Learning, it is said, is a lifelong process. Even at age 62, one may acquire a new qualification, if one is adequately determined.
Since taking voluntary retirement from a bank in 1999, I have been working in the youthful software Industry. Recently I approached my boss and sought ‘leave without pay for four months, to study ‘GSM’. He readily assented and requested me to make the announcement to colleagues myself at a staff meeting. When I did so, explaining that the term stands for ‘Grandson Management’, the audience greeted me with laughter and applause. My wife too got a sabbatical from her office and we were all set!
Our daughter living in the United States became eligible for a ‘three-month paid sabbatical leave’ from her company, which she wanted to utilise fruitfully by attending a workshop, in London, on painting – her passion. Our constant refrain to her being ‘follow your dream’, we were overjoyed when she asked us if she could leave her 30-month-old son ‘Nathan Wood’ with us, during the period.
At the outset, my wife laid down the ground rules: ‘When the children were small, every time either of them cried at night you would wake me up and go back to sleep. But in the case of Nathan, you have to make an equal contribution by putting him to sleep at night and keeping him engaged during the day!’ And I nodded, albeit with raised eyebrows.
When leaving the child with us, our daughter made three requests to us – to speak to him only in Tamil, to ensure that he got potty-trained and quit the finger sucking habit. Then she left for London, wishing us good luck, and we got an idea of the challenges that lay ahead in taking care of a grandchild, whose parents are thousands of miles away.
The first few days were especially tough for all of us. Nathan would keep asking for Mommy, but would quieten down if we read out a story or promised to take him to a place of interest. Our daughter rang up to say she had trouble sleeping at night without her baby’s antics. Our son-in-law James would call every morning (night for him), on Face Time, from Portland, Ohio, to cheer him up.
Every night I would tell Nathan half a dozen stories — some of them made up, with himself as the hero. Then, just when I thought he was asleep, he would get up and demand a banana, or a toy to play with. Whether or not Nathan learnt anything from my motivational stories, he taught me patience in dealing with a two-year-old. As a self-styled hypnotist, I tried implanting suggestions in his subconscious mind as he was falling asleep, to help him achieve the goals his mom had set for him. But the only visible outcome was my quitting the longstanding habit of taking afternoon naps.
Making him eat was yet another challenge, which we accomplished by playing his favourite songs or videos on a smart phone. Our house became filled with children’s story books and toys, with my wife constantly reminding me to walk with care, not lest I tripped and fell, but lest I inadvertently stepped on and broke an expensive toy. What we dreaded most was upsetting him enough to make him demand to see his daddy.
We tried to make him follow a daily routine of having oat meal first thing in the morning, followed by an autorickshaw ride around Adyar, then lunch at noon, telling/ reading out stories hoping he would doze off into an afternoon nap, a visit the temple in the evening (where he would watch fascinated, the big bell ringing during aradhnana ), a weekly visit to a park, or to a shopping mall, then dinner at 8 p.m., followed by sleep around 10 p.m. But then, what child ever follows a set routine? Often, Nathan left us exasperated by refusing to finish his meals, or delaying going to sleep until midnight, though he had an insatiable hunger for new toys.
Psychologists say time would seem to move fast when one is busy, and slowly when one is idle. If a baby is at home, time simply flies. Four months went past in a jiffy and it was time for us to send Nathan back to Portland. Though we could get him potty-trained, making him quit finger-sucking proved much tougher. To accomplish it, I had to apply a bitter tasting but harmless solution (as suggested by a paediatrician), on his fingers, when asleep.
However, where we failed was in making him learn Tamil. He did learn to sing a few lines from a couple of Tamil film songs, which he watched with interest on an iPad. But he would sing them only if in good mood; else he would simply say the song was downloading. An upshot however, was our picking up his baby slang, such as ‘wanna go buss’, ‘went a mountain of poo poo and pee pee’, ‘going to templee’, ‘fell down and got ouvi in hand’, and so on. All said, his four-month stay with us was wonderful, from which we learnt more from him, than he from us!
