keep running

Oh god. Now at school they want Jispa to come to school early at 7 am for taekwondo practice twice a day. Oh man o man. Now this means leaving home at 6.30am on Tuesdays and Thursdays for school, in addition to the leaving home at 5.30am for swimming practice on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Jasmine and I did not know how to react to this news. Is this a good thing or a bad thing, from two perspectives?
First perspective – Jispa. The poor thing has a packed schedule. There is regular swimming and taekwondo, and one orphaned guitar class a week. Now in such a packed schedule, she has to manage her homework, extra time pass reading, playing with friends, studies during reviews and what not. In addition to this we are wondering on the physical burden on the child. We try and ensure she gets her adequate sleep, even if it requires us to scold her and switch off the lights when she wants to read. The second thing is that how do we give her adequate nutrition? Jasmine had spoken to a nutrition expert through a common friend. Her advice was that till the child reached adolescence, there is more harm than good if one tries to regulate nutrition through planning. Eat well, eat all you want, ensure balance. This is both great and worrying honest advice. This puts the pressure of nutrition squarely on parents. So now we keep thinking of what is enough or not. Add to this the fact that Jispa is developing an awesome abdomen. She had some serious ab muscles. These won’t let her tummy expand. So she will feel full in smaller meals that she would need from time to time. Then comes school, which is not exactly designed for small meals. They have fixed breaks with long intervals in between. How does Jasmine give her adequate food to last her through the long periods when her tummy is small to store much? At least that is the dilemma we believe exits. I think pretty soon I might have to chat with the school and get some special permission to eat every two hours. A small bite, a mini meal or so. And then the problem of cooking something a nine year old would want to eat. Jasmine goes mad trying to cook stuff. Jasmine is not exactly a blessed cook. She is quite adequate to the job but she is a bit bored cook. Asking her to challenge herself to cook something interesting everyday is a bit of a non starter. Compounding the issue is Jispa deciding at random not to eat her school snack completely. Shit. That just gets everything in a mess. So this time when the taekwondo call came in Jasmine was wondering, how are we going to feed her before the class and what do we give her to eat after the class. Mar gaye re… AND THE BIGGEST ISSUE – Jispa takes forever to eat. She is easily the most bored, lost and sleepy eater in the world. She can eat one bite and then take forever to put the next one in. she can put one bite in the mouth and then hold it in her mouth without chewing it for minutes on end. It drives us wild. Especially when you have to beat the clock in the morning. JISPA CHEW is the most popular word in our house. We have to keep reminding her, scolding her, shouting, everything. She sits with one knee raised to her chin and then rests her hand on it and then it’s waiting for Godot. I went hard after the knee bit. No knee on top. Not that I have a problem with it, but it puts her in a position where she just sits and dreams away. she can take 45 minutes for breakfast. We can’t wake her any early; we can go to school any later. This is a killer. Its kills us as parents. We feel like mean bloody driven parents.
I being the father took the complete cop out. This was more than what my brains could effectively handle. So I suggested the simple route – Complan - a milk drink in the morning which claims to have all the bloody nutrients you could think of. It’s like a vitamin cocktail. Jasmine and I never wanted to give Jispa these cocktails. We were of the belief that as long as you eat right you don’t need any artificial supplements. But given the pressures of time and the added responsibility of a square meal, we are left with no option but to give her a glass of complan in the morning. She likes the taste and drinks it one shot. We don’t need to scold her and she is off, ready to pack a mean punch.

Here she is, having a glass of Complan in the morning.
Now Jasmine has to pack something really tasty and pack it for a small fast meal after taekwondo and before school starts. I listed down all the possible stuff she can make. All the tasty fatty stuff, basically I write all the permutation and combinations you could have with potatoes, cheese, butter and paneer. Sometimes you toss them, sometimes you shallow fry them, you pack them, you sandwich them – whatever. Just pass them on.
So now you realize why we did not find great joy on hearing that she was selected for morning Taekwondo. The second perspective is that we are being severely stretched as parents. We got sucked into this mess in spite of not being driven parents. We said no classes for Jispa. Only swimming, which is a good thing? She started performing and moving up and more importantly enjoying her swimming. We had no option but to follow suit. Then this school. We are sucked into a vortex which makes us run around, freely her, revolve our lives around her extra circulars. Waking up early with her is taking a toll on us. How much can we do without breaking? Especially when we get no special thrill in seeing her medals.
All we can do is hope that this will make her a fitter person, a better person and hopefully this is a well-rounded childhood, and most importantly – we keep asking her – you sure you enjoy this, nah? Are you dead sure? You are not doing all this for us – please do only what you can do. The only thing we ensure she does is home work. Rest all is optional.

he who laughs last...

