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Monday, May 09, 2005
Carino: Parental Guidance
By Linda Grace Carino
WHEN I became a mother close to 18 years ago, probably like any other woman of my generation, I was determined to be a good parent.But of course, one thinks. There isn't really an "of course" about it, methinks. I find that for generations before mine, parenting was perhaps taken for granted, i.e., parenthood was simply a part of the cycle of life and a phase, like birth, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, being-married-hood, grandparenthood, growing even older, death.
I could be wrong, but it was probably with my parenthood started to be recognized as a job, one that required skills and a conscious determination to make good at it. It was only in the 80s, for example, that the social welfare department actually launched "parenting skills" programs, this in response to a felt need, that many a parent needed to be taught what the job was all about.
Myself, it was a conscious decision to breastfeed, despite the paradigm that still exists in this country that it is more fashionable to bottle feed. All of my siblings, who are all younger than I am, were bottle-fed.
I remember waking up after delivering my son in July 1987 and just being in so much physical pain, then immediately thinking: colostrum. My baby has to have colostrum. I was very, very determined that he get that thick, yellowish fluid rich in antibodies and infection-fighting stuff, available only from mother's milk. I also knew that it was available for only three days or so.
For one reason or another, it was already by the second or third day that I could breastfeed my baby. Since, to my mind, he wasn't going to get enough colostrum, I was rather obsessively upset. Though looking back now, I guess he got some of it.
Then there was the acute consciousness that a child's optimum learning age is actually from 0 - 7. So even while still pregnant, I made a conscious effort to think positive thoughts, listen to uplifting music, cultivate only good company. Oh yes, I stayed away from gossip, whiners, and what have you.
I put effort into choosing toys that would teach. Special note:that Tupperware ball with the different shaped blocks, you know?So a child can drop a block into an opening it fits into. So an oblong block can get into the ball only if dropped through the oblong hole, etc... So I'm all excited presenting this toy to my baby, explaining what he's supposed to do. It takes him two minutes, tops, to figure it out and voila!The blocks are in a flash. I call it the two-minute toy from then on. Although the blocks did serve to teach him shapes and what to call them.
Which reminds me of a more recent related incident. I have this delicious two-year-old nephew named Thor, who got gifted lately with a bus with differently shaped windows. Yes, the bus came with blocks he was supposed to drop into matching windows. The bus however had a back hatch to empty it of blocks. Well, Thor, instead of dropping the blocks into matching windows, just opened the back hatch and dropped them all in through it. Hmmhmm.
O - 7 is a great time. As a mom, I made sure my son did not play with toy guns and other seemingly harmless "toys" when he was that age. His television intake was closely monitored. He learned to love books, and so on and so forth, despite being told I was being "O.A." Well, I'm glad I didn't listen.
But seven is a far way from 17, and this teen age has different rules. On this Mother's Day, my fervent prayer is that I can look back 10 years hence and say, yeah, I handled it well.
(May 9, 2005 issue)
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