When Storytime Turns Serious: Navigating the Hard Questions

Avyaan’s bedtime routine is a cherished ritual, where we read together from the book that rests on our bedside table. However, tonight’s story took an unexpected and serious turn. The narrative included a couple of characters meeting their end, not in a gory or frightening way, but enough to bring up one of the most challenging conversations a parent can have with their child: the topic of death.

Usually, after the story ends, Avyaan snuggles up beside us and drifts off to sleep. Tonight, though, I noticed a pondering look in his eyes. Then came the question that every parent dreads: “Will you and Mom die too?”

I wasn’t prepared for this question. I don’t think anyone is. Yet, from the moment I became a parent, I committed to being honest with my child, even about life’s harsh realities. Taking a deep breath, I answered truthfully: yes, everyone dies eventually, including us. My answer made him visibly uncomfortable, and he anxiously followed up with another question.

He said, “But I don’t want you to die. I will have no parents. Who will take care of me?” I reassured him as best I could, telling him that, hopefully, this wouldn’t happen for a long time and that by then he would be grown up and able to take care of himself. Although he didn’t seem fully convinced, he finally relaxed and fell asleep. Now, I am the one left awake, reflecting on the conversation.

I find myself questioning how to balance honesty with comfort. How do we create a sense of security while helping our child process difficult truths and develop resilience? Did I handle the situation the right way? For now, Avyaan is sleeping peacefully, and I’ll consider that a success.

His questions linger in my mind. They have made me confront my own mortality, something we all know is inevitable but often avoid thinking about. I offered comfort in the moment, but now I wonder how we should prepare for the future, understanding that we will not always be here for him. Love for our children is not just found in bedtime reassurances; it is also reflected in the practical steps we take to ensure their safety and security, no matter what happens. This means it is time to begin the difficult conversations about guardianship and to make legal, financial, and emotional arrangements now, so that Avyaan will always feel loved and protected, even if the unimaginable occurs.

In a sense, his question was a gift. It prompted me to think not just about soothing his fears, but also about facing my own and taking steps to ensure his future well-being.

Why are you still sitting here?

3 years have gone by since my last post here. 3 years is a long time, and countless fleeting moments, core memories, firsts that were missed from being recorded on a blog that was meant to record them for posterity. However, I opened this up today to record something profound that happened today.

Relaxed family time is a rarity, and today evening was one such time when the stars aligned and there was no cooking to be done, no remaining work to catch up on, no temper tantrums to address. So the three of us sat together at the dining table, eating guacamole on toast, which qualifies as dinner at our home.

I eat fast, so I was done soon and was just sitting at the table while Prajakta and Avyaan worked on their portions. That's when this conversation happened between Avyaan (A) and me (M):

A: Why are you not eating?

M: Because I am done eating.

A: Then why are you still sitting here?

M: Because I like being with you. You are my family.

A: But you could be doing something else.

M: Like what?

A: Like work.

And... my heart broke a little. The poor kid doesn't recall a time when we were just chilling with each other. While we do spend time with him, a lot of it is individually with one parent, while the other deals with whatever life has thrown our way during that time. Most of it is trivial stuff, some corner to be cleaned, some email or message to respond to, meals to be prepped, clothes to be folded, dishes to be cleaned, and so on, but it all adds up. And when we do spend time together as a unit, it is still undertaking some activity - walking around the park, going to the grocery store, Costco runs, and the sort.

I tried explaining that things are the other way around. While work is important, it exists so that we don't have to worry about existential things and can spend time with each other. Although, in retrospect, I'm not sure if I was trying to provide a life lesson to him, or reminding myself of what's important.

This whole parenting thing is not easy, but moments like these that make you ponder over what your values are, what example you are setting for the little impressionable human who looks up to you, and in the process help make you a better person, make it all worthwhile.

I end this note with the hope that unrushed family time becomes so frequent that next time it happens, he doesn't treat it as an exception.

Tractor Nightmares

Avyaan is now at a stage where he, sometimes, talks in his sleep, and wakes up when has had some sort of scary one.

Today morning, when he was half awake, he suddenly woke up, and the first line he said was, "किसने लिया अव्यान का ट्रॅक्टर?" ("Who took away Avyaan's tractor?").

Some context should help here. Avyaan is very fond of model vehicles, of all sorts. It doesn't matter whether it is a big rig truck, a garbage truck, a police car, or a vintage jeep, he loves them all. My sister, Bhavya, is visiting us and she brought him a model tractor, the workhorse of Indian agriculture. As anything novel, he refused to let it leave his side for all of yesterday. You can see him sleeping with the tractor in his hand during his afternoon nap.

However, as the day went on, he started poking and prodding at its parts, and by the evening had destroyed the steering wheel. By dinner time, one of the seats was also out, at which point I took it away from him and told him that he'll not get it if he kept destroying it.

Apparently, he was dreaming about his tractor at night. It must be nice to be at an age where your nightmares concern losing toys and you don't have much else to worry about.

Mumma, TV pe Cocomelon laun de!

I always knew that Avyaan is going to be multilingual. He is typically surrounded by Hindi, Marathi, English, and Punjabi. If we continue to live in the US, I'm sure he'll have a fairly decent exposure to Spanish as well.

Hindi is my primary language and the preferred mode of communication with my side of the family. Prajakta's side almost exclusively speaks to him in Marathi, while my parents do sprinkle in some Punjabi here and there, which is culturally our native language, and which I can understand, but unfortunately, never made an attempt to learn to speak, read or write.

