An Interview on Parent Level Maturity

As we continue our focus on human maturity stages, Marsha Kumar, a new member of our HCI community, shares from her parenting experience. Catherine Curtis (CC) interviewed Marsha (MK) on parent level maturity. Below is a shortened transcript of that interview. We hope you will enjoy hearing her insights as much as we did.

CC: Tell us a little about your journey beginning with the birth of your first child.

MK: I got married at the age of 20. Our daughter was born when I was 22 years of age. I had a very narrow mindset about what a parent looks like. I was going to be the perfect parent. I read many books including Dr. Spock, God the Rod in Your Child’s Bod, How to Raise an Excellent Child (this was a Christian book, with an authoritarian mindset) about how to parent. What I read was all about discipline and having schedules. In those days, a new mother was hospitalized for five days after a regular delivery, and our pediatrician was on vacation. Every day a different pediatrician would come in and give me advice. Each day was different advice on how to care for this little baby. One doctor would say let her cry, feed her every four hours, when she is two weeks old, give her rice cereal. The next day the doctor would say don’t worry about the schedule, whenever she is hungry, nurse her, and at three weeks start giving her applesauce. Being someone who wanted to do it right, I was so confused. I had the perfect nursery decked out with Winnie the Pooh. I wanted this child to be a very happy child. When things started happening, when she was crying, and I did not know why she was crying, I tried to figure it out. I did not know about soothing her or that her brain had not developed the ability to go from fear or anger to joy. I did not know then that we have neuro networks that are formed during the first two years that are designed to lead our brains from the difficult emotions to the joy center. When a caregiver soothes a baby in his/her negative emotion, a baby is comforted and the neurons that lead to the joy center develop. I would think, something is wrong, and I am doing something wrong. It was stressful to say the least!

Then my second child came, and he had a totally different personality. He entered the world saying, “I will do it myself!” Everything I figured out with my daughter now went out the window. What a challenge. As they grew, I kept reading, studying and tweaking. I did not know what I know now about how the brain develops. I did not know about comforting, soothing, and attuning. I just read the books and had the whole left-brain thing going on. I figured, if I kept reading and doing what they say to do, it will all turn out alright. And guess what? Not so.

When these two were teenagers, I was taking them to their sporting events, concerts and activities. I was a Girl Scout mom and a den mom for the Cub Scouts. I was totally immersed in what my kids were doing and really exhausted at times. Our third child was born when the older two were teenagers. This was a challenge! How do I run with the two older ones and have time to think about the needs of this little one? When my older son was 16, he was in a very serious car accident. He had brain injury, and the neurosurgeon did not know if he was going to make it. It was a long recovery. He had two broken legs, a broken arm, a broken jaw, and a brain injury. He was bedridden for almost a year. Navigating that with a little one, who was by this time three years old, was quite a task.

I was overwhelmed to say the least. When I had this crisis, our neighbors and church folk came around. But, after a month or two, people go back to their own lives and that is when it becomes difficult. It was quite a challenge to find someone to watch my three-year-old, so I could get ready for a doctor’s appointment. I had to navigate getting my son in his wheelchair and then get into the van. All those challenges, it was really hard. 

CC: Marsha, were you a believer when your children were growing up?

MK: I came to know the Lord when the older kids were two and four years of age. I figured that was part of being a good mother. I really didn’t know what it meant to know Jesus. I had a neighbor that would invite me to church. One time, the pastor gave an altar call, and I went up thinking that is what you do to join the church. But when I prayed, the Holy Spirit revealed to me the awesomeness of God. Even though I didn’t know what I was doing, my heart really wanted to know. And God heard my prayer. I joined that church, and the children went to Sunday school and learned about Jesus.

CC: How do you see your children as beloved and cherished in the eyes of God?

