stay-at-home mom syndrome

Twenty two days have gone past the time we entered the new decade. I have probably not been active enough to even prepare my new year resolution. I never subscribe to the “how time flies” statement. The reason is time does not really fly; it is the how I meaninglessly spent it. The shift to Pune from Chennai is complete. Eight months is a long time to shift gears and settle in the new pace any new city allows. I am now a stay-at-home mom due to variety of professional and personal reasons. The change comes with its share of pitfalls. There is restlessness coupled with helplessness. But when I notice the twinkle in my eight-year-old’s eyes as she sees me opening the door for her when she comes back from school, I feel strangely happy at being home. But there is also an element of anxiety regarding how I want to exploit my interests and tap my forte. What I see is a confused myself, sometimes an exaggerated “completely at a loss” situation.
Children are demanding, and they sometimes have strange ideas and needs. This is more so with the single child. Their most coveted demand is time. With working mothers, bonding time is always at a premium, which is not so with their stay-at-home counterparts. But children tend to demand more from their at-home mothers. Fair enough. These mothers, like me at the moment, will have the time to satiate their children’s appetite for time. But then it does not take these children long enough to realize that their at-home moms are always at their beck-and-call. And they do treat them as their personal fiefdom.
My daughter has strictly “instructed” me not to attend my cousin’s wedding in Bangalore because it coincides with her final exam date! She has the audacity to challenge my travel plan, and even veto it. Her reason: “Who will ask me questions before my exams?” Though her father has decided to pitch in as the stand-by mom for three days, she is not confident he would help her prepare well for her examinations. Do I read it as a compliment? I do not think so. Or does she feel her father might be too busy with work, and he might not concentrate too well? Wrong again. It is just a feeling of possessiveness that the single child has for the home mom. Taking for granted is probably too strong a word to attribute for children. But these children play around with the emotional control they have over their home moms.
Such moms also run the risk of taking flak from their children, on whom they have invested time and emotion. My daughter commented the other day that “amma anyway does not do anything, so she can do this for me”! Both my husband and I were too shocked to react. She actually feels I do nothing, so I’d better cater to her needs. This hurt me. Was I getting led into this situation where my daughter will have a complete emotional command over me, and then make myself vulnerable to her open declarations of my non-working status, which she interprets as “she does nothing”? That was a harsh slap on my face. I felt like a nobody.
They say nothing succeeds like success. Today’s children probably interpret the stay-at-home moms as unsuccessful and incompetent, and fit only for fulfilling their gastronomical demands. It is high time I woke up to this reality; and stop getting tempted to go for a postprandial snooze. My daughter may well interpret that as laziness personified.