Sporty Kids

The Euro Cup just got over and the lull is almost painful. Since I don’t believe in football clubs, my only real salvation is the World Cup and the UEFA championship or the occasional Olympics Football matches. I am not too partial with the Olympics, they seem to be cursed for the Brazilians and if the Brazilians aint winnin’, I aint watchin’. Every 2 years there seems to be a higher purpose in life, something beyond work, home and family. Not necessarily undermining the important things in life but taking precedent for the time being. That ‘higher purpose’ for me is ‘football’, I like calling it soccer though, people still think ‘American football’ actually deserves to be called ‘football’ at all! Soccer is the epitome of what I think people ought to be – forward, tough, pushy, relentless, passionate, focused, patriotic, charged, co-dependent and all those wonderful things only seen in a game of football. The exact moment to notice all these feelings is when a goal is scored. Players embrace each other like blood brothers, they cry without shame, they kiss the earth and imagine their motherlands, and it is all so raw and so pure.



Soccer and I started a romance as early as the age of 6, way back in ’82, when televisions were still black and white and stood on ornate wrought iron stands; I remember that some even had wooden shutters. It was summer outside and my dad had decided that I would actually remain awake to watch the matches with him, much to my mother’s disdain. I was already a hyper and mildly violent child; she didn’t need for me to see more hysteria. It was held in Spain that year, a Spanish fruit was the mascot and Netherlands didn’t qualify, those were the two memories that never left me. 25 years on, I am not half as hyper or even slightly violent, I guess that’s one place my mother was wrong, what I am is – persevering, disciplined, ambitious, passionate, patriotic and very proud! Most of that has come from soccer. These days my dearest friend’s son plays football, he is all of 10 but the wisdom that boy exudes has to come from an innate confidence that not all children have. Anant plays for ‘Shimla Youngs’, how I love that name! How wonderful it must be to certify your youth. I have seen this boy blossom in front of my eyes. There is heaviness in his voice that doesn’t come from testosterone, there is a spring in his gait that doesn’t come from nonchalance and most of all there is a ‘nose up in the air’ pride that seems so becoming of ambitious young boys. All these traits are developed from Soccer, I am sure of it. This can be seen in children all over our city but not all kids have such noble reasons for being uppity. Let this be a lesson for us. If the kids must walk proud, the pride ought to come from personal achievements and not the car their father drives. If the kids must talk heavy, it ought to be because they know what they are saying and not because their cantankerous mothers are standing behind them.



Let’s empower our kids. Give them voices with a cause, a purpose, a passion. So whether you have a son or a daughter, sports have to be a part of their lives. Just the way reading is promoted, I wish sports were too. The learning is so unique, no instrument or art can replace team sports. I encourage you to pick schools that promote a sports culture, I urge you to emphasize the need for ESPN over MTV, I beg you to move on from frivolous, urban trends and go back to the good old days of PT. We are all in the era of fast foods, fast friends and fast lives, slow your kids down, hand them a bat, a ball, a racket or just lead them to a swimming pool and let the natural sports person in your child break free!

My Baby and Me

I was destined to be a mother of daughters. I knew it from the time I was 17 and decided I wanted to get married early but have kids late. Worked out beautifully for me, I was married at 20, had a wonderful 9 year party with my favorite person in the world, my husband and then one fine day decided, I wanted to be a mom! Nature was kind, we conceived the very month we discussed it and our beautiful little baby was on its way. I have deep spiritual leanings and I rely heavily on the Tao, it kept telling me to be a rock in the river and let the water flow, so I did. The pregnancy was uneventful, no morning sickness, no aversions and certainly no complications. We scheduled a C section a week before the baby’s due date and were thrilled to know the exact very day we were going to be parents. Even the night before the big day, I had pink dreams, hues of pink, peach and lilac all over everything in my dreams, like I was dreaming in rose tinted glasses. Nature blessed us that day at 3:15 pm with a 7 ½ pound, healthy baby girl. I watched my C section in a mirror on the ceiling, I watched my baby breathe air for the first time, I watched my soul reach out from my body and touch her toes. We named her Alyssa Maya Shirazi.



