I was in the midst of a meeting yesterday when I get a call from home. Since it's always me who calls home (daily) and my parents call only when it is really urgent, I decide to take the call after excusing myself from the meeting.
Its my Mom and she says that Aman wants to talk to me, which comes as a great surprise to me given that after the initial craze for the telephone, he is now bored and it is really tough to get him to speak. When I feel like hearing his voice, I have to cook up a fib about how I am at the toy-shop & would like to know what he wants. This would bring him to the phone instantly.
I have noticed this with my niece Divya too - as a kid she would like to chat endlessly on the phone (many of my initial blog-posts here were tele-conversations that I had with her. Then she became bored. Now her brother Dany is in the I-love-telephone stage and irrespective of who calls, he wants to speak to them.
Anyway, Mom hands over the phone to Aman & this was our conversation - he was all excited while talking :
"Biju!" // He calls me by name mostly and very rarely as Biju-papa.
"Yes, Aman. What is it that you want to tell me ?"
"Biju, I got 50 out of 50 in my exams." // To me it sounded like 60 of 60.
"Really? Did you answer all the questions ?"
"Yes. I wrote from a to i as was asked to. And also correctly answered the orals".
"Wow!!! That is indeed great. What do you want me to get for you from Madras for your awesome performance ?"
"I want.. hmm. I want.." //He is not sure what he should ask for.
I ask him if a Thomas train with its own station and controls should be fine, since I remembered him asking for this since the time he saw an advt. for this on Pogo.
"Yes. Yes. Get me a Thomas train."
He has completed 1-year at play-school and will join a proper school from June-2011. Our intention in having him spend a few hours daily at play-school was for him to be able to spend time with other kids and enjoy himself. Inspite of our clearly telling the teachers that we don't want him to be actually 'taught', they taught him the alphabet, make him do homework and finally an annual exam too. Ofcourse, while I am not too worried about his exams, Sheena had been spending time with him over the last week, which shows in his acing the test.
While he is all excited about exams and scoring, as he grows up, he will find that this is going to be a way of life for another 16-18 years or so and thus not really fun. We should have a law which mandates that schooling for kids should start only after attaining atleast 5 years of age. In Kerala it is currently 3.5 years - too early in my opinion. Kids should be able to atleast enjoy the 1st 5 years of their life without worrying about lessons, exams etc.
