When I look at all these ads, I am reminded of all the times I tried to get my baby to ‘spend time productively’. I got him all the ‘right’ toys. Lamaze toys. Mortimer the moose & Jacques the peacock. Multi sensory Toys with the right texture & pattern to help develop his brain..

Melissa and Doug wooden blocks when he was a year old because wood toys are better I had read. Soft toys that promised to teach my child sentences and 100 new words. Wooden jigsaw puzzles to develop cognitive abilities. Busy boards, carpenter sets to develop motor skills.

Of course nothing went according to plan. My son would fling blocks. The hammer in the carpenter set was tested more on my lipsticks than hammering away at toy nails. I ended up completing all the jigsaw puzzles. He didn’t want to be a coder. He wanted to be a bunny.

It was only when I started to see my child as a child and not as some project that has to be aced that the stress of parenting left me. I started to listen to him instead of getting him to listen to my instructions. He liked Beethoven. We saw concerts & fun Broadway performances

He liked stories. He picked up more than a hundred words by just talking to me. I introduced him to art through the lives of artists. Salvador Dali, Edvard Munch, Amrita Shergill became his favourites. We would recreate famous paintings for fun like Munch’s Scream here-.

“I think I am shy, mama” he told me once when a relative told him he should be as confident as his mom and dad. My child is only 7.
He doesn’t have to be like his mom and dad or an improvement on them. I want him to be himself and I will help him be the best version of it.

Byju’s, Einstein, WhiteHat jr & myriad other classes could teach him math or coding. But they won’t be able to teach him something only parents can- to love yourself. And that it’s perfectly fine not to be the coolest or the smartest kid in class as long as you like yourself.

You see, the only pursuit that your child should be taught to undertake is the pursuit of happiness. Coding could make him happy. Or not. Just go easy on yourself. And on your child.