Got the priorities wrong...

I am very upset and feeling depressed because of my parenting choices.

Rewinding back to a long time ago.. the little one loved books from the time he started recognizing colors. Compared to his peers of the same age group he learned colors and numbers very early on. He wanted a book all the time. Would not go to potty without Amma reading / showing pictures . So it was very easy to potty train him too.

Even though he was good at numbers , colors , fruits and animals .. we never taught him alphabets or never prepped him for school . Later we moved to the US right in time for his kindergarten and he had a difficult time.
For one , he did not speak English like his classmates. And two because we were in a neighborhood with a high percentage of Indians , every kid knew how to read fluently and write quite well by the time they were starting kindergarten.

The teacher assured us that he would catch up and he did. I did not take an extra effort for this. I trusted the teachers and let them teach him. They did a good job.

In first grade , he had a senior teacher who made them work really hard. Again, I left it all to the teacher. My mom and most of my extended family are / were Professors. So I somehow had this feeling that I should not interfere or force him to study. I believed and still believe that teachers are the most qualified hands for this job. He was not a bad student either. He did his homework himself and the teacher had mostly good remarks about him.

Come second grade and he has the youngest teacher in school as his homeroom teacher. As parents, my husband and I agreed that we should not push him too much . We never sent him for Kumon / Extra math things. Instead we did enroll him for extra curricular activities. This was also because the winter is awful here and he would have no exercise or fun during these months otherwise. He enjoys it too though he isn't particularly great at any sport.
This weekend I realized that they did a lot more in first grade than they do now in second grade. This has made him very lazy , he is bored with the school as he does not learn enough and does not seem interested any more.

I do not want to blame the teacher. She is young and has her limitations. Maybe second grade is more relaxed than first grade. I feel the syllabus is also like that.. first grade was a big leap to new things. Second grade was more like a revision . But now the son is super lazy and I feel I am to blame for not seeing this sooner.

I do not want to make him a rebel , I do not want him to be lazy , I do not want to make him feel that Amma is putting too much pressure on him. I am upset. He does not seem to want to read any more. I used to and still read a lot . But I cannot find the books I read as a child. He loves Wimpy Kid , Captain Underpants and the like... But I cannot get him enough and he reads as it is a chore now.

I know I went wrong , I was lazy , too engrossed in work , too busy in trying to be the perfect working mom who puts hot food on the table for every meal.

I regret . I should have set my priorities right. I will !!!

Mom , MIL and Me ... Cooking

I never considered my mom to be a great cook when I was growing up. We rarely ate out those days and we when we did my mom made it a point to dissect the food we liked in her brain and try it out later. It was mostly a success. She baked cakes, cookies and puddings in those days when people rarely had ovens. We never bought any pickles or jams or fruit squashes(concentrates) , mom made it all.

Even when I moved to a hostel during my Engineering days and the food there was barely edible , I still did not give her the credit. I just assumed that every mom was a good cook or maybe that all home cooked food tasted good . 

Soon after school, I moved to another city to do my Graduation. It was supposed to be a good choice for an Engineering college . Then I got a job and moved further away. All through this time I made sure that I came home every weekend. I hogged on my mom's food but did not appreciate her cooking skills. Nor did I try to learn or try or even watch to see how she cooked. 

When I was dating my husband he often gushed about his mom's cooking . I told him that my mom is just an average cook. I was in for a shock after marriage. With all due respect for my MIL , she wasn't the cook I expected her to be.  Today I realize it is because of circumstances. She stayed in a joint family where the other elders did the cooking. She never went out a lot so she did not know anything other than the traditional fare. And their traditional fare was not what I have had and took me a lot of time adjust to. My husband on the other hand found my mom to be a great cook and would polish off whatever she made and ask for seconds. 

Then life happened and we moved to the US. And I realized that though I knew a lot about theoretical cooking thanks to the cooking blogs I read, I did not know how to cook at all.  It has been some time here now and I have come a long way from where I started. 

I am happy with the progress but then when I look back I keep thinking of some of the kitchen experiments that became an unexpected success. I wish I had those recipes to recreate the magic. I am planning to document my recipes keeping it in mind...