Dear Mieja:

I have never written public blog letters to you and your sister. I had my reasons. Now, Mieja, this is my letter to you. My first public, blog letter to you. I have my reasons.

If I ever write your biography, the chapter that covers 3.5 years – 4 years of your life will certainly be titled HEART ACHE. To call the past six months as turbulent will be an understatement.

Your motto has always been Vini Vidi Vici – you came, you saw us all and you conquered us all with your laugh, love, expression and attitude. You make me laugh like there is no tomorrow. When I hug you, I feel this sense of contentment swell inside of me. You have multiple facets, all of which I enjoy. Heck, I enjoy even your ‘padagamani’( adamant and aggressive ) side. You have always gone by ‘naan oru mudivu pannital, appuram nane yen pechai ketka maten’ (Translates to: If I decide something, then I will not listen to me convincing myself to change my decision.) and in the past I have found it awfully cute. The thought that this child is my last child softens parents in many ways. It is an abstract feeling that  can only be experienced and cannot be explained.

Any thing goes is definitely not what flies in our house. Your appa and I believe that discipline is not a dirty word. We view it more as setting safe limits within which you and your akka can explore. It will be false to say that we do not have any expectations on you and your akka. Though the two of you are young, we do have expectations, age appropriate expectations on you both. We are not new, inexperienced parents any more. Tantrums neither scare us nor embarrass us. We are level headed to view it as mismatched expectations and  are willing to work through it.

Now, something happened. Or may be many things happened….. I am not sure, but I can only make educated guesses. May be you moved from what Dr.Montessori would call ‘just existing’ to ‘conscious existence’. May be you are trying to learn your limits by pushing our limits. May be you delicate digestive system is still in the process of maturing and you are suffering from the same lactose intolerance and acid reflux that made you scream in pain 24X7 the first two weeks after you were born. May be you are trying to define your niche in house and in school. May be you are trying to run with the top dogs too soon. May be you are competing with your sister. May be you are competing with your self. May be you found that by screaming you get my attention sooner that anything else and decided to take that short cut. May be you are feeling insecure…..

As a result of this, the past six months have been non stop crying and plain unhappiness – mostly for you. What shocked me was the rage, the anger that emanated from you and that you blamed me for your unhappiness. It was not just me, but your teachers also noticed it. What started as hugging my legs and refusing to say goodbye to me when I drop you off in your classroom, only worsened over the past three months. You regressed in certain areas I thought you had already mastered. Your teachers were surprised that you were having separation anxiety after being in same classroom, with the same teachers for the past two years.

We had a conference and discussed certain things that have been sending red flags right, left and center in my mind. Most of the red flags, your teachers said, were ‘preferences’. Strong, rigid and to some extent eccentric, but they did put my mind to ease by saying that there is no cognitive dissonance.

The real slap in the face came to me, when the head teacher of your classroom, the director of your school, a very patient, kind and nurturing soul called me aside and gave me ‘the note’. After an unhappy good bye in the morning, you were sitting with your teacher and she made conversation with you. After long probing you told her that you were MAD at me. Your teacher suggested that you write a letter to me. You dictated. She wrote. And I am holding the note that says, “To mommy, Mommy, I am having fights with you. That makes me sad.” Slap. End of story.

Since then, I have been trying to get a break. One thing I strongly believe is that, when you are desperate for something, the universe conspires to give you exactly what you ask for. It may not be packaged in the way we want it. But you get it. The challenge is to recognize it and make the most of it.

The break I have been asking for came as a real break…. in my tail bone. I fell on the stairs and broke my tail bone. The positive aspect of it is that I get to stay at home and spend some time with you. Real, quality time that is not measure in minutes but in love. I am able to slow down and give you the focus you need without cutting down on the time I spend with your sister.

You will be four in a week. Hoping that the chapter about your fourth year will be titled CONTENTMENT.

More love than you can ever imagine

Amma

Technorati Tags: Mieja-isms, Parenting, struggles of a parent, tantrums

I reckon that national poetry month just got over. I had been meaning to add my two cents….but better late than never. So here it goes.

Let us play word association. What comes to your mind when you say poetry? This is what comes to my mind:

Glum. Melancholy. Daffodils. Sad. Rote. Wordsworth. Memorize. Exams. Marks. Simile. Metaphor. Hate. Struggle. Depth. Inadequacy. Puzzled. With-reference-to-context. Robert Frost. Complex. Forgetting-and-leaving-a-space-hoping-that-the-word-would-come-to-mind-before-the-exam-bell-rings. Mnemonic.

