Minimal parenting: learning to listen without intervening
Sometimes when we struggle to fit in, it may be because we deserve better. We don’t always need to change. We owe it to ourselves to do justice to the self.
Why read this story?
Editor's note: “Mamma, it’s our birthday tomorrow,” our firstborn told me the night before she turned 20 this week. “My birthday is also your birthday of becoming a mother.” “Yes,” I said, hugging her softly. “It is.” The pandemic years have been extra disruptive for the April-born. Sahar turned 17 when the first lockdown had paralyzed the country in April 2020, creating an unprecedented hunger crisis for India’s working poor. The next year she was sick in bed as the second wave of COVID-19 struck, bringing in a tsunami of death and trauma. We were still reeling as a family and a society in 2022—unable to distinguish anymore what the direct causes of our prolonged fatigue and restlessness were. “I want to talk to a therapist,” Sahar started telling me at some point in the last three years. I listened to her. I put in extra effort, trying to be a parent who was more present than absent even if we were in the same spaces most of the time. She was crying a lot. It was difficult to separate her personal …
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