Daddy what is Independence Day?

As our independence is approaching fast (August 15th), all the newspapers have features on our freedom and freedom fighters. Any story of freedom fighters of India would be incomplete without talking about Mahatma Gandhi and there was a picture of him in our newspaper. Lydia immediately recognized him and said “Hey there is Gandhi Thatha” (Thatha refers to Grand Dad).

I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to talk about our independence day so when I began talking, she promptly asked, “Daddy is Independence Day?’

“It is a day when India became a free nation” I answered knowing well that it is not a child appropriate answer and she would have more questions.

“Daddy, what is freedom”?

By now I had realized that I had to answer her questions in a child appropriate way otherwise I would miss out on a great opportunity to help her to understand the history of our nation.

“See honey, you have so many toys in your own room, right”?

“Yeah” waiting to hear more

“Let’s say someone comes to our house and says to you that they are going to take all your toys away and will give you when they think you should play and tell you what games to play, how do you feel”? Questioned I

“I don’t’ like it” said Lydia.

“I know you don’t like it, but they want to take it anyway. They are going to pull everything out of your room; they are much stronger than you are, what do you do?” asked again hoping to hear the obvious.

“Well….I am going to fight with them till I get my toys back” answered my little fighter.

“That’s exactly what happened to India honey. White people from a place called England came to India and wanted to tell us what to do and what not to do. Gandhi Thatha didn’t like it and fought with those people by not hitting them or anything like that but by arguing with them”

“And they left?”

“Yeah only after many years of arguing fighting, they did leave and the day they left India, it became a free country and we got our freedom back like how you would have gotten your toys”
There was an obvious contentment on my little girl’s face for learning a new history lesson about India.

Practicing the lessons of ‘Millionaire next door”

For quite sometime my older one – Lydia has been saying that she want to learn to play Piano. We called up the piano instructor in town and he wanted us to wait till she became seven years old and guess what? Now she is seven and she is after us. We couldn’t resist her interest so there we went and signed her up for piano classes.

Teacher mandates that we have an instrument at home to practice (he only teaches one day/ week and the student has to practice at home) which we don’t have and we had to make a decision whether we are going to buy one or not. When we enquired, it is working out to be beyond our family’s budget. I guess the weakening dollar and the inflation have didn’t help but Lydia’s interest has been so strong that we want to do the right thing.

We decided to buy it but how? I remember reading a book called ‘Millionaire next door’ while living in the US and learnt how actually people become rich and on what the rich people spend. By no stretch of imagination, I dare not identify myself as rich but one thing that was mentioned in the book about rich people do, impressed me so much that I talked to my wife and she readily went along with my decision to buy the Piano.

Lesson is this: Save on anything that you possibly can (however little it may be) and spend as much as you possibly can on your children to broaden their horizon of learning. What do I have more than my children to live for? We talked to Lydia about the cost of the instrument and how she needs to make use of this. She has readily agreed to do that and we are happy to have purchased the Piano. Saturday will be her first Piano class and she is having sleepless nights to wait.

Explaining death to children.

It was December of 1997 and my wife heard from her parents that the dog she had grown up with had to be euthanized as he had grown too old. She was very sad that day so I wanted to brighten her up and came with an idea. We adopted a six-weeks-old boy. He is very different in many ways than a one.

We adopted a male puppy (Sheltland Sheep breed) into our home. He was running around so much that we named him ‘Chase’. He was such a fun dog when he was young that every time I came home, he wanted to be touched and played with and when I didn’t he would stand on his hind limbs and pushes me with force with his forelimbs on my butt (probably that’s how dogs kick people). He maintained a ‘no fly zone’ above our backyard because every time he saw a plane flying over our backyard, he would go crazy and run around in circles till the plane goes out of vicinity. I can go on and on about him.

In 2001 and 2004 my girls came home. When we decided to relocate to India, we wanted to give him to someone that want to take him but in one attempt we learnt that he doesn’t want anyone else but our family. We decided to bring him with us to India so he traveled in the same plane with us for 20 hours to reach Bangalore. Girls saw him in the airport and were excited that we are going to be together again.

He adjusted himself much better to the heat than we had anticipated. It has been more two years now and all in all it has been more than 10 years since we adopted him. He has grown old and slowed down quite a bit. We suddenly noticed that he is peeing blood. In the town that we live in, there are some vets but not that good facilities so when we took him, they took an x-ray and said that he might be having stones. Now it is getting worse. He now dribbles even when he barks and he being an inside dog, making the house unhygienic.

A thought crossed my mind about euthanizing Chase. It was a flashback of 1997. When her father told my wife about her dog, she didn’t take it well and here I am having to tell my little girls and how do they take it? How am I to explain about euthanasia? Would I be seen as cruel and inhuman?

Do you have any advice or thoughts to help this dad?

Daddy, will you promise me??

It was a Thursday afternoon around 3:00 PM. My kids returned from school and the older girl Lydia had a full-page birthday invitation in her hand to show it to me. It is her best friends birthday on Saturday. Daddy I really want to go for this party, will you take me? Without even thinking I said, “Yes” and in an instant she asked, “Daddy, will you promise me that you’ll take me”? I told her again “Yes”. Here is the beginning of my post.

Today is Saturday and I didn’t realize how busy this would be. I had to take my wife to the hospital and we left the house around 7:45 AM and returned at around 1:30 PM. After that I was doing some work on the computer and before I knew it, it is 4:25 PM and my wife asked me if I am planning to take Lydia to the birthday party?

I said “I don’t know, I am feeling tired”

“She has been waiting from this morning you better take her” said my wife.

Thinking about the Saturday traffic that I had to wade through gave me a real discouraging feeling not to go. We only have to drive 5 kilometers but it could take around 20 minutes.

Anyhow, simply for the reason that I made a promise I decided to drive Lydia to the birthday party. As we were driving in to the destination, she saw her friends and started calling out for them. From that time on, she was on the go – running, jumping and screaming around the place.

An hour later, it was time for us to leave and as we were driving, I asked her if she had good time and she said yes and wished that she had stayed there longer. By the time we reached home I was exhausted but looking at Lydia’s face with all the happiness, I felt content and thought “Promise made, Promise kept”.

Why being goofy helps your kids.

Yesterday I was in the car with my kids while mom went to get something from a store, my 7 year old asked me to tell her a story. I don’t know any other stories that she didn’t hear from me. So I decided to do something – making monkey faces and asking them to imitate daddy.

Well….with my extra skin on my face I could stretch my face in every possible direction and then throwing in my tongue in between to make it look really goofy got them excited.
With their tiny faces, both girls were tried as hard as they possibly could and looking at each other goofy faces made them even more excited. If I had done the same thing in front of adults, for sure they would have thought that I was going crazy.

Little kids perception of humor is low because they have not seen the world yet. So they got to see something very explicit to find it funny or have to hear of something in the familiar context. Making them laugh helps them to develop 'sense of security' in you apart from keeping them healthy.

So go ahead and be as goofy as you possibly can because that makes your kids happy. I Remember watching a commercial of Ray Romano (of ‘Everybody loves Ramond’) where he is asking the dads to be goofy to be funny and I thought he was crazy then but now I know who is crazy.