Unhelpful

When I was in 3rd Std, my class teacher ran a competition for the best ‘good behaviour chart’. Everyone had to make the chart, which had the names of all my classmates and a column for good mark ( red  dots) and a column for bad mark. ( black dots). Amma made my chart for me. She cut flowers from old Christmas cards and decorated my chart and the teacher chose mine and I got the credit for something I didn’t do.

When baby was in grade 3, she had some project  that involved in making a poster. End of the term, parents were invited to the class to see the project..All the posters except one were very similar..stick figures, irregular writings with lots of spelling mistakes. But the one that was different..looked exactly like my good behaviour chart. It was picture perfect.

My son had a mechatronics project due this week. The past few weeks he has been asking me what he should make. I felt, it is his project and he should figure it out. He was really annoyed with me because I refused to help him and told me, I am a mean unhelpful mother.

This is where the dilemma I face is. Where do I step in? and When do I not help? He is coming to me for help because I am well read and can guide him, which is my job as a mother. But I don’t want to be like my mother..

I don’t know what he made for his project. He didn’t tell me because he is very annoyed with me. The marks he gets for the project will be part of his term report.

The feeling is should have, could have is bothering me.

4 thoughts on “Unhelpful

  1. Well, we all go through the “could have, should have”, but since you stuck to your gut, there must have been some reason..put it under Mother’s instinct.

  2. Children are treasures of ideas, novel and innovative. They are so imaginative also. They may falter at conceptualization level due to inexperience and that is the point where the parents have to step in with suggestions to make it perfect and help their abstract ideas turn to concrete shape with beauty.
    Leaving it to themselves make them frustrated.

    So Sarah, don’t allow your 3rd Standard. follies to recur in your children.

    • Bipin: Valid points..but still it is his project, he has to figure out what he wanted to do.. I wouldn’t have minded if he came to me asked what I thought of his ideas, he wanted the easy way out..get mom to do all the thinking..

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