NAT-190226-Advice-from-Mom-(Read-Only)

1. Hide my sorrows from my parents: Pretending to feel okay takes a huge toll and gets exhausting after a period of time. I have learnt to not carry the burden and instead speak up about what upsets me. It’s okay to not be okay and the best people to resort to are our parents.

2. Be thankless for what I have been blessed with: I consider myself to be extremely blessed to have a loving family, be able to study at UAE’s largest school for girls, be able to have three meals a day, buy things that I want, and much more. It took news about the situations of children in war-torn countries to remind myself to be grateful for whatever I have today.

3. Ignore my mother’s advice: I wish I had heard the song ‘Mother knows best’ (Tangled) more to realise that my mother’s words were gems. I wish the naïve me had taken heed of some of my mother’s golden advice.

4. Be judgemental: I have long learnt to see the positives in people and stopped judging someone’s character based on the words of another.

5. Be careless about where I keep my things: Many a time, I have lost things that are precious because I either misplaced them or had kept them in a safe place and forgot where that ‘safe place’ was. We tend to realise the value of some things after losing them.

6. Procrastinate with my studies: As I say this, I laugh within as I don’t really know if this is something I will never do again because a little bit of procrastination never harmed anyone. But I will try my best not to.

Alia Aysha Mariam 11
Alia Aysha Mariam - Grade 11, GEMS Our Own English High School, Dubai Image Credit: Supplied

Pink colour for girls and blue for boys: Is it outdated? “Yes. Today femininity and masculinity aren’t associated with colours. Both genders openly accommodate all colours.”