English is inescapable and a must-know in the modern world, but we need to do a better job at exposing him to it. The ongoing pandemic, and the lack of vaccines for kids under 5, means that we cannot enroll him into usual child activities. Both Prajakta and I are notoriously asocial, so we don't have many friends locally, and we don't get invited to anything, which also means Avyaan doesn't get any socialization.

The only group activity he is a part of is a once-a-week kids gym class at the nearby My Gym which has helped him a lot in giving an out for his endless energy and introducing him to other kids his age. But since we don't speak to him in English, the extent of English he knows is pretty much the rhymes we sing to him, what he watches on TV - Cocomelon, and some basic interactions he has with the people passing by when he's sitting in the balcony.

As he grows up, his cognitive abilities and linguistic skills are also exploding, so he absorbs everything he observes. So, we were a little surprised when he went to Prajakta, with the Roku remote in hand, and said - "Mumma, TV pe Cocomelon laun de", which is a perfect amalgamation of the 3 primary languages he is currently exposed to. He mixes languages when communicating, and will probably continue to do so as most multilingual people do, but I hope as he grows up, he gets better at regulating his language and can form sentences that stick to one language at a time.

Little Minion

Every few weeks, I re-realize the obvious - Avyaan is growing up, and fast! When you are a new parent, you get tired of hearing the same cliche from the veteran parents, "Cherish these days, they don't last as long as you think!". But as you continue your parenting journey, you have to admit that cliches are cliches for a reason. It feels like yesterday when we brought this tiny human home, who comfortably fit in my forearm, and now, containing him in my lap is a challenge.

You can literally spend the entire day watching him play with his toys, throwing stuff around, identifying objects in his books. There isn't a dull moment in the house when he is awake. It is the silence that gets you because there are only two kinds now. The first is when he is sleeping and you suddenly have an hour or so of simultaneously having nothing to do, and getting as much pending stuff done as you can. The other silence is the deadlier one, the kind when the little hurricane is out of sight and not making a noise. That is your cue that something major is about to happen, and you better brace yourself for whatever mess will greet you when you go looking for him!

Now that his vocabulary is exploding, he is picking up new words daily, and having him around is akin to accidentally turning your on-screen narrator on the computer - a tiny voice that will name every single thing in its line of sight. Since he is still figuring some of the more difficult sounds, it is super cute to watch him try to name things and extract a smile out of us.

He has gotten taller, so now we're running out of places to hide things. He can even reach the kitchen counter, so we have to be extra careful when working with knives and other kitchen implements. He once toppled the pooja ka lota in the temple at home, and he can now reach the oil, diya, etc., so now we have to keep the inside room locked if we can't actively supervise him.

He now understands us a lot better but follows instructions only when he feels like it. He has also gotten much better at communicating what he needs, but that also means he has gotten better at distracting us with demands for random things when we're making him do things he has no interest in, such as eating. So there are only two effective ways left to get him to do stuff - Bribe, and Blackmail! And since neither of those is a great parenting practice, I find myself conflicted on whether to choose the ends or the means. Any parents out there who can get their kids to eat, brush, nap, etc. without resorting to bribes or blackmails, please teach me!

One great thing about all this, and that brings me to the title of this post, is that the little minion has started becoming useful in some of the chores, only when the task is of interest to him. So, we have to convert everything into a game. With the right motivation, he now helps with the toy clean-up, putting away groceries, folding the laundry, fetching sundry items around the house, etc.

As Prajakta summed up the other day when I commented, with mixed feelings, that he is growing up - "The good thing is that he is growing up, but that is also the sad thing!"

Gaya!

As he gets closer to being a year and a half, Avyaan is adding new words to his vocabulary, some that we recognize, some we don't. So, a 'Truck' is 'ka', 'Pants' is 'Ta', 'T-Shirt' is 'Dadada', 'Tikka' is 'Kakka' and so on. But his favorite, by a long distance, is 'Gaya', which is the Hindi word for 'Gone', or 'Went'.

'Gaya' is something he instinctively picked up a few months ago when we would point at vehicles driving by, and telling him - 'Truck gaya', ' Car gayi' etc. Now, every time some walks by, or a vehicle drives by, it's 'Gaya'. Every time you ask him to show you something in his books, and he can't figure out what it is, or he doesn't want to turn the page, it's 'Gaya'. Every time you ask him to bring you something and he can't find it, it's 'Gaya'. If he's in the middle of a crying fit, and you ask him, 'Truck kidhar hai?', he'll stop for a few seconds, compose himself, shout 'Gaya', and resume crying.

You don't even have to be talking to him. He may be in another room and Prajakta and I may be talking about something or searching something Avyaan may have hidden in one of his many stowaway places, and we'll ask where the said thing may be. 'GAYA!!!' comes the response from the other room!

An Angry Toddler

Avyaan loves remotes, doesn't matter what kind, Roku, TV, Sound Bar, XBox, he loves them all equally. In trying to discourage playing with them, I took it from him. Immediately, he started crying, something he has perfected when he doesn't get his way. So, a few seconds later, I returned it to him, which brought back the smile.

Now, I don't want him to learn that you can get your way by shouting through a disagreement, so I took it back a few moments later and when he resumed the shouting, instead of giving it to him again, I tried reasoning, whatever little of it you can do with a toddler. Of course, that didn't work and I eventually had to hand him the remote.

But something new happened today. He was looking at me angrily. Anger, genuine anger is something I hadn't seen in him before, so just to test, I called him towards me. Usually, he would jump at me, but he just hugged Prajakta tighter. So, I switched tactics and went to him instead. This time he actively pushed me away! I had my confirmation, yes, he was truly angry with me!

Now I need to figure out a way to teach him to take a no for an answer without him shouting his way to a win and without hating me. Wish me luck!