When my children were toddlers, I had a quote stuck on my shelf which read, “When we lose our agendas, everybody wins.” At that time I was just beginning to take tiny steps towards gentle parenting and words like ‘triggers’ and ‘childhood wounds’ were unfamiliar to me. But, this quote gave me some direction in my otherwise ambiguous motherhood journey. ‘Stop having set plans and you will not struggle so much with your toddler’ became my go to, to give my children more of a peaceful mummy and less of a yelling and disregulated mum.
It’s almost eight years later; the paper I wrote the quote on was removed a long time ago. But, this morning, something happened that had me stand up straight and realise that the journey of the gentle parent is always an ongoing one, until we say goodbye to life on Earth.
I was making chapatis for lunch today. Both my children show curiosity about what lunch I’m sending and after some episodes of ‘Ugh, sambar today’ and ‘eww, why kootu’ they were disciplined (gently, of course, maybe, probably) to not say these mean things about food I was making to nourish them. After that, my little ones (who now reach my shoulders), began wordlessly coming into the kitchen and inspecting the menu for themselves - without the grimace and commentary…haha!
Anyways, I was in a hurry to finish things on time when my older twin asked me to make a baby chappathi. I was short on time and told her that it would not be possible. She was a little disappointed and walked away. But, after I finished my work, I had a little dough left, so I made two tiny chapatis and began roasting them on the tawa. I wanted to secretly pack it with their lunch and my heart felt contented imagining their surprise and the non-verbal way in which I would have told them that I loved them and that their desires meant so much to me.
As I was roasting the secret chapatis, my younger twin walked into the kitchen. I was like, ‘oh no’. So I told her about my plan to surprise her and her sister, but now since she knew, she needed to keep it a secret. She agreed and found ways to keep her sister out of the kitchen. A few minutes later, I was outside, packing lunch, when my older twin walked into the kitchen and as she took her breakfast plate, she noticed the tiny, baby chapatis. She immediately asked, “Amma, is that for us?”
So absorbed in my agenda was I that I completely forgot the whole purpose of me making those baby chapatis - to show my love to my children. Instead, I felt anger that my plan had gone kaput and was annoyed with both my girls for having found out. Thankfully, I’m in a place in my journey where I’m able to control (most times…not all the time) my outbursts and I just sulked quietly. That’s when ‘When we lose our agendas, everybody wins’ surfaced back into my conscious. And suddenly, I saw the quote, the situation, my motherhood and my growing children in a new light.
The paradigm shift helped and I crawled out of my bad mood and was able to go on with the rest of the morning prep and rush with a cheerful spirit.
It’s continuous and demands work, but the gentle parenting journey is the most Christ-like, God-like parenting that I can imagine. The grace I receive from my parent - my God, is the inspiration with which I offer grace to my children.