Life was never the same again. I had my muse, my friend, my baby, my blood, right there in my arms. The wonderful journey of motherhood had begun. The one thing people noticed most about me was the amount I kissed my daughter that was simply because I couldn’t believe she was there and that she was mine. It’s been over two years now. She is a million times more of a doll than she was the day she was born! She speaks fluent Hindi and is catching up on English fairly quickly. Her doctor has suggested we get her evaluated for IQ levels in the next 3 years, she has a vocabulary of over 500 words and can hold a 3 minute conversation verbatim, all before the ripe little age of 2 ½ years. Ally draws already, mostly straight lines and bulbous circles. Ally prefers her books to toys, she can name ever object in a picture alphabet book, she said she preferred to say ‘X-mas’ tree for X, xylophone was too much of a tongue twister. We agreed with her! Ally has been eating on her own since she was 18 months, she can put on a pair of pants, she can wear Velcro shoes on her own and she has been threatening to do her own hair too! These developments have left us thrilled no doubt but we are also doubly concerned about channelizing this energy correctly. Fortunately for Ally her paternal grandma is a qualified child psychologist and her first piece of advice has remained Ally’s social mainstay, she advised that we let Ally socialize as much as possible. Toddlers like Ally ‘give’ more than ‘take’, if they are not provided an avenue for this energy release, they implode emotionally. And if you think you have seen a toddler throw a tantrum wait till you see a bright one do it! Over the last 6 months we have picked up the following points to make Ally the complete person she craves so much to be –



1. Avoid boredom at all cost: even if it means stocking up on pounds of play dough or making a sand pit in your 10th floor apartment, a smart kid needs an outlet, all the time! Since I am very fussy about the kind of materials Ally plays with, I prefer to make my own play dough. It’s a simple recipe:
Nature's Playdough
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 tablespoon oil
2 tablespoon cream of tartar
beet, spinach, and carrot juice

Mix flour, salt and oil, and slowly add the water. Cook over medium heat, stirring until dough becomes stiff. Turn out onto wax paper and let cool. Knead the dough with your hands until of proper consistency. Use as is, or divide into balls and add a few drops of the vegetable juices to make green, pink, and orange. Store in an air tight container, the salt will keep it preserved for as long as 4 weeks but keep an eye out for mildew.
2. Make eye contact: the only way to address an intelligent child is to take them seriously. Children can easily identify when they are being taken for a ride and when mom and dad are really listening. Perceptive kids can pick up on parental nonchalance and that’s one more reason for them to rebel.
3. Answer every query: even smart toddlers don’t always have a fun story to tell but by and large their nature allows them to ask exceptionally sharp questions. Avoiding the question is not an option, even the hardest one need to be dealt with and weak answers are never acceptable to tardy toddlers. So even if you are asked where babies come from, no need to get down and dirty but make sure the stork and baby story is believable and entertaining! A lot of questions mean a lot of thoughts, a lot of thoughts can result in action only if the child is helped in comprehending what they are thinking, that’s when you come in.
4. Listen, I mean really listen: I have heard insanely profound words come out of my daughter’s mouth. Since she does not have a maternal grandmother, her curiosity about ‘nani’ is slightly on the peaked side. I told her that her Nani was with God and her immediate retort was why, I answered that God asked for her to come visit, to which Ally promptly announced, ‘Mummy, you don’t go if he calls you, say you are busy in the office’. Sharp kids can let you in on how they are feeling, how they are coping and what they are missing by simply talking to you. You can address deep set fears and anxieties by listening to what the child is trying to say, ask a few interested questions and you will be able to deduce exactly what is on your child’s mind.
5. Respect your toddler: the only way a child will learn respect is by having it meted out to them. Even when a child is being unreasonable, they deserve the same respect you would give to a peer. We have to accept that our children have a difficult world to live in. They need tools like self esteem and pride to be able to be respectful and disciplined. Don’t undermine your child’s anxiety, look for signs of activities or people that stress them out and most importantly always speak politely to your child. A 3 years old child’s stress can revolve around an ill pet, a missing hair-band or a sulking friend. These are bona fide issues for a child and can be dealt easily with conservation and patience.



These are learning’s of a first time parent but these are also easy ways to herald a bond. I have felt these revelations develop around me because I have a daughter, I chose to assume they are a more sensitive and intuitive sex. So please nurture while nature takes its course. Even if you have those 2 hours in a day, make them worthwhile. Girls are wonderful people, they make excellent executives, exceptional students, remarkable sportspeople, I am running out of superlatives … but you know what I mean. Celebrate your daughters, they deserve it!

