The perfect parent-child bonding tool is just ten minutes away

Our schedules are jam-packed with meetings, official travel, weekend plans, holidays, movies and what not. This leaves us almost no time to spend with our little ones. Still in the midst of all the clutter, our munchkins demand our attention with all their might. Lingering on, many of us also fall into the trap of feeling guilty due to our unavailability. The truth is that all of us are trying to fit into the demands of the ultimate work - life balance and are not alone in this fight. We all are striving   to find the slightest streak of time to spend some warm time with our families. 

Bonding was never an issue ever. But, with shortage of time, there are surging issues in creating the adequate environment for the natural growth of children. Suddenly we have more artificial environments and superficial relationships in the form of day cares and nannies. We are all stuck in the same well and trying to pull-push the rope to come up. 

In the given circumstances, what can be the best way to bond with our children in the shortest time possible?

The answer is that, the perfect parent-child bonding tool is just ten minutes away! 

A Parenting Lifestyle can have it's best experience by making "Story Telling" an eternal part of the daily routines and struggles.

Stories are the most creatively simple form of art to enlighten children with the core life skills required for survival and growth too.

Children who are brought up on stories are holistically balanced in every way.

Some great benefits of story telling are-

1. Build the never-ending quest for learning and thinking process

Children right from the start are intellectually sound & knowledgeable. With stories, their thirst for learning continues forever since it has already been built throughout the growing-up years. Devoting a ten minute regime daily builds a certain discipline in the child to keep working on exploring the several boundaries of their thinking process. This in turn has an everlasting impact on the child's imagination, confidence level and self-esteem too. 

2. Score high on emotional intelligence

Since stories are all about give and take between two sources, children know they have to wait their turn. Also, the several characters and themes of the stories gives them a much clear picture of how the world works in reality and in fantasy too.Kids becomes self-aware of their conscious needs and over-whelming wants. Just like there is a structure of a story - Background, theme, action, plot, style, climax, ending; Children too start structuring their understanding of themselves (intra-personal skills) and clearly flag their feelings to express them through emotions. This leads to a through cleaning of the psychological mental state of the body and the mind. There by, children understand the significance of life and also live out the delicate balance of yin and yang.  

3. Cultural and Inter personal (relationship) skills 

   Stories are a great source to keep children grounded to their cultural roots. For parents, usually the best way to start telling stories is by sharing their childhood

   incidents and family tree history. Many cultures, languages, linguistics and communities have survived the test of time by carrying forward traditions, festivals and

   observance of occasions through the art of story telling. Tangible crafts and intangible heritage need to survive the generations through the knowledge of their

   existence. Stories are the best way to keep them in remembrance with the future generations.      

4. The Power of Perseverance

The keep trying till you succeed attitude has taken a huge fall with today's world of use and throw. Stories build the attitude of keeping at it till one achieves the desired results. Not keep shifting focus, but, keep giving the best shift even if time eludes. Also, children tend to become more mindful of their physical boundaries.

Because the patience they showed in listening to the stories gives them the power of labelling their work areas and their several energy levels at different times.   

5. Inclusiveness and Diversity

Stories portray several kinds of characters and keep the child open minded to accept and not judge people. They become socially sensitive & empathetic and

confident to be out there in any corner of the world and survive the odds. Since we live in a global world, it's essential we make children understand through stories what it means by 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', - the world is one family!

Your story telling time is the most intimate bonding time you have with your children where every tiny move is questioned and answered.

Just by cooking-up a ten minute story for your child's bedtime, you can take care of your parenting role for a lifetime.

Under The Pretext Of A Progressive Indian Family

I never believe a word will ever become cliche with my belief in Karma. But, then the word “Progressive” does annoy me much with its super saver status on many matrimonial platforms. “The boy belongs to a progressive family!”. Now, does this mean financially progressive ? or mentality progressive? Progressing towards what? The alarming rate at which this word has been brewing over a decade now makes it for a rustic topic to write on. And so here I am giving “Progressive” a deep cut from it’s routine of just being there to lure the nuptial ties.  

The truth is that I am one of those never doubting naive souls who got overtaken by the power of the word “Progressive” (from a mentality perspective of being an open-minded family) when I tied knots. And it did cost me much turbulences to understand very early on in my journey as a married woman that the word “Progressive” actually means the “Big Unsatisfying Ego” of the family of the mentioned “Cultured and Clean Boy” who want their respective stake in every move that this wedded couple will take in their life long journey together.

During my twenties, I used to turn my judgmental knob to the loudest, mostly when I knew of a person who has hurt me or my loved ones. Though by the time I got married which was on the verge of me entering my thirties, I had slowly come to practice, the way of life where I do not get into conversations which belittle people. I was quite mature in understanding my needs in life and my craving for where I want to go.

But, “Under the pretext of a progressive Indian family” it became real tough not to wear the bitching cape and dance to the tunes of deliberate procrastination which my mother-in-law threw on me because she could not see the ideal daughter-in-law in place. The deal she wanted to strike with her son was remake her and let her suit our needs. Well the “our needs” was actually “her need” to show to the world that she will forever be the ruling queen and I, just a subdued and submissive puppet like what our age old trusted culture expects of daughter-in-laws.

My realization on to not to give her what she wants and that “ignorance is not bliss” in my case, took a long time. I accepted that the dynamics of life rolls it's dices to show us its different sides. People behave so different in changing surroundings and time boxes. Here, I had to be the change. I cannot be simply me but, someone who will stand up to confront the undeserving attitude. I did face it and behaved different from what the society expects of any daughter-in-law who is supposed to enter the family as a daughter. But, when I was never taken in as a daughter why will I need to express my gratitude?

Today, I was reading this write-up by Sadhguru “Mother-in-law demystified”. Read it here -http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/relationships/mother-in-law-demystified/

So true, many a mother-in-laws and even sister-in-laws seem to suffer from a crab mentality. Under the overdose of their patriarchal state of mind, neither do they want to fly away and neither they want women who walk into their households to get ahead of them. This is akin to the mentality of crabs. When you put many crabs together in a bucket, none of them will be able to crawl out, because while one crab tries to get out, the other pulls it down and in the process no crab manages to get out since they all impede each others progress.

For many Indian Families, the word “progressive” is like a defense mechanism to protect their ego like a consolation prize, a fantasy that they repeatedly play out in their heads to make themselves believe that the competitor family or their daughter isn't that successful after all. Relationships fall out very badly when sometimes these mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws thrive on others failures and derive sadistic pleasure from their pain without realizing that doing this does NOT take them ahead. You cannot become taller by cutting of someone's legs.

The truth in life is that no amount of competition or jealousy is going to stop us from realizing that as social beings we all want to co-exist happily ever after. And words like “progressive” need to be taken down.

The recent advertisement by “All out India”, questions this very hidden essence of Indian families under the pretext of being progressive. We the women are the change who can bring up the gender equality index. 

#StandByToughMoms