All About Your Child

Tonight, I need to setup my stall at the bazaar. So I had to beg ask my mother-in-law to take care of them for a few hours while I do my setup in peace.

In the past, I sell my handmade accessories as a job. Now I am selling them as a duty. I need to clear them fast because I do not like to go through the moment where my kids show me the mummy-can-you-don’t-go-work kind of look whenever I drop them off at my mother-in-law house. I hate to see that look. I can feel how my kids feel, its the same kind of feeling as when my auntie told me that I had to stay with my parents for good (read my story).

In the past, it was a daily routine that they had to be deposited at my in-law’s house. They still gave me that kind of look then, but because they were so used to it, they hardly cry.

Ever since my sister-in-law became pregnant for the 3rd time, my mother-in-law could forsee that her 61 year old body will not be strong enough to take care of 5 kids, that’s including the unborn child. The baby was born last year May. So on by April, I had to stop my work completely already.

No matter how much argument we had in the past. My mother-in-law is a superwoman in to me. She took care of 4 young children, age newborn, 1, 2 and 4, housework, cook and everything else. She really deserves the family’s respect.

When my sis-in-laws 3rd child was born. That was the beginning of my new profession – full-time domestic manager. But I had lots of ready-made accessories, and lots of beads yet to be beaded up, I need to clear them, afterall I had been in this line for 6 years. So I discussed with my mother-in-law and she finally agreed to let me go for 1-3 days bazaar every alternate weeks at most.

Everytime when I had such bazaar, I will had to go through the ‘drama’ with my kids all over. Normally, a few hours after I left, my mother-in-law would call and say that they are back to their bubbly self again.

But today, the call was different. There was a crying child on the other side of the phone. It was Binbin. Through his sobbing and catching of breath, I could roughly figured out words like, “mummy…hug me…carry me…want to …go home…”

My heart was so sour, I really felt like calling the bazaar off! But I could not. Close friends know why….I needed to clear the stocks, yes, and I needed the cashflow too.

Next moment, I heard the sound of vomit. My mother-in-law took over the phone and said Binbin vomitted because he cried too much and the call was cut-off.

Sigh….hate this, don’t like to hear my baby cry. Ahhhh….. No parent would like to hear their baby cry!!!

I was watching a circus performance on TV and I can’t help but think of Honghong. She passed away at the age of 6 at home.

Her parents brought their 4 children to watch a real-life circus performance, 2 days after the fun-filled day, the accident happened.

According to her other siblings, the 4 children were pretending to be circus performers. Honghong was trying to try out one of the act seen at the performance. The one where the performer held on to a rope using the just his mouth and turned himself round and round in mid-air.

As the performer is so high up in the air, the performer may have looked like he hang the rope over his neck. And that was what Honghong did at home.

According to her younger sister,5, Honghong climbed up her double-deck bed, somehow managed to get the rope tied onto the dangling ceiling lamp. Then put the rope round her neck and let go of her footage on the double-deck bed. That was how she ‘hanged’ herself.

She was the eldest child in the family, an obedient daughter, a caring sister. She died in 1990.

As parents, its important to explain what they see to them, The dangerous acts in circus, death-defying stunts, violence on seen on TV programmes….To children, they may not ‘see’ the danger and would often learn to imitate. To them these acts may seem just as harmless as imitating their parents way of speaking.

The death of Honghong always reminds me of the simplicity of a child’s mind. Do you have similar stories to share?