We had an interesting time last week. We realised that now we were moving into a prenting zone that increasingly would have situations where you know less and less about what to do or behave. Jispa was having a taekwondo competition in school on Saturday and on Monday while she was practising in school, she over did her practice kicking. By mistake she ended up kicking a pillar and got her tiny toes hit in the process. It was ok whole day and she even swam till it was time to sleep and it hurt a bit. I saw it was swollen and feared a fracture.
As a kid I used to get hurt quite a bit, I gave got bruised, cut, hit but I have never got a fracture. I so wanted one. The fun of wearing plaster to school on which everyone would be able to write messages etc. I always used to get a hit and then get an x-ray only to come back disappointed.
The next day she missed school for some x-rays and the result was negative – no fracture. So we went to our ayurvedic doc to get some medicines to heal the foot and to reduce the swelling. The question now was – what about the competition. I did not care two hoots about it. It’s just an internal competition and that doesn’t really matter, does it? Jispa obviously wanted to take part and doc was ambivalent. If it does not hurt much she could go. Jasmine called up the teacher and gave her an update. In the following days her teacher caught up with her and pumped her up. Jasmine was almost pissed. She told Jispa ‘ you are my girl, you are my best kicker, you got to do it.’
Now what to do? Jispa is pumped up and so is her teacher. I would rather not and Jasmine is with me on this.
Jispa also takes part in inter club swimming meets. There one marathon coming up. What? I asked? A swimming marathon? How many laps? 80 laps of 25meters. WOW. NO was my response. How on earth would she do it? Jasmine too was confused. We asked her coach. Her coach was like – ‘we can take a call. It’s ok. Ask Jispa if she wants to do it?’. Ask Jispa? How would she know? Then Jasmine told me that Jispa does around 50- 60 laps a day while in class in any case. Wow. That’s cool, but 80 laps. Her coach thought about and discussed it with the senior coach and came back and said – go ahead. Jasmine was still wondering when the coach said ‘do it if Jispa wants to do it. On her ability to do 80 laps – that’s ok. She CAN swim 80 laps.’
Look at these situations. As a parent you want to push the child but you don’t want to PUSH the child. You have an idea of her abilities but you don’t really KNOW of her abilities. Here you may disagree with the coach but you know that the coach is probably right. So now we are entering territory where the parents takea back seat and simply watch. I guess we can only be there to encourage and not much else. I probably know jack shit of swimming and even less of taekwondo.
Any ways... her school competition was on Saturday and she was fighting a girl one year elder. That’s a big thing at her age. Given my class and some other commitments, I reached just 10 minutes ahead of schedule to know that it started ahead of schedule and I saw them as they just finished. Talk about timing. Exactly 5 seconds late. Drat. There were two rounds and the first was tied 4 all and the second Jispa lost 2-3. I just came in time to see them announce the result of the bout on the area and then see Jispa remove her protective gear. As the results were announced, Jispa started to cry. She suddenly realised her damaged foot was paining. While it might be true I think it was an emotional release. It’s a tough ask to go in and start kicking and fighting, especially for a girl and especially for Jispa. Jispa is not a natural one to pick a fight with someone. She has a lot of qualities like care, love and forgiveness in her. For her to kick constantly and attack might be an emotional roller coaster. Possibly the balm of winning might have been a soothing touch but the defeat would mean a chance to release. Possibly it was just that – the adrenaline wore off and her foot started to hurt. Possibly she psyched herself not to feel the pain for a few days and it now all gave way. Who knows? But anyways. Since her school is a tiny winy pond, she got a silver for her efforts. One bout you lose and get a silver? Possibly that’s her category or something. Only two in it and no more rounds... who knows. Quite frankly I don’t care. No point in competing in that really small pond.
As for the swim meet, that’s yet to happen. We have sent the entry, but the dates aren’t announced. So thats us relying on the teacher more than on parenting instinct.
But wait – there is still justice at last. AS a family we have been avid bird wacthers in the last few years with us each having our bird books and we keep roaming around spotting birds. Yesterday in class she had a session on birds of India where she told us that she kept correcting the teacher – Miss, that’s a crane not an egret and that’s the egret which you called a crane. The egret is a common bird you see everywhere, even from the bus while going to school. Whoops. Then she explained to the teacher that the bird you called pigeon is actually called the blue rock pigeon. Double triple whoops. It seems that the teacher did not really believe her. Also it seems she knew all the birds that the teacher spoke about. And many more :). Haha. The parent’s last laugh. So we do know a bit about teaching our kid, after all.