A and I were reading a book( Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever.) I looooove that book. I used to have it as a kid and I found the newest version of it for A! It was first published in 1963 and in 1991 some changes were done to portray a more progressive society.  You can have a look at it  Here. It’s interesting how they realised that children perceived these things at such a young age!)

So coming back to my topic of Old MacDonald. My baby has made the latest change to this age old rhyme. So first we were on the farm page. So she called out the usual animals…. cow, dog. And then she turned the page. And the next page is an airport. Now I was still singing the rhyme for her. So when I stopped for her to name the next animal, she said Plane! And I thought Wow! That’s interesting. So I sang along and she went on to name helicopter, train and rocket! It was so much fun! 

Co incidentally both the things I mentioned today are about the Mordern world. Whether it was the changes in the Richard Scarry book or it was me singing plane and rocket in Old MacDonald. It’s important how we should break age old stereotypes and move ahead and teach our children about being more open minded. Not sticking to gender stereotypes (one of the reasons for the changes in the book). 

Everyday we read and see about women being abused across the nation. Why does that happen? Because men believe that women are meant to be bossed around. Because we teach our daughters to be independent ( trying to be mordern in outlook) but we forget to teach our sons that girls can be independent and have minds of their own. Now a days men want their wives to work for the additional money they get but they don’t want to help with housework. So woman lands up doing cooking ,cleaning , being a mom (in India it’s usually just the mom bringing up the kids) and having a job. Which is physically and mentally exhausting and the man won’t even move a finger when he comes home because he is “tired”. Really? And your wife? What is she a superpower goddess? 

Anyway I went completely off topic. I can write pages and pages about this. So conclusion is let’s treat our kids equally and set examples by behaving the same. Otherwise we will only be harping about equality and change and it will never happen. Because we as parents havnt set a good example. I’m lucky my husband is pretty hands on in whatever he can do. He hasn’t been taught to even make a cup of tea so maybe not the kitchen. But at least with the kids he helps as much as he can.