A Mother’s Manifesto

A cafe in Villefranche sur Mer, France 

 I am fully aware that I am not meant to live vicariously through my children and  I have set out some parenting rules as reminders.

Rule No 1 : While I cannot force my dreams  on my children no matter how good I think my dreams are, I have to try my best to make them see how everything they do or say  will bring some consequences. We are therefore responsible and must account  for what we do and say.

 Rule No 2 . I can only guide and share my views and thoughts but I must not expect that my children will agree with me totally.

Rule No 3 :  I must appreciate my children for who they are. I hope that they will grow up to be sensible, kind and compassionate human beings who dare to be different if they want to and try the unbeaten path if there is one and if they so wish to.

Rule No. 4 :  I love my children no matter what they do but  I  must not overlook their flaws.  I love them all the same. It is not a rule it just is that way.

Rule No.5    :  I must always pay attention and listen to what they say * and I think  they have great insight of the world and can often offer fresh ideas and new approach to a situation.

* (So often I am guilty of that.)

Queen of Hearts chocolate card placed in
 a sealed envelope
from the Fat Duck

Rule No 6     :  I  want my children to know that if ever I  unwittingly put them in an awkward position,  it is unintentional as it is never my intention to embarrass them.

Rule No. 7  :  I cannot expect my children not to subject themselves to peer pressure. I hope that they will rise above peer pressure.

Rule No. 8  :  While I will not make disparaging remarks, I must not unnecessarily raise their platforms or expectations as they must have realistic assessment of themselves. Refer to Rule No4.

In school and at tertiary, we have teachers marking our work. So who is the referee in real life? I will know that  I am doing okay if and when my children continue to believe in their own abilities. My office young partner’s late dad had always told her “Confidence is half the battle won”. So true.

I recently read the novel by John O’Farell “May Contain Nuts”, a hilarious and thought provoking story about a compulsive and  protective  mother who frets about errant drivers on the road and took extreme measures in this league table maniac world to prevent her child from failing the  entrance exam for  getting into the elite school . Alice, the protagonist wanted to do everything for her children: “clear every obstacle in their path, fight every battle and take every blow”.  In the voice of the protagonist , O’farrell wrote“ The period in which your children are totally dependent upon you is such a short phase of your life. You think it’s for ever, then suddenly it’s over; before you’ve even looked up from checking their coats were buttoned up properly , it’s over. One day you are in your kitchen when the doorbell rings and it is your own child arriving home from school, staggering over the threshold with a four-ton ruck-sack of books on her back and her mind weighed down by a million thoughts that you will never know. And you glance up at those framed photos on the stairs of when they were so little, wearing clothes you chose, sitting in swings you had to lift them into, laughing uncontrollably as you pushed them back and forth. And it’s gone. That’s it, she’s grown up- that expression of total trust in her face, it’s gone for ever; just a memory.”

 

As I browse through pre-school photos of my daughters taken when they were growing up, I miss those years and wish that if only they could stay like that for just a little bit longer. I can still recall the time when my child was three years old and we were late for her nursery class. After I had dropped her at the school compound and let her walk to her class on her own, I could not bring myself to drive away as I had this fear that kept me thinking what if someone was lurking in the school compound and she was abducted during her brief walk to the class. You cannot fault me for worrying as in my biased opinion, they were the cutest and adorable kids around. I then stepped out of the car and take a quick walk to the classroom and was relieved that she was already at her desk. I once stood by a joint parental rule that my husband and I  set for our daughter. If she did not make the mark, she would not get to go for the class trip to another state. I was prepared to forfeit the fees already paid so that I could free myself from the anguish that she was going to travel on the school bus. Till this date, she felt that the punishment we had meted out then was a little severe for her score in a language test that proved to be unimportant. I had heard too many horror stories about reckless bus drivers that I would dissuade her from joining the rest of her classmates on those school excursions. When she was twelve and I reluctantly let her go on the junior school trip on a chartered bus ; when I saw the bus  leave, my heart felt this quiver and I was in tears. I had to refrain myself from trailing behind the bus all the way to their destination. I had to put my guard down when my younger child was ten and she took part in some junior squash heats away from home. I had to stop myself from worrying sick about her crossing the big wide road in Kuala Lumpur. Thanks but no thanks to mobile phone because when I could not contact my children on their mobile phones, I became frantic only to be told later that their phone batteries had gone flat. Now that my girls are grown up, I have to  tell myself to stop worrying otherwise I can get carried away by worrying about things like them going to bed too late, losing track of time lines, procrastinating etc etc etc every single thing I am not a good example for . 

