There are days, and there are days.
R begins his 'final exams' at his playschool today. I detested the term as a child, and I detest it as a mother. At playgroup level, 'testing' is of no vital importance to me, though feedback certainly is. They had a neatly printed 'portion' sheet, a lot of which, with due respect, amused me no end. Months of the year, numbers 1-20, all alphabets, 6-10 rhymes, vegetables, fruits, flowers, birds, animals, conversation and story-telling. Whew. Each one sounds more daunting than the former. Was my two and a half year old going to get his head around any of it? The only bit I could cheer about was colouring, though I wonder if the theme for that - summer - would ring any bells for R. He is already behind his peers in the speech department. So most of his testing would seem to me to be, shall we say, pointless. Or so he would have you think.
Yesterday, just before we trotted off to 'sool' in the morning, R decided to dig out his ABC, rhymes and picture books, looking as thrilled as if meeting old friends. With my typical adult tendency of cynicism, I assumed we would be done with the books soon, both of us frustrated with each other's non-compliance. But the Gods were smiling benevolently upon us, and as A progressed into B, C and went all the way to Z, I could swear the tyke was trying to show off and have his mother fall flat on her face. There were glitches I would readily gloss over - he can't say B/ P as an isolated sound, F, L, R sound like Swahili alphabets, and W is an adorable, but wrong, 'bow-zoo'. I decided to test my luck and move on to the numbers page, which he can usually identify to 10 but won't say anything except 'two' and 'three'. As I goaded him into saying 'One', lo and behold, out came two, three, four..... , (a distant cousin of) five, and six! Be still, my heart.
I tentatively turned to the fruits page, all of which are usually 'appu', i.e. apple. Today, we had a chickoo, a pear (not clear but similar sounding), identified a handful others right away and just when I ignored the rest, the chap points and says, "Aai, Cherry!" .............What?!?! He hasn't even seen a cherry in real life! <Jaw drop> Riding on that wave came some of the birds (owl, crow, cock, eagle) and animals. I wanted to say nothing in fear of jinxing it all, but oh, how I wanted to cheer! Whether or not it was flash in the pan, it's always pleasant to be surprised thus!
And then, to put it all in perspective, when we reached school, R's pretty little classmate replied to my greeting in crisp, clear words, 'Good morning, aunty'. Sigh, there's some way to go yet, but oh well, at least I got the cherry on top ;)
R begins his 'final exams' at his playschool today. I detested the term as a child, and I detest it as a mother. At playgroup level, 'testing' is of no vital importance to me, though feedback certainly is. They had a neatly printed 'portion' sheet, a lot of which, with due respect, amused me no end. Months of the year, numbers 1-20, all alphabets, 6-10 rhymes, vegetables, fruits, flowers, birds, animals, conversation and story-telling. Whew. Each one sounds more daunting than the former. Was my two and a half year old going to get his head around any of it? The only bit I could cheer about was colouring, though I wonder if the theme for that - summer - would ring any bells for R. He is already behind his peers in the speech department. So most of his testing would seem to me to be, shall we say, pointless. Or so he would have you think.
Yesterday, just before we trotted off to 'sool' in the morning, R decided to dig out his ABC, rhymes and picture books, looking as thrilled as if meeting old friends. With my typical adult tendency of cynicism, I assumed we would be done with the books soon, both of us frustrated with each other's non-compliance. But the Gods were smiling benevolently upon us, and as A progressed into B, C and went all the way to Z, I could swear the tyke was trying to show off and have his mother fall flat on her face. There were glitches I would readily gloss over - he can't say B/ P as an isolated sound, F, L, R sound like Swahili alphabets, and W is an adorable, but wrong, 'bow-zoo'. I decided to test my luck and move on to the numbers page, which he can usually identify to 10 but won't say anything except 'two' and 'three'. As I goaded him into saying 'One', lo and behold, out came two, three, four..... , (a distant cousin of) five, and six! Be still, my heart.
I tentatively turned to the fruits page, all of which are usually 'appu', i.e. apple. Today, we had a chickoo, a pear (not clear but similar sounding), identified a handful others right away and just when I ignored the rest, the chap points and says, "Aai, Cherry!" .............What?!?! He hasn't even seen a cherry in real life! <Jaw drop> Riding on that wave came some of the birds (owl, crow, cock, eagle) and animals. I wanted to say nothing in fear of jinxing it all, but oh, how I wanted to cheer! Whether or not it was flash in the pan, it's always pleasant to be surprised thus!
And then, to put it all in perspective, when we reached school, R's pretty little classmate replied to my greeting in crisp, clear words, 'Good morning, aunty'. Sigh, there's some way to go yet, but oh well, at least I got the cherry on top ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment