As much as I hate to admit it, exam time is generally a bit stressful in my household. This time however, I was determined to make things work differently. Among other things, I consciously made efforts to talk in feeling vocabulary. Example : “ I feel uneasy watching you laze around when you have such and such to do…”.
Although, this was not something entirely unusual of me to do, I was just doing it more vocally and more consciously this time, especially to communicate ‘not so good’ feelings.
To be honest, I was doing it without expecting any results from my kids. It was helping me stay calm and sober (especially in cases of the above and their like!!)...and that is why, whenever I felt a heavy rush of blood flowing in my body, I expressed myself vocally , in pure feeling vocabulary.
But the other day, when my son was sitting to do his Maths, I saw a little glimpse of the effect this was having on my kids. I had just finished explaining a particular problem..one which he was avoiding doing for some time now. This time he got the hang of it and then putting his pen down, he told me, “ You know mum, every time I would see this kind of sum, I could not attempt it...because I felt a certain tightening in my stomach. Plus my hand would start getting wet, and I am not able to hold my pen properly”
I was initially shocked!!. Not so much due to what he shared but the fact that he expressed his feeling !
At that moment I had myriad of my own feelings going through. I hated the system which made a child feel so. I hated myself for being part of such a system. I was amazed to see him expressing himself ( I didn’t know he could feel this way too!!).
The very next day, he comes back from school and tells me that he attempted the similar kind of sum in his maths class and this time he was really “confident” about it. I asked him what according to him brought about the change. And he almost shyly admitted that it was “practice”.
This lead to him forming his own goal of doing 30-45 minutes of Maths everyday.
To me, this little incident had a feelings session, an empowerment session, a motivation session a self -esteem session, not to mention beliefs ...all rolled into one. And it felt great!!
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