Category: Thoughts

Up until yesterday, the chores that L has been doing only covered around her own things. Wash her own dishes, wash, hang, and fold her own laundry, make her bed, and tidy up her room. It’s been a while since I am thinking to upgrade her chore to involve things she does for others too.

After watching the morning flow for months, I found something that is pretty doable for her. Delegating a little of my morning task would be a good idea. It could start at the weekend only where she has more free time in the morning.

Fruit bowl is our compulsory breakfast. One third of my weekly groceries budget spent on fruits. Every morning, I make three fruit bowls for each one of us. It contains at the maximum four kind of fruits, at the beginning of the week, and two kinds at the end of the week.

So, I told her this Monday that starting this weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, she would be the one who took care of morning fruit bowls. On Friday, I asked her to write down the plan, what fruits she would put for that two days based what we had on the fridge.

The nicest thing of teaching new things to the children at her age is, they’re so eager about that. There’s no slightest rejection tone from her mouth, only excitement.

Although in practice it wasn’t as easy as it looked, but still, new experience was always exciting. She did the first days of the new job quite well.

We could consider a household like an entreprise and houseworks/chores as projects. I could consider myself as a mommy manager who is in-charge of many projects and doing the four functions of management (POAC) daily.

Now, for one little project on the weekend, I have the first three functions (planning, organizing, and acting) done by my subordinate and only in charge for the controlling part.

Thus, I don’t listen to those who said ‘what’s the degree for if you ‘just’ stay at home?’

All the learnings I had done in both of my bachelor and master degrees are aplicable in almost all situations in the daily life and I use, appy, and pass it to the one who needs it the most, very well.

Done with telling her happy experience at school yesterday , out of the blue, after some period of silence, something came from her mouth,

“When I am older, I’ll have a husband”.

(Stay calm)

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll get married and have a husband”.

(What’s with this sudden idea?)

“Wait until I park the car and we talk about this”.

Glad when this happened it was already near home. It was such a distraction during driving. Off-record convo kept going until we arrived at the parking lot.

Asked the main idea again once the engine was off.

Even asked her once again to get to know what’s her main idea to blurt out such thing suddenly.

Did I say “gentar” is the word to describe the end of the first 7 years?

This kind is one of the reasons why.

To fully accept and realize that she is no longer a little baby.

To answer many questions without preparations.

To deal with many hard conversations to come.

I don’t know whether it’s the right thing to do or not, as someone who is being next to her most of the time, I almost always take her questions seriously.

So, instead of telling her that this is not something to talk about on her age, I am more eager to know what’s on her mind and how much she could elaborate, in spite of her limitations in language and understanding.

More than worry, I was actually quite happy having this convo because this means she could talk freely about everything on her mind with me. Something that we definitely need in future years to come.

Also a reminder to not underestimate my child for something that she is capable of thinking and doing despite her age and conditions.

Like being capable of describing the qualities she wants for her future partner to the flowers she would like to have for the wedding.

May Allah grant her good wish and grant me (and her dad) more patience and better guidance to walk this journey safely.

Amin.

How I am not ready for this.

At first, the decision to send her to a non-religious school gave certain guilty feeling inside. It was among many (important) things that didn’t go according to initial plan.

But then, since when (big things in) life goes according to your plan?

Never mind. The more important thing is while the goal should be rigid, the strategy needs to be fluid.

The bright side of choosing non-religious school where religious study is not the main menu (and far from adequate), it opens many opportunities to explore other possibilities of good teachers.

Done with a Quran teacher, next searching that I have been doing for months is a (proper) Islamic teacher.

When gender is not a problem for the Quran teacher, as long as the person is qualified and speaks English well, which we go with a male teacher, for Islamic, I strictly want a female teacher.

Why female teacher? Because she will soon go to puberty, where many drastic changes would happen. A period of many turbulences which she needs someone to hold on to, to share things with other than her parents (since maybe the parents would be one that she would have conflict with), someone who understands what she has been going through, more importantly, someone with proper knowledge about the know-how according to our religion. For me, that’s one important thing that I surely couldn’t handle alone.

Been looking around, reading many profiles, did some trials and not working well, until I bumped into a good looking profile in one of the platforms on the internet.

Sent short paragraphs of introduction explained what I looked for, what kind of lesson I expect to have and the learning purpose. Explained thoroughly about her condition and my expectations.

A reply received in an instant. The conversation went well and the first meeting set up right away.

Alhamdulillah, the first lesson done as good as expected. On time, well-prepared, and I loved how the lesson delivered.

Hopefully, the relationship will be as good as the first lesson.

It takes a village to raise a child. Surround her with good and qualified teachers on the subject that we consider important and where the parents don’t have adequate knowledge about, is part of our efforts to provide proper village for her to grow.

(Switch to Bahasa mode)

Menuju periode 7 tahun kedua, hati makin berat dari sebelumnya. Kenapa? Karena sadar ilmu yang diperlukan buat menghadapi periode ini masih jauh dari cukup.

Menghadapi 7th pertama yang udah belajar teorinya jauh sebelum prakteknya aja masih banyak ‘miss’-nya. Apalagi ini, yang baru mulai ‘serius’ belajar beberapa tahun terakhir.

Di parenting Islam, 7th pertama anak adalah raja (master) yang bebas tanpa tugas, main tanpa batas, masuk ke 7th kedua anak adalah ‘slave’ (once elaborated here).

Waktu dimana sudah harus belajar disiplin, ilmu yang baik, punya kewajiban dan tanggung jawab, bahkan boleh dipukul jika umur 10 tahun tidak melaksanakan kewajibannya.

Usaha mencari guru ini yang terlihat buat ngajar anaknya, tapi tujuan utamanya adalah buat ngajarin orangtuanya. Menghadirkan guru buat anak lebih untuk supaya orangtuanya lebih punya ilmu yang benar buat menghadapi ‘battle’ yang akan lebih berat dari sebelumnya.

Seperti dokter yang harusnya lebih tau dari pasiennya, bos lebih jago dari bawahannya, masuk akal kalo tuan harus lebih pinter dari hamba sahayanya. Jadi, ngga ada cara selain belajar lebih keras dari sebelumnya. Anak-anak itu fast learner, yang lambat itu orangtuanya.

Hari-hari menuju akhir 7th pertama, hati lebih sering gentar dari sebelumnya.