I know I am not doing justice to the genre of poetry. Especially when early childhood education has nothing but good things to say about poetry and its benefits in language development in young children. I feel that my poetry learning was associated with probing to check for understanding rather than focusing on exposing the beauty of the language and it soured my experience.

I am reading some poetry with my children and at school. From my observations, I feel that poems with a strong cadence are a huge hit with all children. So far I am yet to come across anything that beats Mother Goose in its strong rhythm and cadence. Some of the content in Mother Goose, I feel, is culturally irrelevant, sexist and makes my eyes roll, but I must also say that it is the adult perspective. Children are oblivious to it and are mesmerized. Also from my observations, at around four years children start enjoying nonsense verses. The next in the natural progression is enjoying poems with clever word play. At home we are heavily in to nonsense verses and considering that it the highest level I will ever reach in poetry, we shall remain at that stage for a long time

I am sharing some poems that we like at home

My Name Is… By Pauline Clarke
Book: The 20-th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury
Selected by Jack Prelutsky. Illustrated by Meilo So
Additional Information: I sing it to the tune of “My name is Madhavi, I am from Allepey” (Karadi Tales)

My name is Sluggery-wuggery
My name is Worms-for-tea
My name is Swallow-the-table-leg
My name is Drink-the-Sea.

My name is I-eat-saucepans
My name is I-like-snails
My name is Grand-piano-George
My name is I-ride-whales.

My name is Jump-the-chimney
My name is Bite-my-knee
My name is Jiggery-pokery
And Riddle-me-ree, and ME.

Eletelephony by Laura E.Richards
Book: The 20-th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury
Selected by Jack Prelutsky. Illustrated by Meilo So
Additional Information: It so happened that Chula and Mieja’s teacher also read this poem at school. Need I say how thrilled they were?!

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use a telephant-
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone-
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I’ve got it right.)

Howe’er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee-
(I fear I’d better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

From school: The primary teachers do a cool circle time game in which they sing, “Willaby Wallaby BAY, an elephant sat on JAY. Willaby wallaby BACK, an elephant sat on JACK”. The idea is to rhyme a nonsense word with a child’s name. Once the kids are familiar with this routine, they sing, “Willaby wallaby MALICE, an elephant sat on______”, they pause and the children chorus “ALICE” – they pick a child’s name that rhymes with ‘malice”. If the children are rained in, they are sure to play this game, it keeps them engaged for a long time.

Book: Gasa Gasa Para Para Author: Jeeva Ragunath. Illustrator: Ashok Rajagopalan
Book: A-vil yirundhu Ak varai Author: Jeeva Ragunath. Illustrator: Nancy Raj
Publisher: Tulika

Alliterations, onomatopoeia, funny alphabet pictures, nonsense verses. What is not to like in these books?!
A-vil yirudnhu is about the vowels.
Gasa Gasa Para Para focuses on the consonants and the letters emerging when combined with the vowels. My children like to look at the books and identify the tamil alphabets.

Technorati Tags: alliteration, Mother Goose, national poetry month, onomatopoeia, poetry appreciation, poetry for children, poetry nonsense verse, Tulika books

I mean any book.

Subject matter.

If so, why is it suggested that parents read to infants? Do infants really ‘get’ the subject matter? Definitely not in the adult sense.

Knowledge.

Hmm…. Kind of yes. But again not in the adult sense.

From a book, over many many reading sessions, a child slowly realizes

-Print symbolizes language.
-Words symbolize objects and/or actions.
-Letters symbolize sounds.
-Thought process can be communicated either verbally or through print.
-Print holds knowledge.
-Print follows a certain pattern, some ground rules. For example, in many languages books are read from front to back, top to bottom, from left to right.
-It prepares them for an adult life where print is used to acquire/disseminate knowledge and to communicate ideas.
-Reading loudly to a child creates phonemic awareness and phonic awareness. This later leads to reading and writing development.

If a child can learn so much from a book created by another person, what can she learn from a book that she creates? Is it possible for a child who cannot read to make books?

In Montessori they have a wonderful work material called definition books. These books are approximately 3inch X 3inch, spiral bound, with about 5-8 pages, on subjects such as mammals, parts of the root, parts of the leaf etc, with simple illustrations on one side and a 2-3-sentence explanation on the other side. It is perfect for a young child to hold and use. A Montessori teacher uses these books in her classroom in various ways depending on the stage the child represents.

