He did really well in the first round of tests – much better than I hoped, considering he attended a grand total of six days worth of school before he sat for the tests. Hindi and French were the main hurdles but I am sure he will do more than fine in the next round of tests – starting in a week’s time! Before that, he has his school trip to look forward to, with a swimming competition the day after – and knowing my boy, he is just gagging for both!

Last week, he decided to broaden his horizons a bit more – apparently school work, impending Grade 1 violin exams and various sports activities aren’t enough and the chap auditioned for a  Drama Workshop at school.

When he was 5, we had enrolled him with the local Jo Jingles in London but he didn’t like it much and we abandoned it after the second session. So when he announced last week that he has been selected for the workshop, I was surprised. But with public speaking and personality development being the part of the mix where Theatre is concerned, I willingly consented to ferry him back and forth every Saturday morning.

As the session was to have lasted for only an hour, I didn’t see the point of not staying back so The Mintlet and I sat around, watching the fun. Personally, I was happy with how he threw himself into the proceedings. He was totally into it, doing everything that was asked of him. His team was asked to perform a short 5 min skit and they had chosen to enact the story of King Midas. P was King Midas and he had a ball, being King Midas, albeit a giggly one!

The workshop was conducted by three young men, all former students of the school. Whilst they were adept at getting the children jump through hoops, I found them lacking in two aspects – one, dealing with children. Most of the assembled lot were aged 8 – 10 and were spoken to like adults. Children need lots of praise and after they put on their skits, when the reviews were given, the negatives were listed one by one. I watched P literally deflate in front of my eyes. A “well done” followed by a litany of their faults would have worked better. Two, the excessive use of jargons – words like ‘improv’ were being thrown about and I don’t thing every child understood that, not on day 1 of the workshop.

One thing I have learnt so far is that my son needs to toughen up if he is to survive in this environment. England, I found, was much more child-friendly and accommodating. With people coming out of our ears, these are attributes that have no place in society. A month back, I would gave fretted at this, but now, I have a feeling he can deal with this just fine.
Well, you’ll read about it in these parts anyway!

On the school bus:

“It is not a bus; it is a van! It is soo cramped and there are no seat belts. I had to hold on for dear life and even then when the driver hits the brakes, I end up banging into the rails.”

On his teachers:

“Everyone is so strict! When you first see them, they are all smiley but then they come into class and give you the beady eye. It just freaks me out! I try to concentrate on my work but when I have to copy things from the board and the teacher is sitting right in front of it, giving everyone the beady eye, it creeps me out!”

On sports:

“Yeah it is good. I do swimming, football, volleyball – wanted cricket but it was full. Then I asked for tennis and was told there weren’t enough racquets. Badminton only girls play. But again the teachers are so strict.”

What it meant was that every evening for 2 hours, we had to battle with his books. Trying to make sense of what had been taught in the class when he was in a different part of world, copying down notes and coming to grips with this new and very demanding syllabus. I have to say, the boy has been coping with it admirably well. He never says no when I say ‘let’s hit the books, son’. After asking me repeatedly in England if he’d have homework everyday, his response to my ‘have you got any homework today, P’ these days is a ‘what do you think?’

Touche!

After a lifetime of sitting at the top table in his school, P is now having to work very hard every day. And I am glad that we brought him over this year as it is evident that had we waited even a little more, he might not have been able to cope – at all. As it is, there are struggles a’plenty, with the differences in the teaching methodology, the expectations and the way in which the schools over here test the children. One of the fundamental differences is that, in the West, the children are asked what they infer from a given situation; here, as long as they can replicate the text, they can pat themselves on the back on a job well done.

As I had looked only for schools that provide French as a second language option, at least he doesn’t have to wage a war with Tamil grammar every night. But, despite the fact that he has been learning French in England for two years, the standard here is so high that you can see he is struggling. Already, he has to conjugate no less than 10 verbs, figure out if the given word is masculine or feminine (from a pool of 25 words), change into plural, give the meaning of a given words (again from a collection of 25-30 words) and learn numbers till 75. A tall order, considering the children have just started learning French!

Typically of CBSE schools, he had to have a third language too and we had to go with Hindi. For a boy that learnt Mandarin Chinese, I am hoping Hindi will become child’s play! For now, we have to just struggle with war, vyanjan and other assorted ills.

