Like mother, like son

As Ads is growing up, I can't help but notice many many similarities between his personality and mine. To name just two or three striking ones:

1. He is shy yet confident. He is far more comfortable with adults, especially elderly people, than with kids his own age. Every social thingy we attend, he is a big hit with the uncles/aunties. The kids can take him or leave him :) In our condos, he will strike up a conversation very easily, with my friends. Yet, when I ask him to go and play cricket with the other boys, he hangs back, reluctant to join them. I don't force him, recognizing myself in him at the same age. Shy, introspective, sometime tongue-tied - it took me many years to gain the confidence to be at ease with my peers. He'll get there too :)

Yet, his class teacher tells me, he is different in class, amongst the kids he sees every day. Being the class monitor for 4 weeks gave him a lot of confidence and the teacher says a lot of the kids really like him for his helpful nature, non-aggressiveness and yes...just the fact that he's a very simple kid who doesn't tell tales and doesn't bully anyone.

Some people might call 'em boring! I know that's what I used to think I was, for many years. Quite an un-interesting specimen. The more I think about it, the more I realize I had some serious self-esteem issues :) 

2. He is conscientious. Oh boy! Conscientious to the point of irritating me. Yet, I should know better, because that's exactly the way I am, even today. A couple of days ago, we had an incident at home which illustrates this really well. Ads had tennis class that evening, followed by an hour of playtime, then bath and dinner and before we knew it, it was just half-an-hour left before bedtime. He was busy completing his Hindi workbook which had to be submitted the next day. Now the lil fella struggles a bit with Hindi and is quite slow at writing. I have been noting him working on that workbook methodically, every day for the last 2 weeks. That night, he was looking really sleepy and tired and yet he was plugging away at the last 4 pages that needed to be completed. I knew his Hindi teacher would not mind if he gave it in a day late. I was even ready to give him a note to that effect. I also suggested that he get up 15 minutes earlier the next morning and finish it then. None of my well-meant suggestions worked. On the contrary, he got very worked up and started crying. I felt terrible to see him so sincere and hardworking (when it was not required!) and also extremely annoyed with him. Anyway, we sorted that matter out somehow and I asked S to put both kids to sleep since I had a proposal to be sent out that night and needed to work on it.

15 minutes later, just as I am furiously typing away, S reappears with Y, who looks wide-awake. The minute she sees me, she wants me to put her to sleep. By this time, I was really tense and said a lot of things I shouldn't have. S was really annoyed with me. He asked me later why I was so tense and worked-up and   wasn't I doing exactly what Ads had done just some minutes ago? I had been annoyed with my son then, for not being able to lighten up, and here I was doing exactly the same!

3. He can turn on the waterworks at a second's notice. Sensitive, emotional inside and bravely stoical inside; that's Ads for you. I remember being the same as a child.

Like mother, like son? I keep complaining that neither of my kids looks anything like me (or my side of the family), but now it looks like Ads has picked up some personality attributes from me (including my finicky Virgo ones). I'm ok with that, as long as my short fuse isn't one of them!