I am not going in to the philosophy and the exact use of these books in a Montessori classroom, but FYI, the progression roughly follows: reading the book to the child -> asking the child if she wants to make a book -> taking the child to challenging stages depending on the child’s fine motor control+ability to focus+ periods of concentration+child’s ability to come back to the same work and continue from where she left off -> finally helping the child to assemble her hard work in to a book that is a replica of the definition book on the work shelf.

Sometimes children do one book or at times half a book and move on. Some children do a few books till they get the fundamentals mastered. Chula being a specialist, has made all the definition books that are present in her classroom. After she did the first few books she declared that her goal is to create a library with her books that contain her own illustrations and handwriting. So we have about 21 of the books she made. The first book dates to the beginning of 2009 and the most recent book shows the date Feb 2010. As a result of these wonderful books, I now have the opportunity to look at her progress in writing.

The first book is devoid of any letters, she had just traced the pictures. The next stage, she had traced the definitions and I can see plainly that the she had done the tracing blindly driven by the challenge of following the cursive in the definition books. In the stage that followed she was able to read what she was writing and she shows control over the script. A recent time stamped book from this collection is a poem book. The title of the book is Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti. She has done a front cover, back cover, no tracing, but she has copied the poem and I was said (by her) that she has been working with her teachers on ‘POEMS’ and she made this book. The most recent book is a book on ‘FROOTS AND VECHTUBLS’. She said that she made observational drawings of the life sized fruits and vegetable models they have in their classroom and captioned it without any help. In this book the author and illustrator has presented to us belle peper, aplle, lemin, oringe, graip, sraberee

I am very much enjoying her progression from just doing the work given to the stage where she takes ownership of her work and creates. And to add to this Mieja has started to bring her books home. The first book on Animals of Antarctica was proudly presented on Feb4, 2010. She had traced a few Antarctic animals and her teacher captioned the animals for her. The third and the most recent book is a complete definition book on the ‘Parts of the leaf’, pictures, front and back cover and tracing of definition included. I can’t wait to see what this one has in store for us

Technorati Tags: children spelling, how wiring helps in reading, Montessori defnition books, montessori reading, Montessori writing

Part I here.
Part II here.
Part III here.
Part IV here.

Considering how I acquired language and how I grew up, my brain is very bilingual and it adapts to the environment I am in. While in India, I found myself reading more Tamil, speaking more Tamil, hearing different dialects of Tamil and thinking more in Tamil. I remember hitting road blocks while trying to do creative writing in English. My vocabulary tank hit empty often and I confuse tenses. Presently the case is reversed. In my case, I feel my Tamil is just dormant and will come back with immersion.

My parents are with me right now, which makes me focus on something interesting. My dad was educated in Tamil medium till he completed high school. English was just one of the subjects. But he studied his history, geography, math, science, for that matter even English, through Tamil. He started formal English medium in his undergrad. He later acquired three masters degrees and a PhD in organic chemistry. He says that he struggled quite a bit for the first couple of months in undergrad, but it was smooth sailing after that. I find that his English is REALLY good. Much better than mine! We are talking about the person, who represented Annamalai University in the National Level and received prizes from Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr.Radhakrishnan for his creative writing in English and his mono act as Shylock. This is not totally out of context, because this article triggered my train of thought.

Now to the challenges I face as an immigrant parent. Both my children started as very fluent in Tamil. When they started preschool, they could follow simple one sentence directions in English, but couldn’t talk other than yes or no. It was a silent language receiving period for them for the first two months of preschool. After that they started code switching. Now it is English all the time. Initially I thought that the fascination of the newly acquired language is making them talk in English all the time and that they will change. After two years, I feel that they have successfully converted me!

Most of the bilingual studies in the United States, I feel, cannot be applied to the unique case of the Indian immigrant. In the States, the focus is more on ‘ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE(ESL)’ learner. An ESL learner, is very fluent in his/her mother tongue, is introduced to English after the home language is mastered and continues to get her home language immersion at home, from relatives, peers from the same cultural background, entertainment media and books. Where as the development of home language in children of Indian immigrants is precarious. The children switch to English after they enter school and their level of home language immersion is not that great, owing to a great deficit in the dosage of home language they receive.

As a resident of the state of California, I am in a better shape when compared with my peers living in some remote city in the States. Here we have The California Tamil Academy, a Tamil school that we can send our children to. Not that an one hour a week, Tamil school is a cure all wonder, but in the worst case, one can at least hope that the children pick up some basic Tamil for survival. I volunteer to teach Tamil for a small group of ten year old children. I have to say that these children are pretty good. They can read, write and understand Tamil. They can talk, but are extremely self-conscious.