Then there’s this beast called Social Science, where the topic is India. The boy is faced with tongue twisters such as Shiwalik, Hindu-Khush, Gangotri and other interesting words. Whatever I might say about him, I have to admit that my boy is game – he plunges in time and again, trying to master these unfamiliar words and learn why they are so important. Any child might have had a meltdown, thrown in the towel and generally, called it a day but not my boy! He is made of sterner stuff than I and is bound and determined to see things through.

But at the end of the day, he is a little boy, in a new world, surrounded by strangers and trying to stay afloat. He wouldn’t be human if it didn’t get to him a little bit and it did, yesterday. His class teacher rang me at 10.15 AM and said he was unwell – he had vomited profusely twice and was complaining of stomach-ache – and can I come and pick him up. I did. A combination of heat and nerves over the impending tests had got to the chap. We had a long talk about it yesterday and I hope that he understands he has nothing to prove to anybody.

He is already a winner.

The reason for today’s visit? The child didn’t take his swimming kit with him. And as I had some work at the school office, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and take it to him.

Because of that, I had a chance to see how he has settled down in his class. He was sitting in the third row and despite the fact that he was the only one not wearing the uniform, I couldn’t pick him up straight away. There were boys jumping around, solving math problems while discussing their impending cricket game during that afternoon’s P.E session. As I finally located the boy, he was doing some calculations using fingers from both hands and even seemed to have borrowed a few off the chap sitting next to him!

Typically, he was embarrassed to see me at school and when I hoicked the swimming kit bag up high, just pointed to the shelf which had the lunch bags. As I put the bag down, the lovely boy that had befriended him on Minute 1, saw me and said, ‘Aunty! Don’t put it there! It will get lost! Here, give it to me – hey P, put it in your bag, da, you don’t want to lose your things, do you?’

Ah, bless you child!

Before I could even say ‘thank you!’, the boy once again hailed me. ‘Aunty! Did you know? P is the vice-captain of our class cricket team!’

I went ‘really? wow!’ but my voice was drowned out by the chap sitting directly behind P, who piped up, ‘who’s the vice-captain? You, P?’

And then a loud discussion involving lots of gesticulations and arm waving started, chiefly about cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, bat, ball, bowler, whoseturnisittobowlfirst and so on. My son was still sitting there, in the middle of this pandemonium, busily counting with three hands.

This just in: The expected cricket game didn’t happen – at least not the way my son intended it to. A boy hogged the ball, refused to share, son didn’t get a chance to play and that was that. P was fuming at the injustice of it all but he is already full of plans for the following week’s play time.

The teaching methodology here is vastly – read, totally – different to those employed in the West. P’s teachers in England did not believe in making the child feel inadequate or worse, inept. They repeatedly and calmly told their students to correct their ways. When the children played the fool, as children are wont to occasionally, they were admonished, yes, but not so strongly that the children’s feelings are hurt.

In India, sheer numbers make it impossible for teachers to try the softly, softly method. As I was waiting to enter the Principal’s office on Thursday, I had ample time to observe how teachers tackle the younger classes. A Class I teacher was heard yelling at someone beyond my field of vision – when that person moved into view, I was shocked to see a tiddler, just a little bit bigger than my two-year-old. Such a thing would be unthinkable abroad, the child would have burst into tears straightaway and the parents would have quickly met with the teacher to thrash out matters. But this 6 year old just quietly walked over to where his teacher was pointing and in two minutes, was raising merry hell from that quarter! In that moment, I felt quite sorry for the teacher, trying to contain 40-odd bundles of energy.

Having said that, I wish they had given P some leeway due to the facts that it was his first day and it is an entirely new methodology. You cannot expect a 9 year old to hit the ground running – but that is just what they expect. This, in my opinion, is too much.

P felt his first day was a success. It was, a personal one – he has faced up to his nervousness and conquered it. He walked into a strange classroom as a newcomer and walked out in the evening, feeling quite comfortable in the surroundings. He has made many new friends and despite not remembering a single name, is quite looking forward to meeting them on Monday. He has already made plans to play cricket with them at the next P.E session.

Delve a little deeper and you realise the priority of a sports-mad 9 year old is quite different to what the Indian schooling system expects. His maths teacher has scribbled across  his notebook in bright red splashes “Untidy and incomplete work – meet me!” When he saw it, poor P gasped and his face crumpled. He, who was at the top table consistently through out his career at his old school in England, was now faced with not-so-positive remarks for the first time. He deflated like a pricked balloon in seconds. I was hopping mad – why couldn’t the teacher have cut him some slack? Didn’t she know it was his very first day there? Apparently no one, including his class teacher, spoke to him, asked him where he was from, checked if he was okay, is he coping – no extra consideration for a boy tat has been thrown into the deep end.