They grow up fast but as a parent, you never stop worrying and  if you let your big fat worries take over, parenthood will never be any fun. As  a mother, we forget that we are not running our child’s race but our child is yet we  want to protect our children from harm and also failures at all costs and we cannot imagine that they can manage without us. John O’ Farell wrote, “ You have to let them fall and fail and then try again. Nobody ever learnt anything except by doing it (said a book I’d read to make me a better parent)”.   I sometimes wonder how my mother had done it.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers in the world!

Time Machine

The Astronomical Clock in Prague

About a year ago, my elder daughter asked me, “ Mom, it is said that a woman cannot have it all. That's true right?”  I reckon she and her friends were talking about how a woman must balance her work and family thus it is not possible to have it all. I am not sure if I gave her an answer. Maybe I did not want to discourage her and I wanted to sound optimistic,  I might have mumbled something incoherent that I have no recollection.

A month ago, my younger daughter who is nineteen said to me, “ Mom I want to try so many things.  There are just so many different things I want to do.” That was when she was trying to decide which societies to join in her first year at the university. It is wonderful that she is keen to get involved with the student communities. Her enthusiasm is commendable.

Time is slipping from us. When we are young and robust, we think that we have all the time in the world but if  time travel were possible and  I could go back in time to  tell my young self “ You have to prioritize your goals in life and tackle each one with singularity”, my young self would probably chuckle and dismiss that in a huff.

In his memoir “ What I talk about when I talk about Running”  Haruki Murakami writes about his experience in running and preparing for marathons and how running intersects with writing for him.  He writes about how he has to accept the fact that as he ages, he will not be able to run the way he used to. He writes, “ Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do.”  He observes that physical decline is waiting as you age and though it is not one of your  happier realities, you will have  to get used to that. 

It is a fact that time is ever moving forward without a moment’s rest. Thus it is not important to compete against time but it is important to know one’s limitations and as long as we are physically fit and able, we make the best use of our time to do whatever we enjoy doing. But what happens when there are still so much more to explore and to learn about? The question is how can we prevent ourselves from getting all wired up in order to fit in all the things we must do and also things we like to do?

Whether we are young or old, we do not know what tomorrow awaits us until tomorrow comes. Meanwhile whatever strong desires we have about doing something, we probably should just give it everything we have to set out to do it. So can we try to do it all?

Maybe if we really want something bad enough, if we know for certain what we want, we will somehow make it happen, otherwise we just have to accept that we cannot have or do everything. That is life. It is not just us women who cannot have it all. Nobody can have it all. The author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair My Year of Magical Reading, Nina Sankovitch wrote in her reading memoir about what else she wanted for her children; Ms Sankovitch told her husband about Murakami, “ He doesn’t try to do it all.” Murakami dedicated himself to writing when he decided that writing would be the focus of his life so he gave up socializing and change his lifestyle to suit his new vocation.

Like  Ms Nina Sankovitch,  I would quote Murakami’s words to my daughters:

 “ You really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.”

To be able to do something totally well, we should totally and definitely commit to the task and tackle it with singularity and rigour if and when we decide to do it. But  the difficulty for most of us when we are  young is  to know what is it that we would like  to do with such conviction and quite often nothing specific comes to mind. So tick – tock, tick- tock………..

 

Tiger Moms Rule?

As soon as you become a parent, you worry non-stop. There is always a lot of anxiety as to how to equip our children for their future as they grow up fast. There is also a lot of anxiety about how they are doing when they are away from home. Now with the internet and whats app, skype, you expect instantaneous response. If you do not get connected for a couple of days, your mind starts to get frenzy. So you tell yourself, maybe his phone runs out of battery. Maybe  her phone runs out of credit so you calm yourself down. Maybe he or she is busy with school work...Maybe maybe maybe . Why have we not heard from them? Then a message via skype or a phone call that sounds a little frantic: "Mom I have run out money!". Then you are a little annoyed and  tell them to budget their expenses as we are not some kind of money making machines. You question yourself if you had not taught them the discipline to keep their spending within their budgets. Still you are relieved to hear from them. You want them to  know that you are there whenever they need a helping hand. You worry if you have taught them enough to trust their instincts and to differentiate between those who are good people and those who are not. You worry if you have instilled in them the right priorities, attitude towards life and the strength to handle things when the going gets rough. You wonder if you have equipped them enough to cope when there are rejections or disappointments and to still continue to reach for the sky by trying harder while recognizing our human failings with just the right dose of optimism. 

As the children  grow up,  we try in vain to let go of our instinctive need to protect them from bad or undesirable elements or  from making bad decisions or falling in with the wrong company etc etc etc. Whether we are strict or doting parents, we are all doing our best. Welcome to the world of parenting!

A memoir entitled  "Battle of Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua has spun an international debate  as the author, a self described "tiger mom" spilled the beans about her strict parenting ways.  I must admit that I  am no tiger mom. I am one of those mothers who go for coffee and yoga, one of those mothers  described in the book by Amy Chua as western mothers but  I am Chinese.  I understand that the author qualifies herself  when she describes the tough love parenting method as the Chinese parenting way; the word "Chinese"  serves more as  a generic term rather  than referring to the method as the monopoly of the  Chinese as a race.After reading  the memoir by the most talked about mother, I start to wonder if I should have pushed my children harder. Yes it is a tough wide world out there. My children will have to compete with children who have a tiger mother or tiger dad. Kudos to the  tiger mothers and tiger dads who have done your best as you have put in the hours and you have devoted all your leisure time and energy to making sure that your children  do their homework and practise their piano and violin when mothers like me  sighed a sigh of relief when my children wanted to drop ballet ( that means less ferrying!) and quit the Yamaha music classes ( I  rejoiced as those classes were dreadful and pedantic. If you have not been to any of those classes, I tell you I rather suffer in a Pilate class than attend anyone of those classes ever again!).  

Says the author:  " What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up" 

There I was giving up at the first resistance shown by my children. If I were charged with giving in to the preferences of my children, should I plead guilty? Can  I mitigate and argue that  mothers like me allow our children to make the decisions at an early age so that they will grow up  thinking for themselves rather than doing what they are told to do. We certainly were not  taking the easy way out because there was never an easy way out. There will always be the nagging doubt whether we were doing the right thing. Can I mitigate and say that we just wanted to pursue our passions so that our lives could  run parallel and as a result happier  moms and dads? Since we knew all about the empty nest syndrome,  can i therefore argue that we are only preparing ourselves ahead for the anti-climax when your children are on their own and have their own lives to lead?  Guess parenting is personal and we  must do what we think best for ourselves and for our child as what works for others may not work for us.

Human brains are complicated and human emotions are tricky. What happens if the child is not gifted? To the tiger moms and dads, at least you are pushing them to the best of their abilities. Think the  Singapore movie " I Not Stupid". Despite the fact that these days more and more mothers are working , these women are still the ones who see to the food shopping and attend the parent teacher meeting. If I look on the bright side, I will say perhaps mothers rule after all?  It is apparent that mothers in general play a key role in a child’s progress so what happens if the mother of the child has to work away from home like those women who have to leave their hometown to work as maids ? I guess the child will grow up whether you are there or not . For those of us who can be there, we shall do our best and hope that we have brought our children up alright. Stop worrying Moms and Dads! 

No manual in the world can tell us how to bring up a child. I do not think the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" was trying to tell us why and how the Chinese mothers are more superior, she was just narrating her parenting roller coaster ride which was  in all fairness impressive and touching. She  no doubt reminds me of the protagonist in the novel by Allison Pearson "I Don't Know How She Does It" .  Do these super mothers exist? I like to think that they must have thirty- six hours in a day as opposed to my twenty hours a day. So maybe time is really infinite.  Have you ever not experienced the panic that compel you to race against time with all those tasks at hand and you actually make them all happen when at other less inspired or pressured time, you probably take triple the amount of time to accomplish the same tasks.   For now I shall be in denial as  I need my time to daydream, read my books, play tennis and write this blog.... 

 Coffee or tennis anyone?