Summu taught me, that the most amazing feeling I get, is not from watching him do what I taught him, but from doing that which he learnt on his own.
This feeling of mine was just reinforced today.
Ever since Sumukh has been born, and even while I was pregnant with him, I have talked A LOT to him. I mean, really, a LOT... I am a chatterbox, so talking has been easy for me.
Sumukh spends most of his time with me, and since we do zero screen-time, he spends all his waking hours with me or by me. I realized when he was an infant, that it might be a bit of entertainment & fun to just keep explaining everything that I do, to him. Even as I was pregnant, I used to talk to him, telling him what I am feeding my stomach so that he will get so & so nutrients from that food. After his birth, talking to him only felt the most natural thing to do, because it was an entertainment for both of us, to keep chatting & gossiping about everything.
When Bhavani visited us, she asked me if I talk all day to Summu, she noted that I keep on blabbering to Summu. O yes, when I was a child, my dad named me 'Bak bak Raani' (Queen Chatterbox) for this reason.
Now at 14 months, Sumukh has a varied vocabulary of all things & processes that he noticed in his environment- objects he finds on the road, in the park. Objects & processes he notices at home- cooking, cleaning, washing up.
He also understands opposites- fast & slow, hot & cold, sad & happy, dirty & clean, small & big.
I haven't bothered to teach him ABC or 123, I tried but he didn't show any interest. As we read books, he shows me what he finds interesting. From the colours book, he learnt objects. From the counting book, he learnt the names of fruits. From the shapes book, he learnt objects. From his hungry caterpillar book, he picked up the concept of biting, swalllowing, stomachache, a bit of counting (points his finger as though he's counting). He chooses what he wants to learn, and I go along with that. But I must say, the bulk of his learning, has been through watching real life objects & watching me run errands, do the housework. Then when he next sees those objects & activities in books, there is an instant recognition & pleasure at sighting something he knows.
The other day, I was wondering, not as a regret, but a general pondering thought... That Sumukh doesn't know any of the stereotypcial things that a 14 month knows by now- he doesn't know any of the famous nursery rhymes/songs (his favourite song is Adigo Alladigo Sri Hari Vasamu, an Annamacharya keertan, a couple of Hindi movie songs like Bol Re Papihara, Jab Deep Jale Aana, Suno Sajana Papihene, a couple of songs that I made up for him, that Summu & I sing to each other), he doesn't know ABCD, 1234 etc. So I was just asking myself, will he feel handicapped if he goes to school, as all other kids there will know the typical ABC, 1234 stuff?
Well, I told myself, he will catch up soon. Meanwhile, my toddler has an EXTENSIVE vocabulary of his environment, he asks me for solid food (chooses whether it should be daal, banana, strawberry, yogurt, honey, butter), asks me for water & drinks it in a glass, asks me for breastmilk, asks me for juice (he loves the homemade carrot-apple-celery-romaine juice that I make every morning). He understands instructions (please follow me, please tidy up the room) and chooses to sometimes not obey, as per his mood.
He knows a washing-machine, vacuum cleaner, bucket, bathroom, he knows a variety of fruits & vegetables, that they need to be first washed, then wiped & cut, then cooked until hot, so that they can then be mixed & eaten in a plate. With a spoon. Add butter. He knows many random animals, their sounds, birds. He knows that the fridge has cold things, while the stove heats food.
The most important point I noticed, he knows the majority of his words in two languages- Telugu & English. So my toddler is bilingual.
It depends on what you want from learning. We are learning something every moment in life.
When it comes to structured conscious attempts at learning/teaching, I want my son to have a variety of things to explore & expose himself to. He has an entire lifetime to choose what he wants. And those typical ABC kind of things, he will learn in school.
But by talking a lot to him, just the way we talk to adults, involving him in everything I do, I am prodding his intelligence & reasoning.
There I got what I wanted to convey, I want my son to learn how to reason, how to decide. Reasoning, decision making- these are the things I want to teach him at home. These are the things I hope he learns from our activities together. ABC, 1234, he will learn in a classroom anyways.
I know many parenting blogs mention that it is important to talk to our kids. When I say I talk to Summu, I don't make an intentional effort to talk on some particular topic with him. I talk to him by involving him in every routine activity. If we are going to the supermarket, I let him know that we are going out to the supermarket, so we need to make a list of what we need to buy. I show him the rack of onions & show him that there is only one left in the bag (this is the way he learns counting, by counting the objects around him in contexts where counting is necessary), so we need to buy more. When we go to the supermarket, as I place the bag of onions into the cart, I show him & remind him that we needed these onions since there was only one at home, and that we will wash it, cut it up, cook it until it is hot, eat it up in daal with spoon after adding butter. It is like weaving a story of the entire life-cycle of an onion. Reading books has it's place & importance, but when I tell such detailed stories to Summu, it is an audio-book tweaking his imagination. Sometimes I ask him, do we need onions Summu, how many should we buy?
The other day, after Summu finished eating strawberries that he requested for, he formed his hand in a gesture of 'finished' and said, 'ayipoyindi papa' to his dad, Telugu for 'it is finished, dad'. We were thrilled, we didn't try to intentionally teach him that, he learnt it just from our long conversations.
So, I guess we have been so busy juicing Apples, playing with Ball in the park, watching Cats mew, saying hi to pet Dogs in the park, biting our Infantino rubber Elephant teether, that we didn't bother to learn A for Apple, B for Ball, C for Cat, D for Dog, E for Elephant. But I trust his school will teach him that anyway, that is what we send our children to school for!
