Last week there was an incident that made me question my parenting skills. Every parent I know of, no matter what their parenting style, goes through self-doubt regularly. My trigger was a message on a Mum’s Facebook group that put the cat among the pigeons. One concerned mom complained that her husband did not want to buy their kids new school bags, lunch boxes, and other supplies as their old ones were still functional. Her rant went like this — “My husband and I grew up with very different upbringings, so I’m not sure if he has this mentality because this was how it was for him. But in my experience, every year of our life as kids, we got new book bags, lunch boxes and other supplies. So did all the other kids in my class. I just thought this was the norm, and it was something I looked forward to as a little girl — shopping for brand new school supplies. Is that what people do here? I don’t want my son to be made fun of”.
That last line had me choke on my sip of coffee as I realised it was a good three years since my daughter had had a new school bag. I hurried to check the status of her bag and was relieved to see it wasn’t in tatters. I wasn’t sure about the state of image among her peers and teachers, though. Did they make fun of her in school? Did they bully her for not sporting cool new things like the norm seemed to be? I felt I had failed as a mother by overlooking such an important aspect of social belonging. I could picture her on a shrink’s sofa in future, blaming all her life problems on a mother who did not care enough to shell out money for a new school bag. (Yes, I know — I can get a bit dramatic).
‘Back to School’ is such a big deal — come August and September each year, you are bombarded with ads and offers and promotions to go shopping for school supplies. It is an alien concept to me — growing up, I remember carrying the same bag and compass box to school for over five years. When I needed a bigger one as I went to higher grades, the old school bag was handed down to my younger brother, who happily used it for several more years.
When I was in the US many years ago, I had watched a friend shop for school supplies for her kids. I found it fascinating that there were separate lists for Elementary Grades, Middle School and High School. The Middle School List had over 20 items — Wire Bound Weekly Planner, Colored Pencils, Pencil Sharpener, Pens: Red, Blue, Black, 12-inch Ruler, TI Calculator, Pocket Folders, 3-Ring Binder Spiral Notebooks, Sticky Notes, Highlighters and so on. They wanted a wire-bound weekly planner. Not just any type of planner. Or the papers — they had to be ruled, loose-leaf three-hole papers! It was military-style planning and precision. Most impressive.
But that was years ago, and I forgot all about it, as I became an advocate of the three R’s — Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. In the bargain, I had ignored the impact that my sustainable living drive would have on my daughter. So I went back to the Facebook post to see if there were some quick tips to remedy the situation and see if there were other ‘bad’ mothers like myself. I was surprised to find the post had over 200 comments in less than an hour. It was clearly a topic close to many hearts. Some trolled the poor mother and disparaged her upbringing. Others took the opportunity to shine and show how environment-friendly they were and reused the same supplies for 2/3 years, only buying new ones when the old ones had fallen apart.
A few others took it a step further to demonstrate they were even better parents (champions of sustainable living) by pointing out that their kids only used hand me downs from other families. It was a relief to find that very few supported splurging on new supplies every year.
Happy at the thought that I wasn’t such a bad mother after all, I decided to become a kind and generous one and told my daughter I was treating her to a new school bag. “I’m cool with mine, mom. It’s good to go for a few years. Save your money,” she said to me.” It seems my daughter is more stable and well adjusted than I give her credit for. Maybe I should take some parenting tips from her!
Hima Pathak is a banker and writer based in Dubai
