Embrace the change
How many of you here enjoy being with small kids?
How many of you feel it very difficult to manage the
mischievous kids?
Good evening fellow toastmasters and guests.
I am
happily married for the past three years with a two-year-old kid. Kids when
they are small, as the parent’s responsibility we must take care of them, feed
them, help them in understanding the world around them. In my case, my kid
being a two-year-old helped me in a great way. Do you want to know how? He
helped me in preparing the script for my Pathways Level-1 speech-3. Now
you can
guess that today’s speech is around my kid.
My son
had a habit, whenever he goes to sleep, he will not sleep in the bed, We have
to put him in the swing and keep swinging till he goes to sleep. This is there
in most of the kids when they are small. This behavior is absolutely fine when
your baby goes to sleep quickly. There are some kids like my son who enjoys
swinging for hours before going to sleep. This is not cool.
It was
more than 2 years since he was sleeping in the swing during day time and night
time. Whenever he wants to sleep, he prefers me to put him sleep in the swing. He
prefers my pattern of swinging more than his mother. This is a mixed feeling, I
feel it as a privilege and sometimes a burden on me. Whenever I feel it as a
burden, I convince myself that I burn those extra calories.
One fine
evening, my son was suffering from cold. We gave him medicines and he went to
sleep early at 9PM. After the daily status calls and completing the work, I
went to sleep at 11AM. It was just an hour, exactly at 12AM, my son woke up and
started crying. When he wakes up late during middle of the night, the only
option to make him sleep is to put him back to swing and I take that honor to
make him sleep. Without a choice. I started my regular exercise of putting him
back to swing to make him sleep. After 30mins of tireless effort, I observed
that he started sleeping. Then I tried to take him out to put him back to the
bed. He woke up and started crying. I put him back again to sleep in the swing
and started the exercise. This time he was clever. He didn’t close his eyes. He
was monitoring me if I swing him properly. Believe me, he didn’t sleep till
4.30AM. It was a horrible night for me. Then he had mercy on me and went to
sleep. After this heavy exercise I didn’t get sleep after that. That day me and
my wife decided to stop this practice of swinging.
We
removed the swing setup and the next day he didn’t sleep during the day time.
This will result in early sleep during night. It was as per our plan. He went
to sleep early during the night that too without the swing. We felt very happy
and proud that our kid adopted the change without any hardship. Our happiness
didn’t last longer. He woke up at 1PM that night and started crying. We gave
him milk bottle, he got it in his hand and threw it away. He was crying louder
on remembering the injustice made to him. He got down from the bed and came
outside the bedroom. He still not started talking, so he grabbed my hand and
took me to the hall, where his swing setup was there. He saw the ceiling and
again started crying. I understood, what he was trying to communicate. I took
him and consoled him by showing some toys and keeping his favorite rhymes in
the mobile. Nothing worked. He was stubborn in his demand. He was crying and
searching for the swing. At last he found the clothe which we use to tie for the
swing. With tears and loud cry, he handed it to me. I was helpless. I want to
stop this habit. I took him to the bed and consoled him to sleep. He was still
crying and my wife lost her patience. She yelled at him. “Why are you doing
like this? Kids of your age don’t do this much to sleep”. On hearing this he
proved Newton’s third law and increased his intensity further. I told my wife “
He is a small kid. Also we should be blamed for this habit. Not him. Lets be
patient and hope the best”. Then I turned towards my son and told him “Listen,
Change is hard to adopt but trust me your life will be beautiful with this
change”. My wife stared at me and told “Does he understands this?”. I replied
her “May be not now but one day he will realize it”. That is the power of
positive words. She didn’t tell anything.
After 1 hour of all this drama,
finally he gave up, there was a decrease in the intensity of his cry and he
accepted the milk bottle and started drinking. A great relief for me and my
wife. I put him back to bed and he started sleeping. I felt it was a great
accomplishment and my wife appreciated me for not giving up at any instance.
From then my son sleeps without any
trouble. He embraced the change and made our life happier. I want to conclude
my speech by saying Change is inevitable, it is hard at the beginning,
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