Ask Amma

Posts Tagged ‘life’

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She deserved the SNAP benefits

In Call to Action on 21 September 2024 at 8:00 am

What do “TikTok trends” like “She Deserved the Purse” really tell us? Apart from the sorry state of journalism such that the Washington Post chose to report on it, which is how I found out about it? In sum, people film themselves putting cash and/or gift cards in places where they believe a “deserving” person, in this case a mom or really any parent caring for a baby, will find it. It is considered so obvious as not to require any explanation that in the United States, those caring for the young are strapped for funds and hence could use a little unexpected bonus to ease the financial strain.

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Being

In How on 1 September 2012 at 8:00 am
Recently a family member told me that I can’t and probably should not tailor make my life around my child. And that my child should figure out “being” around the life that just happens to us. I think this bit of advice is what really got me thinking about the idea of “being” with my child.
Is it possible that I could just let life happen and let my child figure out how to “be” around it?
 
– Pushpa, mother of a 3 year old in Pune, posted on Swashikshan
  
Life is always happening.  If what you are doing in your life is engaging with (or “tailor making” your life around) your child, that is what your child will “be” around and figure out how to respond to.
 
I find sometimes kids are really curious about the things we do without them or when they aren’t around (or aren’t awake) and we should do some of those things even when they are there.  Of course it helps if we can allow them to “help.”  How often it happens that our work *is* the game that our little ones decide they want to play.  If we could dissolve the boundaries between work and play, then it would not matter who was responding to whom, and who was figuring out life along side whom.  It would be reciprocal.  This is how I interpret the continuum concept.

Thank you Pushpa for letting us excerpt your opening question here on the pages of Ask Amma.  Readers are encouraged to Pushpa’s article in full, “Being with my Child.”