Weekday options for Sunday Papas

For all busy dads ,around the world

With the nostalgia of one more Father’s Day now behind us, Surti Lalas, whose business schedules have converted them into Sunday papas have reached to a tear jerking conclusion, resonating with the adage that they inherited from their fathers-
’ God gave us money but not time.’

Present circumstance and stress of an overworked and underpaid life make sure that children see their dads only on Sundays, when those precious few hours are mostly spent in dining out with friends or catching up on the latest flick.

Conversation is the key word while raising a child. We live in an age where the generation gap has been bridged, but communication gap within families has widened more than ever before.
In their book ‘Adolescence: The Survival Guide for Parents and Teenagers’, authors Elizabeth Fenwick and Dr.Tony Smith have pointed out that, "Although young children usually exchange thoughts and feelings quite easily, adolescents are not often so communicative. It takes a real effort to keep the channels of communication open with someone who is apparently determined to shut you out and to be as monosyllabic as possible. But it's essential to keep talking-and keep listening-if you are to survive your children's adolescence intact. If you can manage it, and are still on speaking terms with your adolescents by the time they reach their late teens, you'll find they may actually want to talk to you, and it's once again rewarding to have conversations with them."
Here are some fun ways to let conversation sneak in between your child and you, while you spend an hour extra with them, within your busy schedule.
Drive your child to school occasionally, make the effort to wake up early, share breakfast, drop your child to school .Chat up about friends, teachers and subjects, discuss fun incidents from your school days. Try and attend the parent teacher meeting whenever you are in town, learn first hand about your kid’s advantages and shortcomings to help understand her/him better.

Catch up over a surprise lunch or dessert .Play scrabble or chess at coffee shops .Plan a picnic .Discuss food preference with them. Explain cuisines or learn what they know about it, with interest. Your child probably knows the best thin crust pizza combo in town and can spell more pasta names than you. Pay full attention when your child speaks; stop doing everything else at that moment.

Visit your child’s extra curricular activity class. Whether its sports, music, art or dance, take interest, appreciate, if possible participate or have your kids teach you the technique they are skilled in. Children are friends with people who perform their favourite activities with them. . Learn to play ‘Super Mario’/ ‘Angry Birds’, on their gadget. Compete in healthy fashion.

Let your children visit your workplace for an hour or two. Treat them as adults as they watch how you spend your day at work. Ask for suggestions to know their point of view. Make them feel important. Show respect through both your language and demeanor. Don’t start giving advice when your child is asking you to listen. Don’t talk or do other things. Listen. End the conversation when your child is ready to do so, not when you are.

Children often send out the same message in different ways, when they are not understood.’ Remember that 70 to 80 percent of all communication is nonverbal. If you truly have an empathetic heart, you will always be reading the nonverbal cues.’ says Stephen R. Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. Read your child’s facial expressions, body language and non verbal clues. Understand that your child will not agree with everything you say.Respond, don’t react.

Time is your most precious possession and it’s all that your child needs.

Dear dad,on Father's Day

Dearest papa,

I know this letter comes as a surprise to you, it’s my first. It would be the easiest thing for me to come meet you or speak on the phone. But, I know I will choke on words that will get in the way.

We have never really had dad-kid talks, you and I, we always communicated via mom.

Today, as my toddler and teen sit down scribbling a Father’s day card for theirs, I realize I never ever made the effort to tell you anything. We seemed to always say it best by saying nothing at all to each other.

While mom was omnipresent through the growing years, you were a Sunday papa.

You never attended any sports day or annual function or elocution contests which we participated in, you were busy, slogging to make sure that we went to the best school, read the best books meant for our age, swam in the best pool in town and received the best coaching when it came to dance and sports.

You don’t feature in any of our birthday pics, even the ones that have distant relatives; it’s only now that I realize you were the one clicking them.

I know for a fact that grand dad and you looked in opposite directions, you never had a chance to live your childhood, but you ensured we had ours. I find it easy to choose the right reads and toys for my children because, irrelevant to the monthly budget, as soon as Scrabble, Monopoly, Rubik’s cube or the latest editions of Amar Chitra Katha, Enid Blyton and Asterix hit the market stands, you made certain they found place in our home.

Although you spent years eating at canteens, we relished fine dining and developed taste buds to appreciate cuisine from around the world. From five star restaurants to hole in the wall joints that Busy bee later recommended too, you always knew the hotspots of food around town. I remember how you hired one of the then best chef’s in town for a day for our introduction to authentic Chinese cuisine; from entrée to dessert. I remember turning my nose up at it then and how much I savour it now. Way back in the 70’s Tabasco’s zing, Choux pastry and Wasabi were not alien words for us.

I teach my toddler phonics, alphabets and his first words from ‘My First Golden Dictionary’ which you bought when I was 4, it is still the best available even now, when I am 40.As I protectively commute with my teenager everywhere, I remember how you taught us to travel independently via air or railways, in a safer world .

In spite of being extremely possessive about your cars, you generously let your vintage Austin be converted into our school taxi, so that we could commute safely and in style. We always strutted in trendy stuff from head to toe even though kid’s fashion wasn’t a term used in India.

I remember you returning from business tours around the world, carrying cultural curios so that we could learn a little more about the countries .I remember you gently but firmly coaxing us to lend a ear to classical music along side renditions of Khusrau and Boney M so that we refined our taste in fine tuning. I remember watching The Sound of Music when it was not locally available. How you made it mandatory that we met Mumbai’s finest theatre artists and painters par excellence and watched them in action.

As I stress over the future of my kids, worrying about their education, friends, gizmos, habits, I realize how easily ma and you handled the three of us, never once letting us feel the worldly pressures you must have had. My own impatience makes me now rationalize your occasional angry outbursts.

With all our individual success in a life that you allowed us to choose for ourselves, we might not have been the best kids, but, just by being yourself, you are the greatest dad in the world.

When I see you clown around with your grand children today, I see, given a chance, what great buddies we could have been. I love you dad, I always did.

A huge hug,
Your rebel without a cause.