No Textbook For Textbook Parenting

For a nation, so proficient at making babies, we aren’t too efficient at preparing first-time parents for the grueling life ahead. The onus of training the new mother still rests on her mother, while the new father relies on a whole host of practically experienced or theoretically sound well-wishers and good old Google baba. Prenatal classes continue to remain an elusive creature that your Amrikawale cousins talk about.

Parenting is both an art and a science,but it has no textbooks. You only learn on the job. In most cases, soon after the birth, the all-knowing grandma takes over. For the next 1.25 months (or 3, 5 or 6 months as the case may be), the freshly conscripted mother is taught the tricks of the trade. By and large, Naanis are quite adept at passing on the not-so-secret code of motherhood. But quite often, like a new mobile phone pre-loaded with bloatware, this information also contains a fair bit of “old wives’ tales” – basically, information that is at least 25 to 30 years behind its time.

Now I am not the one to debunk every ancient knowledge as archaic. Some of these ‘tricks’, although not corroborated by any baby book, still work wonderfully well. I even know of few pediatricians who swear by these ‘Naanimaa ke nuskhe’ even if they can’t always explain scientifically as to how they work.

However, the knowledge deficit is not only in skill, but also in temperament. From personal experience, I have realised that one of the most powerful and faithful, yet understated tool in a parent’s toolbox is patience. The exuberance of becoming a parent lasts for the first few days. But eventually at some point, you will be left in a room with a child that knows nothing about the world around and a spouse who is almost as inexperienced and overwhelmed as you are.

There will be nights where the child will cry for no apparent or plausible reason, there will be times where she’ll wake up with a start just when you think that the worst is over, and there will be times when you will repent planning a family in the first place. You will feel frustrated and helpless. And then it’ll turn to anger – sometimes at yourself, sometimes at your spouse, and sometimes, even at your child.

What one needs to remember is – no matter how bad the situation may seem or how incapable and clueless you may feel, you are not alone. Almost every first-time parent goes through this nadir.It is just not something that people make Facebook posts about, so you are usually not privy to such experiences. Another thing to remember is that no matter how dark the night may seem, the morning will arrive. And when this proverbial, but beautiful dawn comes, you will be more patient than you were the night before; and probably more than you ever were in your life before.

Make no mistake, parenthood will continue to throw challenges at you, it will test your patience and it will test your love; but you will be more equipped and better prepared to handle it with every passing day.

(Published, with minor edits, in the January 29 edition of Loksatta-Jansatta newspaper in Vadodara, India. The views mentioned are personal.)