18 Jan 2026 – I am in a split emotional state today. We celebrated the 8th birthday of my younger daughter. It was a day of celebration and seeing her so excited for every little thing made me feel more accomplished and fulfilled. But today my older daughter left for the university after her long Xmas break. I feel sad, hurt, and a bit lonely.
This took my thoughts 20-25 years back when we would have thought of having a child and made me think what does having a child mean to us adults. It can be for various reasons. It could be due to social conditioning. While growing up we have seen that once you are married the next step is you have children. We have subconsciously or consciously absorbed that when we are adults we need to have children to carry forward our family name. Another reason is our natural instincts to be parents. Our parenthood kicks in and our biological clock tells us to have smaller human beings and raise them, look after them. A third reason could be our desire to contribute to society, raise responsible and caring individuals who will eventually be the next generation.
It’s an exciting time when the first child comes into your life but also difficult and scary occasionally. In these modern times there are numerous resources to learn about parenting long before the child is born. The hospitals and doctors are well equipped guiding you what can be expected. You attend Antenatal classes. You read all kinds of internet articles, talk to friends. I still remember I had a list of items to buy for the baby which I had come up with through my online research and by talking to my friends who had kids at the time and that list was then passed onto my other friends who had kids after me. I am sure it’s still sitting in between one of my old diary pages.
My personal experience says however much you prepare, you never really know what lies ahead until you go through it yourself. No book can truly prepare you for the day you go into labor and the journey your body and mind take to bring a child into this world. It’s an experience that can only be felt firsthand. And honestly men are missing out big time!
Slowly you get used to the new life in your life. You start getting used to their ways. You track their reactions, their moods, their needs. Things start coming to you naturally as after all at the core its a human need to breed and have off springs. With all said, there will still be times when you don’t know what to do. I am sure we all have faced those situations. I remember one funny incident. I was changing my older one when she was a few months old. I suddenly realized she was covered in rashes. I panicked, called the doctor immediately and took a cab to get to the GP ASAP. The doctor checked and found nothing. The rashes were gone. Till today I don’t know what would have caused those rashes! So yeah they cause you a lot of anxiety at times and you go through many of these scary situations. Especially being first time parents you always doubt yourself and don’t want to leave anything to chance. Being a 2nd time parent is a breeze! I now think if I had the same with my 2nd one I would be like I know this one, let’s give it a couple of hrs.
With your first child everything is first including the birthdays, outings, trips. You are extra enthusiastic, at times more than the child. You want to explore their world with them. You plan every picnic meticulously, you go to all possible theme parks, you plan their outfits for various activities and the special ones for the birthday parties. Talking about birthday parties, your social activities change. On weekends you are going to all possible places where kids can be entertained. Your pleasure is secondary now. Your weekends are dedicated to taking them to their extra curricular classes or birthday parties.
Then comes the fun times when you start planning what schools they go to, the daily drop offs and pick ups, what costume I need to look out for the next stage play, what school trip I am chaperone for next, what will be the theme of their next bday party, how to console them when they don’t get enough votes to be the school monitor, eco club head or school head. On a daily basis you have to deal with a lot of emotion. The most required skill you need to have or develop over time is to keep patience for the longest of the periods while they go through the whole emotion cycle. This is the time when you discover you had all those negotiating skills you never knew you ever had!
As your child gets to the next stages of life in secondary school you now worry about their grades, their performance in school, their resilience, their ability to decide what excites them and what they want to study on a longer term basis. It’s all not so straightforward. We do have to make many tradeoffs. The way the school system is structured is not aligned to what we are preached in terms of letting the child decide what they want to do, let them be kids, let them shape their future. We can deny it all but the reality is that the world is structured to be competitive. You need to put in your best and even slog at times to thrive. Our school curriculum is not structured to let a child grow naturally. After a particular stage they need to study something that doesn’t always come naturally to them. There will be parts of the curriculum that your child has to just do irrespective of if this makes sense to them or not, the extra hours they need to put in to get those grades that will decide where they will end up studying and then accordingly end up in their career.
I haven’t experienced life as a parent beyond this stage. I am sure there is so much more to journey through with them in the coming years. They will find their careers, life partners, and will have their own families. We will be the grand mum and grand dad. They will be reaching many more milestones in their lives and making us proud at every part of their life. We mostly say you never know what could happen next in life but at times i think life is not too unpredictable. Detach yourself from the details and see it from a 2000 ft height. Life shifts from a chaotic, detailed experience to an orderly, patterned, and, at times, silent landscape. From this height details of daily life turn into a grand, manageable and interconnected, slow-moving picture.
After having 2 children, one in university now and the other in primary school, what have I learnt about myself and life in general? While growing up I never saw myself being that responsible adult who one day will be bringing up kids so thinking about it all now is a bit surreal. I think parts of life just happen to us. I never planned what type of parent I will be. Lot of this comes to you naturally. As a parent you always do your best. You make the best decisions for your children, you stretch your limits to support your kids, you don’t care if it’s early morning or late night, you want to fulfill their needs, you are their protector till the end and you wish nothing but the best for them.
It’s such a blessed relationship where you never bring your ego in between. You are dedicated to your children. There is a continuous desire to give. Even on your deathbed if your child will say that they don’t want you to leave the world yet I am sure you would negotiate with Yumraj (the Hindu god of death) to stay in this world a little longer!
Children are a blessing and parenthood is to be cherished!
