Meet Dara! A tireless source of energy and motivation to her family. She brings that same drive and soulful passion to her creative genius Aylabeauty.com. As an ambitious entrepreneur and mother of two, she is delightfully honest about keeping it real. Her tribute to teachers echoes our sentiments and why she’s thankful for Plinkit webinars like How to Engage Your Child in At-Home Learning. We loved taking time to laugh with Dara (she is funny!) and to relish in her sage advice. Hint: truer words have not been spoken, especially now.

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On Parenting

What’s something that worries you about raising children these days?

• Figuring out how to best support our kids during a pandemic (including how on earth to set the kids up for success with online school) in what will probably be one of the worst wildfire seasons in California. I try to tell myself that other generations have dealt with far worse things. But for kids in the Bay Area right now, the combination of not being able to touch anything, hug or play with friends, or go to school for what could end up being a full year because of Covid-19 – while not being able to go outside at all due to air quality – is pretty brutal.
• Our family is abundantly fortunate in many ways, but I think what makes this moment most challenging is watching my children go for such a long period of time without the social interaction they desperately need at their ages. Big feelings all around. It is deeply, achingly sad.

3 things you’ve learned from your children:

1. Plan as much as you want, but be prepared to let go of all of those well-laid plans. This was one of the things I learned right away – and a lesson I truly needed. I have a Type A personality and like to be in control, but once I was pregnant, I quickly sensed that was not the case. This became more apparent as I got deeper into parenthood. Eventually, I realized that I was never really in control anyway. Surprise!
2. Listen first. This won’t be a shocker given #1, but I would often come into a given situation with an expectation of not only how things would proceed, but also how the other person would respond. I’ve since learned to listen, watch, learn, and in many cases, let my kids lead me.
3. Live in the moment. I know, so cliché. I practiced yoga for more than ten years before my first pregnancy, and I never truly understood living in the moment until I had children. Some of this has to do with the fact that kids live in the moment, so you have to, too. But it also has to do with #1 and #2 above. I still try to plan in order to create the context our family wants and needs, and I still provide guidance and course-correction for my children where it’s necessary. But I have learned that, at a certain point, I just have to let go, embrace the chaos, and make the best choices I can at any given moment. Because I can guess at what might happen, but I never really know.

What is something that worries you about raising children?

• I think the biggest question that’s consistently on my mind is whether or not we’re raising our kids in the right place – in the middle of a big, very expensive city (that may be shrouded by wildfire smoke for at least a couple of weeks every year).
• I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire, and of course it was a different time and we all think wistfully about our idyllic childhoods. But even to this day, there is pretty poor cell phone coverage there, and it’s still the kind of place where I think you could just send your kids outside for most of the day and they’d bike to the playground or the community pool and eat SweetTarts from the pool snack bar for lunch and have an incredible sense of freedom.
• In contrast, my 9-year old asked me the other day if she could walk up to the local strip mall (which is about half a mile away) on her own and buy a cookie, and I nearly had a heart attack. I’ve come to realize that if we were to go anywhere else, there would be other things to worry about. (I did a lot of nutty things when I was a kid because of that freedom and idyllic setting!)

What is a recent event you wish you could say or do over again with your children?

• There are a million things that I should have or could have done differently or better, no question. But perhaps as a survival tactic, I’ve blocked them out of my mind. I’m very hard on myself and I don’t think I’d be the parent I want to be if I were constantly replaying those situations in my mind and self-flagellating.
• I do find myself frequently telling my kids that I’m sorry (for snapping at them in the car, for example), then mentioning what might have led me to do that without trying to make excuses, and saying or asking what I should have done instead. Is it a good way to model ‘making mistakes,’ or am I just telling myself that to feel better about messing up? I don’t know. We all just do the best we can in any given moment. Learning how to respond to my children is a work in progress.

On Your Family

Describe a favorite family ritual or tradition:

• Family dinner is sacred. We all love food; my daughter, son, and I love cooking. (We’re working on Daddy. But he does the dishes, so it works out.) Dinnertime is a nice way for us all to put a marker on each day and find joy in the process of cooking and eating together.
• My kids also adore my older brother and his partner. They’ll often come over and do craft projects in the backyard.

What is your children’s favorite toy these days?

• Interestingly, my kids seem to be taking after me and both my husband and my brother in very gender-specific ways. My son is playing with my husband’s and brother’s old LEGOs. My daughter is repurposing my old doll clothes, cutting them up and making a wardrobe for a wooden figurine she’s named Beatrice. Two of her besties have wooden figurines that are Beatrice’s parents, I think. I’m not really sure. I can’t keep up with the fictional family’s comings and goings, but from the snippets of conversation I overhear, they have a very intriguing life.
• Pre-pandemic, both kids loved setting up lemonade stands with their friends as much as I used to!

What is your children’s 3 favorite books?

• For my 9-year old: This summer, she’s loved All Four Stars (a book in a series that touches upon a girl who loves cooking and writing, two of her passions), Johnny Tremain (she loves reading my old books), and the Aru Shah series, which makes her erupt into laughter.
• For my 6-year old: He’s been ripping through the Magic Treehouse series and adores their non-fiction companion books. He also loves any National Geographic book for young readers. He adores non-fiction of any kind and loves to repeat facts he’s learned.
• Here’s a weird story: all I wanted to do while I was pregnant with both of them was read, and I only wanted to read fiction books while pregnant with my daughter, while I only wanted to read non-fiction while pregnant with my son. It’s uncanny!

On Your Wisdom

What is something from your childhood that is true to this day for your children?

• You know those days when you’re agonizing about the best possible educational gifts to get for your kid’s birthday, and you ask around for ideas, and someone says, “Well, you know, the best gift for a young child is a stick,” and you want to scream, “No, it’s not! And, you have no idea how much time and effort I’m putting into this search for the perfect gift!”? Annoyingly, the stick thing is true. I hate to say it because it is, truly, so annoying. But some of my best memories from childhood are of playing outside. Often with sticks. And it has been true for my kids. Nothing compares with playing outside.

Words you’d like to share with your children’s teacher:

• Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• Both of my parents were teachers, and I saw how much they poured their hearts and souls into their work for what appeared to me to be a relatively small amount of recognition. They loved what they did, so I’m guessing that was enough. But I still think that teachers can always use more thank you’s. Especially for all they have to navigate these days on top of their normal load.
• Both of my husband’s parents were teachers, too, so when spring break rolled around this year and we couldn’t go anywhere, I announced to them all that we were bringing them out of retirement and they would spend a few hours with the kids online, teaching them random things like Roman numerals while my husband and I grabbed a few hours here and there to work. It was wonderful. Teachers are selfless and their gift for teaching and caring never grows old.

*Plinkit is proud to share these parent profiles as they authentically represent the diverse voices of our Plinkit readership. The views and opinions expressed in these parent profiles are those of the authors and may not necessarily reflect those of Plinkit Pte. Ltd.