Back To School

Indian kids are back to school this week. I don’t really know how most of them feel about it but the few that I know are basking in their new ‘back to school’ stuff and hoping for some fabulous extra-curricular activities this year. Our days were so much simpler. Going to a new class every April meant simpler joys like fresh mangoes in the lunch Tiffin, best friend from last year as a partner, new class books and maybe a little more respect for the one year that we had grown. I went to a fairly popular convent school of Delhi, one that imbibed a deep sense of commitment to personal achievement and performance. Every year there were new academic challenges, new books to conquer, new teachers to appease and new schools to visit for the million things we participated in. I rarely hear children speak of such plainness when they talk about school. Maybe my recent exposure to school children is limited to private schools in and around Gurgaon but I really don’t see genuine joy in their faces. The quandary lies in the fact that though we have provided a multitude of opportunities in the past 15 years it seems like we have taken a lot away too. I can name and quantify all the new provisions in schools like alternative subjects, international school trips, fencing, horse riding, archery, film making, script writing etc. I can’t put my finger on what we have taken away. Whatever it is that is devoid from our children’s lives, one thing is for sure, it is taking them away from basic and necessary entertainment like reading and the outdoors!



Our children think the outdoors require peripherals, perhaps a picnic or at least a pony to ride on. Whatever happened to bug hunting (Oh shush to PETA …. Bug hunting, knee deep in soil is the core of childhood discovery plus the bugs multiply way faster than our kids can kill them!), playing ‘house’, climbing trees (there are a few left, at least in Delhi there are!), playing catch, hopscotch, throw ball (is that even a sport?). All that was fun, maybe not awe inspiring and deeply intriguing but it did leave space for human contact and conversation. What do two kids playing video games together actually ‘do’ together …. Nothing! They have digitized alter egos communicating for them. All the joy, energy, excitement and fun are actually relayed through two unfeeling illustrations. How frightening is that? Please don’t get me wrong, I am a big one for video games albeit the old fashioned arcade variety but I swear I can put a 12 year old to shame when it comes to ‘Pacman' but it’s still not something I will invite a bunch of friends over for, not now and not 20 years ago.



Since I don’t have a generalized solution for this heavy issue, I have decided to make a few changes on the home front. I am at the threshold of some serious motherhood, my daughter just turned 2 and I am beginning to see meaning in the term ‘terrible twos’. Before I begin, a small piece of advice for mommies to be – the first 6 months are not the hard part …. Everything after that is! Now that my daughter can communicate in complete sentences I plan to practice mini plays with her through the week, just ½ hour a day, then we will perform it for the family on a Sunday. I have written 3 plays with just two characters, one scene and 5 dialogues, she seems to love it so far! She can also walk and run confidently, so we will race every day, if it’s not with me then with her dad, her maid, her granddad or even one of her adorable little friends. She can now hold an object steady, so she will draw me one image a day, yesterday is was a very poor looking cow and today I received a suspicious looking snake, I think it started out as a flower! She will spend 2-3 hours outdoors provided the weather cooperates, while she is there she can play in the mud (off late the mud is contained within the hands, so this is a plausible situation), she can look for ‘safe’ bugs (what I mean is preferably imaginary), she can try to tell colors of the flowers, she learn a few of their names, she can meet everyone in the park, she can run free, the options are endless. She has never been into toys and I don’t see the value in a $50 toy that she will either destroy or hate within a week. There were times I felt buying fewer toys was a level of deprivation but now that my daughter is such a confident, highly communicative, imaginative and funny little person, I don’t think I was entirely wrong. No two kids are alike but I think the basic nurturing they need is absolutely similar. Children need time, love, security and routine above all other things and this is something I have learnt from experience.



So whether your child is 2 or 12, their needs remain as basic, the way we fulfill them becomes different that’s all. This year let them roam free, let this year be their ‘pseudo year off’, let this year be the year all activities are organic and involve either one parent. As parents we are all used to sacrifice, this is yet another manifestation of it. School was always meant to impart education, let’s not look at them for everything. We hope our choice of school provides good education and good discipline the plus on that can be motivation, inspiration, confidence, independence and courage. So if your child’s school lacks in any of those areas it is better to start providing the missing traits at home.