Chicknappers

After a wonderful Chinese New Year reunion dinner and the massive clean up afterwards, we rewarded ourselves with a retreat in the woods. Just an hour’s drive from home to Sungai Congkak, Kajang. I rephrase; an hour without the KL notorious traffic. It was a risk worth taking because of the bank holidays and weekend all nicely lined up, making sure many of the city dwellers would have seized this opportunity to travel outstation.

I have never seen KL roads or city this deserted. When we arrived at our destination, even that wasn’t crowded.

We found a nice snugly spot underneath some bushy trees which gave just the right amount of shade from the bright morning sun and just a couple feet away from the stream.

The stream was calm and shallow. It’s flowing water, gently smacking against big boulders in its way, emitted a nice lullaby for a power nap. Ahhh, the comfort of an uninterrupted nap for an overly worked stay-at-home-mom was just minutes away.

All I had to do was get everyone excited to jump in the stream for a splash with their godmother. For once, I was able to just shut my eyes and listen to the surrounding without anyone forcibly opening my eyelids or whispering into my ears “are you up mom?”, like an alarm clock. 

It didn’t matter I had to lay down on a thin sheet instead of my nice comfy bed. It was simply amazing soaking up the surrounding. I just let myself go, to be part of my surrounding with no fear or an iota of doubt, of my children’s safety.

I heard five different types of bird chirping, the buzzing of insects and the laughter of children, playing in the stream. But all this except for the laughter disappeared once I opened my eyes. I shut my eyes again and heard more new sound’s of nature. 

It was such an amazing experience. I did so little but that bit of doing nothing and being in a place where nothing mattered, was wonderful. There was no clock to beat or task to be achieved. It was just me learning to let go, chill and relax. 

I was in such a zen mood, even during our drive back home. There was not a single complaint heard from the back of my car. Everyone seemed contended having spent such a lovely time at the stream.

I was too mellow and all zened up to think that my kids were up to something when they were awfully quiet on my drive back from the picnic at the stream.

With kids, I have learned one thing, when they’re awfully quiet, they’re up to no good.

Everything was fine right up to the point when we arrived at my friend’s house. 

All Zen instantly flushed out of me when I saw my girls holding a chick in the back seat. They had kidnapped a chick from a free range hen at the stream. They wanted to keep it as a pet and dared not ask me because they knew I would have disapproved. 

They were damn right about that! I mean seriously, raising a chick in an urban area? Is that even possible?! My face must have been so crossed, I’ve seen me when I’m not happy and it ain’t pretty, my tween loosened her grip and the chick jumped straight into a monsoon drain. That just made matters worse. 

Luckily it was reunited with its mother, unharmed, but my girls got labelled as chicknappers. A deserving nickname after all the trouble they put their godparents through in reuniting the chick with its mother. 

Another beautiful lesson learned in my crappy parenting chronicles, don’t lose your top because nothing good comes from it. It will only make matters worse.

What I should have done was mask my face and kept it devoid of any emotions, especially signs of anger and disappointment. 

Perhaps my tween would have handed the chick over and a good discussion with them could have spared us the need to climb down to the drain and rescuing the extremely stressed chick.

After analysing my own failure, failures would be a more accurate terminology for a repeat offender, I’m worried sick because my coping mechanism aren’t working well. They definitely aren’t in sync with good parenting. I’m struggling already with the challenges these little brats bring abreast, how would I react when they screw up big time. 

Do they trust me enough to confide in me? I really do hope so and want them to come to me or my husband (whom by the way seems to be doing pretty good at this parenting stuff) if they ever get into any trouble. Would they come to me for advice? 

Would I want to speak to me? Looking in the mirror, I’m leaning towards a most probably not. So I better learn to let go and chill a little more.

How do you do it? How do you keep your calm and don’t go ballistic when they start pushing all your buttons, not one at a time, but altogether, at once?

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