The thing about being a parent is that you’re not getting any sort of immediate feedback that your shit works. You know? 

You just hope that the things you are consistently doing and saying STICK. That somehow these little seeds you’re planting now will someday grow and grow and grow and create a beautiful, emotionally intelligent, curious, compassionate human. 

There are some moments though. Moments that I get some sort of clue that what we’re doing is working. 

Last night, we were all in the bedroom together. Riyaan was on his diaper changing pad. Ankur and I were folding clothes. Ishu was trying on my sports bra. (As a three year old does). 

Riyaan started to get hiccups (he HATES hiccups) and began to whine about it. 

Ishu stops everything he is doing. He races over to the baby, pats his little brother on the chest and says, “I know. I know. I know.” This is a thing he does sometimes to his baby brother. Likely because when he’s having difficult moments, we hold space for him and say things like, “I know. I know it’s sad. It’s sad that X.”

We carry on folding clothes.

And I can hear him whisper to his brother, “Sometimes…when I’m a kid…I don’t like hiccups.”

MY HEART.

I could just hear us being channeled through him. 

Our empathy for the hard moments. Our validation that what he’s going through is hard. 

I mean…

WHY DID THEY NOT PREPARE ME FOR HOW MUSHY YOUR HEART GETS IN THESE MOMENTS?!

He’s so good. 

He is so freaking good at picking up on people’s emotions.

Sometimes he’ll pause in the middle of playing with his toys because he can recognize – from across the room – that my tone has changed when I’m debriefing something with Ankur. 

“Mama?” he’ll ask, “Are you in the purple?” 

According to Ishu, “purple” is sad. He’s given all these different emotions different colors. Pink is happy. Purple is sad. Brown is “out of control.” Black is sleepy. Yellow is silly. 

But he can spot moments in other people and KNOW that they’re feeling a certain way. 

In the middle of being a goofball, he’ll look up at me and say, “Is that so yellow?” 

Haha. 

GOD. I love him so much. 

Sometimes when he’s having these big big BIG BIG feelings, I have these moments where I second guess myself. Am I doing it wrong? Why can you hear my child from three streets over? WHY IS PARENTING SUCH A SWEATY ENDEAVOR? 

And then I look at moments like this and I’m reminded that we are raising a really beautiful, special kid. 

Parenting is hard. Of course it’s hard. It’s hard because we want to do it right. It’s hard because it matters. 

So, yeah. We don’t always get that feedback. But, sometimes, in these small moments, we can see that we’re doing JUST FINE. <3