The advantages of becoming a PARENT!

I have seen several articles about how it is beneficial to have children. But I dont think I have seen anyone talk about the benefits of turning into parents. If you think its one and the same thing, think again. Having children is not the same as becoming a parent!
We live in a generation where people think a hundred times before having children. There is a lot of fear associated with it. Stability, maturity, responsibility and of course the key one Independence, all of these go out of sync! Yet in the previous generation no one gave it a second thought. It seemed like a routine of life. Like you went to school when you grew up, so you had children after you got married.
Highlight: Marriages lasted a lot longer in that generation. The women of that generation seemed content and the men never really had severe health issues till they hit their late 50's.
But forget the previous generation or even everyone around, when I look at myself, I see a tremendous change in me since I have become a parent. Not since I had a child! But since I became a Parent.

Emotional ecosystem: I used to really only think about myself. I know, selfish right!  But becoming a parent, I realized that there was someone who depended on me entirely. I had to think about the world beyond me. My emotional ecosystem started to expand to include strangers I never would have spoken to otherwise. I started to care about the mother who had a baby in her car seat in the next car while I was driving mine. I started to show sympathy to the father who had to handle the tantrums of his child in the shopping mall. I willingly let families with little children step in front of me in a line either at the grocery store or while paying bills.
While we think we become an emotional nutcase, we are actually forming a better world through our caring new nature in the role of  PARENT. 

Mega-Maturity: If you think you are not mature, become a parent. All kinds of maturity starts squirting out of your ears and noes. No! Not the kind that causes you to talk about politics or the civil system. But the kind people call 6th sense. Your maturity increases in the safety of your child and family. Your maturity increases as you make purchases. You maturity increases as you start saving up for a future.
Its almost like you gain a super-power called Maturity!

From Junkier to Healthier: While there are times when I think I am going to have a heart-attack watching my children jump from the swing, becoming a parent definitely caused me to become healthier. For one thing  I know I need more energy and that does not come from lazing around. I realized that the more I exercise the more I  had energy to keep up with the munchkin. As I became a parent, I started obsessing about if the kids were eating a balanced diet. As a result the table was filled only with healthy balanced products. Colas were less frequent and boiled broccoli came up more often.

Freakish Financial Freedom: As a single person or even when we were married and without kids, I never thought about more than the immediate need. We literally splurged all our money every month. We saved up for immediate usage. If I need a car -- I saved up and usually spent more than what I saved in the knowledge that I would not burden anyone or that I could pay it off in a month or two.  But after becoming a parent, I started thinking of long terms plans. Not just buying a house, but paying it off completely! I was saving for retirement. I was putting aside money in a group called 'emergency funds'. I had health and life insurance. I thought about investment in mutual funds that pulled a chunk of money that pinched every year! But at the end of it we were never living from month to month and always had money stuck in little pockets (well Accounts really) that could be pulled out in an urgent situation.

Rabidly Responsible: I remember loving to drive my car to 'Empty' tank and I even remember having to call my DH to bring gas over! I never do that anymore. With two kids in the car, I am constantly watching petrol tank to make sure I am stocked for my drive away from home and back! I did not just buy a car, I made every effort to maintain it. That's not love for my car that's called being a responsible parents. Since becoming a parent, I pay my bill ahead of time not on the last date, I have a well stocked kitchen and pantry and my refrigerator always has butter to whip up cakes and brownies. This not only makes me a responsible parent but also a great host, who always has brownies warm and ready!

Most of us parents think we are doing a favor by raising our kids but if you actually look at all the above we have a lot to be thankful for becoming parents - something that would not be possible without our little munchkins!

SAVE the 'CHILDREN'

He screams ' Focus ... Focus'. The only response he gets is a blank look. 'Attack the ball... come on Attack'. And there is no reaction. Its probably because the 5 year old just doesn't get the meaning of 'focus' and does not understand why he needs to attack the soccer ball.

The situation above is at the soccer game of my 5 year old. Soccer at 5 should be balance of fun and sportsmanship. Yes learning to win is important but its not everything.

We ( DH and I ) have been watching parents around the soccer field like kids go to see animals at a zoo. Apologies for that comparison. But when you scream at a 5 year old because he doesn't score a goal .. I feel no other comparison fit. I wonder when a father screams at his child to 'focus' does it reflect in anyway on his own struggles. I jokingly told my husband that ' Its probably what his manager tells him.' I wonder whether we just push our children to do the things we were not able to do.

Encouragement: Believe me I am not against encouraging some good skills set and it is definitely hard to motivate a 5 year old. My little boy does not seem to interested in soccer. Yet we are there week after week because we believe he needs the the physical activity. But listening to the other parents scream we have begun to wonder whether this is a good place to get any kind of exposure other than unhealthy competition. We are Homeschoolers ...so competition has been long thrown out. We believe that there is only one person you need to compete with and that is yourself. Strive to be better than who you were yesterday. In the case of a 5 year old his goal should read something like this ' You could not tie your shoe lace yesterday ... well lets try again today.'

Weaklings: Another incident that happened simultaneously on the soccer field was a few mothers walk onto the soccer field and demand that their 5 year olds be moved up to a more senior batch. After all who wants to play with 'Kaccha limbus'. The kids were all listening intently as the coach tried reasoning out with two women who probably never played a sport in their life. They had to be told about how there were skills sets that came with development and development came with age. I think the moral the kids learnt was 'Please do not waste your time with those who are any lesser than you'. The end result of this upgrade was the two boys who normally do really well struggled to hit the ball against boys much older than them.

We already live in a  world that lacks compassion. We think the weaker person is to be walked over and thrown away. Why else would 6 years olds be getting raped? We are raising our children to do just about anything to get their way and move ahead. Even if it means asking mom to speak to the coach or pushing over just about any child that cannot make the cut. We need compassion. Not aggression.

Healthy competition: And we do it all in the name of healthy competition. DH and I are very competitive. We have made the best of all that came in our life. But there is something called a sore loser and I feel by pushing our kids and screaming at them when they play games we are telling them that there is no good in losing. The sports field is the best place to teach a child the values of life such as failure is not the end or life! Do not quit! Run like you have never run before! Enjoy the game! We dont raise kids to be successful when we push them - we just make them sore losers. I have even seen the kids do pelvic thrust when they score a goal or lip sync foul language when they dont.

Reaction of the world: With the world cup just over and the amount of jokes on the Indian team and their girlfriends, it seems rather important to realize that we have all stopped enjoying the game for what it is. We enjoy it because we win. When we lose we are sore losers. These jokes come from people who probably never even picked up a cricket bat. On Sunday they only thing my DH said was - 'I hope New Zealand wins - They have sportsmanship.' The sad part is we train our children to be poor sportsman beginning at ages as young as 5 years old.

We talk often about the environment and saving the tiger so our children may enjoy seeing this animal. But are were saving our children and raising them to appreciate the environment and the tiger. Or are we just raising them to be aggressive and competitive adults. The famous saying is 

 'We talk about leaving a better earth for our children. But are we leaving better children for our earth?