IN honour of Mother’s Day, the focus is on one mother who shared with Pepperpot Magazine the challenges and joys of motherhood in this modern age, as compared to motherhood in years past.
Rebecca Ganesh, who hails from Georgetown, has been a mother for 10 years.

During an interview with the Pepperpot Magazine, Ganesh cited some of the challenges that a 21st century mother faces, as compared to when she was growing up as a child.
“I believe that I had an advantage where parenting is concerned because both of my parents were self-employed. While that is a lot of work on the whole, it was easier for me; hence, both parents are at home. Thus things will be taught at home. Children don’t do sports now, everything now is virtual. Children play games on their laptops or iPads, thus children are learning differently now as against when I was younger,” Ganesh told Pepperpot Magazine.

According to Ganesh, becoming a parent these days is more or less planned; it is a lifetime job and as such, lots of commitment is involved.
“There is no right and wrong when you are a parent, each mother deals with various situations in a way applicable to their training,” Ganesh further related.
When it comes to those times, when you are despondent, discouraged and frustrated, Ganesh contends that her Dad has taught her to step back and reassess the situation, before deciding to do what needs to be done.

“Like most parents, we tend to overthink, we are overprotective, and with the world today, we get overprotective because we know what can happen,”Ganesh told Pepperpot Magazine.
In order to preserve both the children’s sanctity as well as hers, Ganesh made it clear that she shares things with her children in spite of their age, more so because her partner is absent.
She believes that sharing gives her children an idea of what is going on in the world around them, so they aren’t oblivious to the world around them.
She is also advocating that we shouldn’t wait until our children enter the working world to keep them apprised on what is going on around them.

Ganesh believes that because children aren’t exposed to knowledge that a lot of uninformed choices and decisions are made when they are faced with certain challenges.
Ganesh believes that one of the most important ingredients in being a mother is understanding, compassion, caring, loving and being very patient.

“It is not easy teaching and trying to understand children. Each child is different. If you don’t have a proper cultural background, traditional background, some form of discipline, you cannot expect to have that with your child. If you don’t know how to deal with it — I am not talking licks here — but if you don’t know what obtains and are able to distinguish the differences between right and wrong, then how do you teach them?” Ganesh related to Pepperpot Magazine.

Ganesh is of the view that because she is academically astute, she is more in an advantageous position to deal with her children’s homework, assignments and so forth, but there can be great difficulty for someone who is not so fortunate.
Advice to parents

“We are in a difficult time right now, there are more issues with children than there were ever before and parents need to pay attention these days. They need to monitor the things their children are doing and parents need to monitor themselves,” she said. “Children do not need to know everything; as a result of paying attention to children, you will discover when the body languages change.”