What is it about these red welts on a notebook that cut you off at the knees? Especially when they are less than laudatory? My son will face many more, I’m afraid, before he settles down into the system.

A long school day, filled with lesson after lesson of different topics, wandering around a vast and strange building had left him winded. He compared his new school to Hogwarts, at one point! When I asked him how his day was, he said ‘it was okay, but we weren’t let out even for 10 minutes!’ In England, schools make a point of letting the children run around in the playground for a few minutes – even if it is during lunch break – so that they can let off steam, instead of keeping them cooped up in lessons all day, like barn chickens. Whereas here, getting on with portions is key and while P’s timetable had 40 mins of Audio-Visual lessons that day, where he watched a movie on Ganesha, he was once again sitting down with his classmates. Little boys and girls need to be able to run free for a few minutes instead of just running from one lesson to another.

Another gripe is the fact that none of these schools have hats / caps included in their uniform. None of the children wear them, as a result. It is shocking to see children of all ages wandering around in the hot sun, with nothing to protect their tender heads.

****************

After doing some homework and reading with me, late last night, I think he has realised that he cannot coast on his earlier, easier way of doing things anymore. For one, he never had to sit down and write tests! For another, his indulgent teacher is back in Brentwood and he has to knuckle down, if he has to win over his new lot of teachers. A long struggle awaits my boy – I just hope the sheer drudgery doesn’t sap his energy and crush his spirit.

As the school follows the New Delhi schools timing for term timings, term 1 of the new year started way back in April and the school reopened after the summer holidays on Wednesday. So before P could take a deep breath, he was told he could call himself a student of the school and may he please turn up on time the next day, thankyouverymuch.

And so he did, feeling quite conspicuous in everyday clothes. We showed up in front of his classroom 30 mins before we were due and so had a lot of time to people watch. P was stunned at the sheer volume of students that kept walking in. His own class has 45 children in it!

As we were waiting outside, few of his class boys stood around being boys and I nudged P to go and introduce himself. Of course he refused. But the minute the teacher walked in and I came out, an enterprising chap claimed him and proceeded to take P under his wing. That irrepressible boy even shouted “bye, Aunty” to me as I walked out of the school! I hung around a bit as the children assembled for prayers. The “standatease” threw P off and he just gaped around him! Then the choir started singing in earnest and it was with  pleasant surprise that I found myself humming along as the long forgotten words came flooding back into my memory banks.

I had to go back to school to pick him up and put him on the right bus. As the teacher had also dropped the bombshell of impending Assessment tests, I was asked to come early to copy down the class notes. Even as I showed up sweating and panting, the lady sweetly said she’ll lend me her notes so I can simply photocopy the lot!

On the way back home on the much crowded bus (which also brought back memories of the days I spent on a similar bus travelling from Ashok Nagar to the school every day), we chatted about how his day was. He said he has made loads of friends but has forgotten the names of everyone! But never mind, he had a trick – he was just going to discreetly read the names off their ID cards! His classmates thought he was from America, going by his accent and were most surprised when he said “England, actually.”

The lessons were alright, I hear. He didn’t have a problem understanding what he was taught and he could easily keep up with the rest of the class. Now and then, someone couldn’t understand what he said but overall, everyone was quite easy going and eager to help him out. The boys had lots of fun playing with his plastic cutlery during lunchtime, apparently!

In fact, I found the children super sweet and tripping over themselves to help. Yesterday, when I was taking down the class time table, 3 girls separately asked me if I was a parent and if so, where was the child. This afternoon, as I waited to pick up P, every other boy that walked past me (they had a session at the Science Labs) to get back to class told me P was right behind and he was doing alright!

I think the fact that P doesn’t seem nervous at the thought of the school says it all, really. Even the thought of impending tests haven’t jarred him much.

So, that was that, the much dreaded first day. Can I just say a gazillion thanks to everyone that sent me best wishes?

