Today, when I went to pick Zainab from school, her teacher asked me how her speech therapy session was. I told her about it and how, miraculously, Zainab had reverted back to almost perfect speech. Almost as if the stammer was a figment of our imagination. Though the problem still needs to be worked on, I never imagined that the results would be seen so soon. She said, “I guess it was just God’s way of teaching you some parenting.”
It is true. I always knew that when my second child would be born that we would continue showering Zainab with love and attention, the way she has always received it. Nothing would change. She would never feel neglected. And I believed that that was what I was doing. Until she started stammering.
Suddenly, we stopped telling her off when she was being naughty, began patiently explaining things to her, bending over backwards to keep her happy and humouring her demands. My husband started coming home early from work to spend time with her. Sundays and holidays are now mostly about her- story telling time, playing games and taking her out.
And we’ve seen the change. The crankiness has reduced. The trantrums are fewer. We had never noticed before how delightfully polite and well mannered she can be – thanking me when I say she looks pretty today, apologising for whacking her brother while playing with him...
But she’s a nifty little child. She’s caught on that we have been behaving extra nice recently and she is milking the situation for all its worth. Yesterday, she was back to her tricks, naughtiness and hourly demands for chocolate. Thankfully, we now know how to deal with it better.
So we are tenderly trudging the middle path, learning everyday how best to treat our kids. How to display our all-consuming love for them and how to stop short of over pampering them. How to teach them and how to learn from them. It’s an exhausting and pain-staking process. But it is the only way forward.
So thank you, Allah, for this lesson. We have only gained from the experience. I know we crib and cry and blame and complain whenever our supposedly well laid out plans go hay wire and we encounter a hurdle in life. We don’t realise that there is a reason for everything. We refuse to believe that there is a grand scheme being playing out in the background. We might not recognise the lesson or the reason, at that moment, or ever maybe. Thank you again, for this speck of realisation from your infinite wisdom.
Sincere apologies for the cribbing,
A Humbled Mother
I remember Zainab coming to my room and close the door, she was always on a secret mission " chocolate eating mission" hiding from you. she exactly knew in which drawer the chocolate pack was and would very sweetly ask me " Maami cho" and there was no way i could say no to her and whenever i asked her for one she flatly refused saying "maami aapke daant kharab ho jayenge" :)...Daniah is also getting stubborn now a days especially when she sees her father her horns come up. we have to stop over pampering her...yes Allah always puts us in a situation to teach us a lesson and also helps us get out of it.
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