekend, in order to pass the entire module. I was highly amused, simply because this is the kind of Math we do- in college- in order to calculate how much we need to pass the ED! As I watched her, a lot of the familiar taunts resonated inside my head. I only smiled to myself, but said nothing.website

MOTHER`S LOVE FOR CHILD

Here I am going to describe stories of two animals. One of them had been a pet cow and the other had been a she-donkey. I had been witness to both of the stories.

In my childhood a cow had always been a pet animal of our family and my parents and other members of the family always treated the cow as a family member. In my childhood I used to take milk of cow and curd, butter and clarified butter made from cow’s milk. All these products contain less fat as compared to fat contents in the similar products obtained or made from buffalo’s milk. Apart from that, cow’s milk and products made from cow’s milk are light and easy to digest. It is said that pure ghee made from cow’s milk is good for memory. Also several ayurvedic medicines are prepared and given in ghee made from cow’s milk. In some diseases cow’s urine is used as medicine. It was when a manufacturer of medicines presented before me a demonstration for forwarding it to the Government for granting exemption from payment of tax on sale of medicines made of cow’s dung when I knew that cow’s dung is also used in grounding of some medicines. Other wise it is used for besmearing earthen floor of houses, for preparing organic manure and as fuel for cooking food. After cow’s death, her skin is used as leather for many purposes and bones are used as raw material of certain engineering products. Horn and hoofs are used for making toys. But in my family, whenever a cow died its dead body was dead buried with respect more than the respect which is given when a dead body of a person is dead buried.

In my childhood I had seen three generations of a cow in my family. It was unique that before death of first cow and second cow, both gave birth to three calves and thereafter only one heifer (she-calf) and when heifer became fully developed cows died. The story which I am going to sate here relates to third cow and her second calf. The calf was then four months old. One day in the summer we set free the cow and calf for grazing in our fields. Being summer, there were no crops in our fields. Our all agricultural land had been close to our house and we could always see our fields from gate of our house. In summer we could see at a long distance. When cow and her calf had been grazing in the field approximately at a distance of half kilometer, several street dogs came over there and began barking and threatening the cow and the calf. Thereafter, those dogs attacked the calf. The cow, with her horns succeeded in keeping those dogs away from the calf. The dogs tried from various angles but every time the cow turned on that and angle and saved the calf. All this continued for about fifteen minutes but dogs could not do well in catching or biting the calf. But then a stout dog grabbed one leg of the cow and bit on it. My younger brother saw all this except dog biting the cow but he told only about attack by dogs. He told that cow had succeeded in keeping away all dogs and finally they went away. So there was nothing to be worried.

All members of the family continued to use the cow milk and products of her milk. But after 17 days we noticed that cow had gone mad. We took it to veterinary surgeon. The doctor carefully examined the cow and then told us that it had happened because of dog bite. Though the doctor gave the injection yet he suspected the recovery as it had been too late. After 4 days the cow died. We all were sad and my mother wept bitterly remembering that the cow had sacrificed her life while saving her calf. Thereafter, body of dead cow was dead buried in our field with full honours.

Then a new cow was purchased but no member of our family could forget the cow which had sacrificed her life for the safety of her child. This had been pure love and care of a mother for her child.

Second story which I am going to state relates to a she-donkey and her kid. The kid might have been 2-3 months old when the accident occurred. Those days I was posted in a town and was residing in a rental house which was situated in middle of the town on one side of a road near a road crossing. The road led to a sugar mill. It was winter season. So many trucks, carrying sugar cane to sugar mill, used to pass through the road. My residence was situated on first floor of the building and we had a balcony towards road side. On the road side we often had seen cows and sometimes donkeys.

One evening when I was at my home, I heard noise of people. I opened the door in the balcony. I saw that a large number of people had gathered on roadside at a place. Then I asked my peon about the happening. The peon enquired from a person and then he told me that a truck had run over a donkey kid and it had died. After sometime, people left the place. The wounded body of the donkey kid was lying dead and its mother the she-donkey was licking the wounded body of its baby donkey with her tongue. After some time the she-donkey sat near the dead body. I noticed that she had been shading her tears continually. During the night nothing had changed. In the morning I saw that she-donkey was still sitting near the body. Some body had put grass and water in a tub near she-donkey. But it did not take either of those.

Somebody had informed the civic authorities about the dead body of donkey kid lying there. At about 8:00 AM Municipal Board truck came with some labourers. Labourers loaded the dead body on the truck. The helpless she-donkey could do nothing. When the truck was driven away the she-donkey returned to the place where dead body of her kid had been lying. She had been shading tears. She remained there till evening. Next day she again came over there with tears in her eyes and remained there till evening. This happened for three days continuously and she did not leave the place unless she was driven away by neighbouring shopkeepers. The incident moved me genuinely.

Both of the incidents relate to love of animals towards their kids. Sometimes I wonder how some women can afford to leave their children uncared and unloved. Are natural world better than human beings? Are our social associations above our kids?