MK: When I was pregnant with our youngest son, I had different medical issues, and we lived in Connecticut at the time. I went to the Yale University Hospital because he was a high-risk baby. When he was born, I had an entire team of doctors in the room. When he entered the world, I lifted him high and said, “Here is Jeffrey, Lord, here is your prophet.” I felt that in my heart that he was very special. My two other children were older, and God sent us Jeffrey as a surprise. He hated being in the car seat, and my two older children loved riding in the car. I knew this son was different. I didn’t know much about autism because he could talk and respond. When he had trouble in school, he was tested and found to have learning disabilities. He had different therapies, and an entire protocol was designed just for him. Then my husband got transferred to Georgia. I enrolled him in school, and the educators said he did not qualify for any of the interventions. That was quite difficult, so I enrolled him in a private school modeled after Charlotte Mason, which the Ambleside School follows. He blossomed there. He skipped an entire grade level, and I was very much involved in his school. A counselor in Atlanta diagnosed him with Sensory Processing Issues. This meant his senses were magnified, especially the feel of his clothes to his skin. He preferred silk shirts and flannel pants. Clothing tags and the hem of shorts would bother him immensely. I had to be careful about buying his clothes.

My husband got transferred to Maryland, where private school was out of our budget. Most of the parenting was my job as my husband traveled all over the world for his job. He lasted six weeks in public school. During those six weeks he would not ride the school bus, so I would drive him, and he refused to get out of the car. I would drag him out of the car and bring him into the school. I knew this was not sustainable. In the meantime, my husband asked me what I thought about homeschooling our son. At first, I did not think I had the ability or resources, was I qualified? Things were so bad at school that I agreed. I joined an amazing Association of homeschoolers in Maryland. From there a group of us with boys formed a small group called the Gideons. Each parent had a different strength: one of the mothers was a lawyer, one of the fathers a pharmacist. One home taught the literary, one the science, one the history. We worked together as a team. Living where we did, we had access to the museums in Washington DC. One memorable field trip was to a nuclear power plant. We had to go through background checks months prior, the boys really enjoyed it. Raising Jeffrey was quite a delight.

CC: When you lifted your son up in the delivery room and dedicated him to God, how has that manifested in his life?

MK: After getting a degree in software engineering, he joined YWAM (Youth with a Mission) and did his DTS (Discipleship Training School) in Brazil. He became very interested in linguistics. Becoming proficient in Portuguese, he did a survival training in the Amazon jungle. While there he contracted dengue fever, which was scary. It was heart wrenching to know that he was suffering in the hospital, and we learned that many people die from this. He survived and went to the Himalayan mountains in India with YWAM, and then to Milan, Italy where he helped set up their computer system. Then he went to live and work in Columbia. Once he had to take a very primitive boat downriver to Brazil. He slept in a hammock, and some of the men on board were drug smugglers. It was a multi-day trip, which was very scary.

CC: What an amazing story of overcoming large sensory deficits to live in many different foreign places. The skills it took him to live in different countries and adjust accordingly are remarkable.

CC: Is there anything else that comes to mind when you think about parenting your youngest son?

MK: I read about Temple Grandin, a spokesperson for autism. One of her amazing accomplishments is to have developed a squeeze machine to calm her sensory overload. That gave me the idea of the importance of massage. I spent a lot of time massaging him and rubbing his skin. And later I took him to get massages. This helped him to be able to wear different clothes. This desensitization took a couple of years; it was not an overnight solution.

CC: How were your children impacted when you began to attune to them?

MK: All three of my children know they can tell me anything (sometimes I wish they didn’t)! Even today, they share their hearts with me. My grandchildren do this also. My grandson, 16 years of age, will ask if he can bring his girlfriend over and visit. They know they can tell me anything and I won’t try to give advice or tell them what to do. They know I love the Lord. They know they are loved. I see so many parents who lose that connection with their kids and grandkids. My daughter comes over once a week, and we spend the afternoon together.

CC: Now that you know more about maturity, are there things you wish you had done differently with your children?

MK: I wish I had not been so strict. I wish I would have listened more and allowed them to be children. Just throw all the books out and let the Holy Spirit lead. All of this book knowledge can lead to legalism. Especially throw out the authors that say they are experts.