Slow Down Mommy!

To do list, clients list, breakfast, lunch & dinner menus, grocery bills, electricity bills, changing nappies, feeding kids, putting them to bed, catching up on emails, reading my favourite magazine, catching up on playdates, daughters classes, projects, keeping them busy, teaching them and reading to them endlessly. These are just a few things that fill my day. I penned this post while waiting for my daughter outside her class, with no network ( thank you Vodafone), realizing how I always want to try an accomplish everything in that list and being ambitious enough to do it. The truth is its too much to do!  However well planned and organized you may be you will still displease someone in the process. especially yourself!

We are also busy glaring endlessly at screens and waiting for that notification on our phone that we’ve forgotten to just be, forgotten to just stop and love, to smell the fresh flowers, to watch our kids drawings and doodles while simultaneously completing errands, to run with them, to bicycle with them, to even eat an ice cream with them. The two words I hear myself speak the most are “Hurry up” . On our way to class yesterday I drove through the crazy traffic just to be on time to only realize that we still managed to reach 5 minutes late inspite of leaving on time. I feel like a mom on a jet ski hurrying my kids everywhere all the time. Hurry up we cant be late, we should always be on time, hurry up or we will miss the bus, hurry up or the ice cream will melt, hurry up or there will be a fly in your milk, hurry to bed, hurry to brush, hurry we will miss the beginning, hurry up we have been at the park for the last 90 minutes and its time for dinner. But like they say you will signs for everything if you want to. I saw my sign too. Yesterday the daughter told my younger one “Hurry up baby, you are too slow, its no fun playing with you.”

I didn’t feel bad that she was being mean to my younger daughter but was saddened by how I made her feel each time I asked her to hurry up. Did I also make her feel like she wasn’t fun to be with? I’m sure I did. Suddenly so many things the older daughter had said zipped by in a fraction of a second. ” Mom why do I always need to bicycle fast, why do I always need to run fast in a race, why cant we sit for some more time?”

Maybe she should have asked me to slow down a while back. I don’t think anybody else could have! I thought I was doing my bit by spending phone free time with them when I was at the park each day or while feeding them or putting them to bed giving them that undivided attention each day.

I don’t want to rush her through life but enjoy just at the pace that she should be enjoying it at. Just the way we grew up where we had time for everything, for our parents, our cousins, our summer vacations and playtime every evening. I don’t want her to ask me again mom are we on time, am I late, did I make you late, are you upset with me for not hurrying up? Oh god!

So here is my plan on letting her be:

1. Buffer time for Tantrums

2. Buffer time for her to be. Wake her up 15 mins earlier than normal so she can just be

3. Respecting time but not going against it

4. Understanding that I can slow down if someone cant catch up

5. Counting till 5 every time I feel like I am losing it

Here is a promise to my daughters: I promise to slow down and not hurry you up all the time.  Promise to let you eat the ice cream at your own pace even if its melting, just like I love eating my Goeey chocolate cake leisurely and sipping my chai while reading the paper on Sunday or actually each morning(wishful thinking, but I am going to try). Sort out everything in advance than last minute, choosing your clothes the previous night along with matching clips, shoes and band. Promise to read that one last book even if its getting late,  as soon you will  read on your own and I will so miss reading to you. I will give you those extra 5 minutes to play in the park before you catch on to the screen syndrome and never visit it again.

We will stop and put life on pause to enjoy our endless hours playing hide and seek, enjoying the silence at Worli sea face, wait for snails to cross so we don’t stamp over them, wait for your eyes to close while I still read. Promise to let you grow at your pace and enjoy every bit of it.

Lots of Love,

Mommy

Rachel Macy has published an article on the same thought here . Great mommies think alike