Kavya is still a kid - let her enjoy her childhood

Couple of days back, I was talking to my mama on the phone and he gave me an interesting advice. He said that just because you now have Ishaan, don't take away the childhood from Kavya by expecting her to be grown up. She is still a kid.

We have always been cautious about not letting Kavya feel jealous or feel left out after we had Ishaan, but my uncle's advice really made me wonder if we were guilty of expecting too much from Kavya.

We do expect her to behave properly and not be very naughty and understand when it is OK to do certain things and when not. But I want to think of that as discipline and teaching good manners and not really taking the childhood away. Even if Ishaan wasn't in the picture, we would have expected that. Or am I just thinking that because I don't want to feel guilty ? :) It is hard to decide.

Anyways, it is a very useful advice - something that will always come to mind when I expect too much from my little Kavya.

Kavya's pediatrician had also once mentioned something similar a while back - although that was in context of education. She said that when we look back at our lives, what we very fondly remember is our childhood because we have had fun at that age. So, don't burden your child with ABCs and 123s at an early age if they don't want to. Let them enjoy their childhood. They will learn ABCs and 123s sooner or later. How true ? Especially Indian parents have a mentality of teaching their kids everything early on.. but what we often times don't realize is that in the long schema of things, it does not really matter if they learn the ABCs when they are 2 yrs old or 4 yrs old.