I remember visiting my Hindi teacher in BBPS, Dipika Gupta mam, in 2003. She slowly recollected me & this is what she had to say-
I remember you had an elder sister too. I remember your mother wasn't particularly bothered about grades, she didn't care whether you sat on the first bench or last, she didn't care if you attended school regularly, she didn't want to know details on your academics. All she said was, my children should be of good character, bacche acche hone chahiye, please let me know if they have any attitude problems. In my long teaching career, I have observed that marks don't mean everything in life, many mediocre/average students do much better in life later when they discover their own aptitudes and high marks don't necessarily translate to life-achievers.
I have realised that I am copying a lot of my mother's attitude, how she brought us up as kids.
She let us play with anyone- street dogs, labourer's kids, neighbours kids. The only thing, of course, she told us to take care about germs.
She let us play with anything- wheat flour poured on the kitchen floor, red lipstick on the dressing table mirror, yogurt-rice smeared on the centerpiece, water-play in the garden with the hose, soap-water in the backyard with torn clothes... The only thing, of course, she didn't let us do dangerous things with chemicals.
Everything we did, she took pictures & made beautiful memories, she never judged us. She never told us not to play with the kid that came last in class. She encouraged me to spend more time with a friend whose mother was a divorcee. My parents were very strict about being polite, not wasting food.
In attempting to bring up Summu in this style, I am just copying my mother and trying to be like her. 14 month old Summu tries to copy me, 29 year old me still tries to copy my 60 year old mother.
Why did I start writing this post in the first place? I had bought some ABC, 123 flashcards for Summu the other day, they are meant for kindergarten kids. I opened the set this morning and Summu started perusing through with me. I was pleasantly surprised to notice, that Sumukh knew all the objects in those flashcards anyways! He knew 90% of it, without us ever having spent time intentionally attempting any age appropriate syllabus of learning/teaching popularly prescribed.
Here, I am not criticizing parents & kids who DO learn ABCs & 123 enthusiastically, I am only trying to say that there is much more to learn in life and ABCs, 123s are not the only measures to fret over and are actually pointless when taught without context.
Also, there is no point in blindly competing (that children should have achieved such & such list of things by a certain age- your child might exhibit some other wonderful learning while being slower on some other aspect- they are not assembly machines, but individual souls.
Again, structured intentional learning is very important at one stage in life, when children are much older (around 5 yrs), because we can never learn a skill truly unless we spend time honing it. One class my mother forced us to attend all our childhood, was music class. We hated it sometimes, we just wanted to play in the park, we prayed for it to rain so that we wouldn't be able to go on the cycle rickshaw to the class. Years later, in our teens, we loved the music lessons and it would have been too late to start learning in teenage, it is something you need to be gently coaxed/forced into when young, but certainly not as a very small child. :)
What Summu exhibited, is a trait every child has- they are tiny sponges that absorb everything & anything around them. So this outcome that I noticed is not because of my intelligence or because I am a great mother. The only thing I did, is to watch where his interests lie (& they evolve everyday depending on his mood & milestones) and gently encourage him, help him where he struggled too much. And let him move on if he doesn't show interest in something I wanted him to try out.
At 6 months, when he wanted to stand with the help of every sharp-edged piece of furniture, instead of preventing him, I placed a huge diaper carton in the middle of the living room. He enjoyed standing by it, walking around it. At 9 months, he found it thrilling to grab his glass of water & turn it over, pouring the contents onto the floor. He refused to sit in the high-chair & wanted to be on the floor while eating, he wanted to set his own timetable. I let him have a silver unbreakable glass, he poured & I mopped. Gradually, in two weeks time, he started drinking the water independently, he told me that the floor was wet, dirty and needed to be mopped. He has learnt these things on his own, with his own reasoning & observation & life is easier for me now (a child that eats what he wants, when he wants), we are not stuck to spoon-feeding on a high-chair. By 10 months, he quit the baby-bottle, didn't need a sippy-cup or a straw-cup. His current craze at 14 months is books, he demands for more & more books, enjoys going through the pictures, recognizing them. We weave our own stories (sometimes in Telugu) based on the pictures. My point is not to read THAT particular book's ACTUAL content. We endeavor to understand the world a bit more with the AID of the book, sometimes how we use the book, is not what it actually is about! :P
What I realized, is that if a child insists on doing things his way, it is wiser to LET him do it & try to construct a safe environment for him to do it. Explaining to him that it is dirty/bad/wrong/bad manners to rebel is unnecessary (we tell them not to pour water, do things only in a certain way, because it is convenient for us) & stifles their imagination & hampers their journey of learning. We are attempting to influence the child, deciding what it should do, what it must not do.
What I am trying to convey, but not able to express myself with as much clarity, is better explained by this article that an acquaintance recently shared (Thanks Subha pinni, By the way, I didn't know this type of approach actually has a name, RIE/Montessori methodologies. I just followed my instincts & let Summu follow his) :
http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/06/how-to-help-your-baby-become-a-math-genius-or-not/
Although this article talks of a mom who wanted to teach her child math, I feel it applies to all situations of learning.
I feel learning & Teaching, are two different sides of the same coin, that never end. When we teach, we learn. Be careful of what we are teaching, we never know what we & our child are learning from it :)
Most importantly, I am not trying to say that EVERYTHING works out & falls into place due to my approach. I am not saying that life is more peaceful this way. Summu has still not figured out his sleep cycle at 14 months, I go through many tired days. I gave up fretting over it. I realized, that when he is capable of regulating & deciding so many other things, there must be a good reason he is not interested in setting a sleep cycle. I did my bit (tried my best to look into his diet/our lifestyle, tips, tricks) and left it at that. It is sometimes inconvenient for me & has turned my life upside-down. But I keep reevaluating what our priorities are, as I am not installing a machine, I am raising a soul (& raising myself).