PS: Yesterday, I stood in front of my Comp Sci teacher and went “do you recognise me?” and was gobsmacked when he did! He then proceeded to tell the inmates of the school office who I was, which year I graduated and after that, everyone was super happy to help me, former student and all! Personally, the best bit of the day was meeting my old school bus driver, who is still working as a driver at the school. The dear old man had tears in his eyes upon recognising me. Took me around and introduced me to the other drivers, spent a good while catching up with me and even came with me as I caught an auto back home!

One of the rides

Apparently, NaBloPoMo works on weekdays only. There was no prompt for yesterday and likewise, today. As I was out making merry yesterday, I shall write about it today and call it a job well done. OK?

 
We took the children to Legoland, an amusement park near Windsor. I like Windsor much better than Legoland but as I am pretty sure my two would rather wander around the latter instead of traipsing around Windsor Castle, looking for Henry VIII’s august tomb, we headed where we did. It was a super tiring day and luckily, as it had rained buckets earlier, it wasn’t the “scorcheroo” (as Pratik’s friend’s mum foretold) I was worried about.
As decided earlier, I went with Pratik on his “must be accompanied by an adult” rides while the spouse looked after The Mint. Who, typically, protested vociferously on being left out of the fun.

The first ride was something Viking Whatzit. We sat with another family of 4 in this round floaty thing and were set afloat on a frothing course. Water was chucked on us from top, squirted from the sides and on two occasions, we had to float through water curtains. Needless to say, by the time the ride came to an end, I was giving drowned rats a run for their money. Spouse took one look at us and instead of springing for the drying tube, said we could walk it off!

Typically, by the time I dried out, it was time for another water ride and time to undo all the good work.

Anyways, this pattern continued, alternated with kiddie rides for the child, till a strident voice announced on the PA system “the park is now closed! the PARK is now CLOSED” and we hoofed it out of there.

The children were so pooped they fell asleep the minute we hit the motorway. So we scorched our plans of heading into Wembley and finding us a nice North Indian restaurant.

In cliched fashion, much fun was had by all.

We shall rest our weary bones today. Though I’m sure my daughter has ideas – I spy with my right eye her getting decked out in her “outside shoes”. sigh.

My daughter

I suddenly realised that it has been ages since I wrote anything about the kids. There were so many posts I compiled, especially about Her Mintness but they just never saw the light of the laptop screen. But after a new reader read a post and stated they didn’t know if I had children, I thought it was high time I did an update on the kiddies before my loyal few forget about them!

First and foremost, The Mint is fully potty trained. I am real chuffed about this because in less than 6 months she has completely got rid of the diaper. I started after she turned 2, in September, just like I did with her brother. She used to go to nursery at the time and the staff taking her regularly helped a great deal. Recently, we stopped using the night-time diapers too after they were dry for the third night in a row. She now wears them only when we go out, but even then, she doesn’t wee in them and we end up taking her to a regular toilet nearby.

On our anniversary, for instance, we went into the city and spent the cold day wandering beside canals and she drank fruit juice after juice and still the chit didn’t wet her nappy at all. Then we went to this restaurant for dinner and she insisted on weeing then, refused to listen when I reminded her she was wearing a nappy and wee-ed like a horse when her dad took her to use the toilet! How she managed to hold it in the whole day I’d never know!

In other news, she is a pucca chatterbox! I was termed one when I was 5 years old by my teacher but my daughter has beaten me to it. Right from the minute she says “morning!” she is vocal. She decides if she’ll drink milk that day or not, what she’ll have for breakfast and so on. No is a word that is dropped frequently – not by us, but by Her Highness.

Conversations such as this abound in our house:

“Minty put away the guitar  and eat your breakfast!”

“No Minty no put away geetah, Minty and Kola (her koala stuffed toy) eat bekfast!”

She has firm views on EVERYTHING, from shoes to whatever she is told to do. At 2, there is already no “you do it cos I say so” with her. She will calmly parry with a  “no…..” and proceed to do what she wanted to do in the first place. She is, in one word, exhausting! But she is also free with the ‘magic words’ – if she knows you’re hurt, she’ll say sorry even if she didn’t cause it. When she’s in the mood, she’ll happily dispense hugs and kisses.

I don’t know if it is thanks to her brother but she loves music – and dance. She can hum the tune of whatever song he is playing on the violin and is always at him to practice! She will hound him to play her favourite tune by humming it fully and will proceed to accompany him as he plays it on the violin. She also loves to swing her hips – be it while watching something on the telly or brushing her teeth!

Pratik, on his birthday

Of course, her favourite person is her brother. She’ll fight with him tooth and nail, labelling everything of his as ‘pappa’s’ and her indignant screams rent the air every few minutes but when he isn’t around, she is the one counting minutes till he comes back. The one night he went away for a sleepover, she nagged us to death to bring back ‘Anna’ (elder brother, in Tamil)!

Speaking of, my little boy turned 9 last week. I don’t think I can get away with calling him a little boy anymore. He is such a lovely child, as different from his tempestuous sister as the proverbial chalk is from cheese. He is very happy with his own company; in fact, after being an only child for more than 6 years, he is extremely adept at making up his own games and I have never heard the dreaded ‘I’m bored!’ from him, ever! He is the quintessential all-rounder – he does so well at studies that all his teacher had to say about him was that she was extremely pleased with him. He also excels at football, swimming, running and is playing violin so well that his teacher reckons he will be ready to take his Grade 1 exams in June! Of course, as we will be in India by then, I’ll have to find a way for him to take the exams in Chennai!

Both his head teacher and class teacher had such lovely things to say about him that we were bursting with pride. The former went on to ask me if the school we have chosen in India for him will nourish him and foster his spirit! His class teacher  had tears in her eyes even as she said she will miss having him in her class. I sure do hope we are doing the right thing by taking him away from people that so obviously care for him!

He is a serious kinda chap but he has a wicked sense of humour. Typically of boys his age, the words ‘pee’, ‘poop’, ‘fart’ etc send him into paroxysms of giggles but he is also capable of spinning a good yarn. An extremely affectionate child, he is also the one  for impromptu hugs – but never a public kiss!  He floored me completely two days back by making me an origami heart for Mother’s Day!

So anyways, that’s my two. Totally maddening but utterly lovely, in my eyes.

Edited to add: I broke one of the golden rules of parenting yesterday and my daughter made sure I paid for my sins. I proclaimed to the world in no uncertain terms that a child of mine does something, in this case, not wet herself and is totally potty-trained. Well slap me and call me silly because last night she wet the bed not once, but two flipping times. I am off now to eat my words. Or is it crow?

I love Brentwood on Sunday mornings.

The air is crisp and clean smelling. As you walk up Queen’s Road, you can hear the church bells pealing in the distance. And all around, there’s a sense of “all’s well with the world”.
Last Sunday, we were up with for a special purpose. We were going to sign P up with the Brentwood Beginners Strings Orchestra, a part of the Brentwood Orchestra for Young Musicians. Understandably, the boy was extremely nervous. I think it helped that we had forgotten all about it till 30 mins prior so he didn’t have much time to psych himself out.
As we walked to the music room, we could see a few girls and boys his age tuning their violins and a couple of them practicing. There was even a girl with a massive cello. The ladies who run BOYM are such a cheerful bunch! They had P’s welcome pack all sorted and ready and before he could absorb that, he was measured for his tee and told it will be ready for him soon. Off we went to the music room where he fidgeted nervously.
“I am not sure this is a good idea”, he muttered.
But we got his violin tuned and he took the seat farthest from everybody else and smiled wanly at us, making motions for us to make ourselves scarce. After hanging around for a wee bit more (where the son couldn’t catch sight of us), in the vain hope of hearing them play, we finally beat it.
We went back couple of hours later to pick him up and the first sentence he uttered was “I wish they practiced every week. I enjoyed that!”
PHEW!
The orchestra is composed of local children that are working towards Grade 1 and beyond. After they turn 11 and pass Grade 2, they can move to the Junior orchestra. They get together one Sunday every month for two hours to play and learn together. It is a wonderful opportunity for these children and I, for one, am chuffed to bits that my son got to give it a shot.

Then he decided he will test me in French. “What is la tête?”

I scratched my head a bit and said “head!”. I got a regal nod in return.

“What is le brah?”

More head scratching ensued and as enlightenment didn’t dawn even after help from caffeine, I shook my head.

“Your arm. You know how you remember it?”

Alarm bells pealed faintly but I took the bait.

“How?”

“Your bra! How do you put it on? Over your ARM! That’s the easiest way to remember – my French teacher taught us that!”

Once my mind has finished boggling, it will be able to formulate better thoughts on French teachers using bra as a teaching aid to 8-9 year old boys. Right now I am too busy coughing and wheezing and trying to forget that my not-yet 9 year old spouts words like “bra” with ease.