As a teacher how do I bridge the gap between spoken and written Tamil in my classroom? CTA follows the text books from Tamil Nadu text book society. Also the Tamil classes through CTA can count as foreign language credits in certain school districts in the Bay Area. So the text books have to be of a certain format and the syllabus has to meet certain standards. So the Tamil in the text book is appropriately formal for that level. From my observation of the children in my classroom, they do not think that that Tamil in text books are formal or different. They do not recognize the gap, because most of them converse mostly in English. Their dose of spoken Tamil at home is limited. Even if their parents talk in Tamil, an average ten year old gets a total 30 minute talk time with their parents after school-homework-homework related talk-play-extra curricular activities.

This is different from an average child growing up in India, where the child gets quite a bit of regional language from the environment and this language is different from what they read in books.

My aim as a Tamil teacher is to make the children feel comfortable talking in Tamil while helping them to read and write. Some how make them connect Tamil language and Tamil literacy. If at the end of a year, these children can recognize that there is a gap between spoken and written Tamil, I will be happy. Major portion of my 60 minute class is devoted to conversation. Most of the time, we talk about something that they can relate to. So I pick the young adult fiction to talk to them. (May the husband note that I am merely doing classroom research and Y.A Fiction is not to satisfy the child in me that refuses to grow up.) Books like this and this gets the conversation flowing effortlessly for a good 30 minutes. Every one has two cents to add and we help each other when we get struck forming a sentence in Tamil. The wimpy kid even branched off in to areas like right and wrong, about how bullying affects them etc.

This concludes part IV.

Technorati Tags: California Tamil Academy, Teaching Tamil in classrom, teaching Tamil to children of Indian origin

Part I here.
Part II here.
Part III here.

What started as a comment reply on Tulika’s blog, discussions on Saffron Tree’s yahoo group and my personal blog, grew and decided to become a blog post. It also ties in with the Language development series I am doing, so here goes it….

There are two components to every language – Language part and the Literacy part.

Language is to talk and understand(when spoken to) a language. Literacy is print awareness in that language – to read and to write.

Typically children are experts in the language part by the time they are three, how is a mystery even to experts, but we are not going to go in to theories now. Then they slowly get the literacy part at around 5-6 years. That is what is developmentally appropriate.

I speak Tamil…or rather used to speak Tamil. In Tamil there is a gap between language and literacy and the gap is widening as we speak. If I think abt it, the gap still existed when I learnt Tamil as a second language. But I was immersed in both spoken Tamil and literate Tamil all the time. One of my early memories – writing my 4th std half yearly exams and delibrately spelling out, ‘nadandhu sendrar’(means ‘he walked’) and wondering we would say ‘nadandhu ponaru’ (also means ‘he walked’, but in spoken form), but while writing this is what we do. So it took me 9 years of my life to figure out that there is a bridge between Tamil language and Tamil literacy. But that was it, I never focused on that difference. After coming to the US, Tamil still persevered, through movies, music and books. Suddenly I look back and find that there are huge gaps.

In the past five years, mainly due to the kids, my external sources of Tamil language and literacy dried out. I haven’t laid my hands on any Tamil magazines/books in the past four years. Watching movies has become such a chore that I have to drink tea to make sure that I don’t doze off and the caffeine has been successful only for the first thirty or so minutes, after that Nithra Devi takes over. Tamil music, though mostly written in English, every couple of years YaadaYaada downloads some Tamil songs in to my laptop that goes in to iTunes and I listen to it in the car during my six minute drive to and from work.

So what about the internal sources? After all I did grow up in Singara Chennai and lived there for the first 22 years of my life! All I can say is, it is tough to keep up if one is not immersed. Plus it is so easy to parent in English. I can say to a child who is trying to claw or hit her sibling, “Well, the way I see it, you have two choices. You can use your hands gently and stay with us and have fun or I am taking you to the bed to clam down”. In English, it just flows, I don’t even have to think and construct the sentence. I dare not attempt it in Tamil.

Now language is something that is very fluid. It changes, grows, evolves, assimilates, gets diluted, adapts and waits for no one to catch up. Tamil language is even more fluid than Tamil literacy. I find that there is a gap not only between my own Tamil language and my own Tamil literacy, but also considering that my Tamil was locked in 1999 and became stagnant, I find gaps between my spoken Tamil and Tamil currently spoken Tamil Nadu.

If I paint the picture of a immigrant who has forgotten her roots, pardon me, I have to point out that I am not alone. One look at the survey results, tells me that even people living in India are in the same boat as me. Over multiple generations, this is the trend I see – my grandparents’ generation with about 20% gap between their spoken and written Tamil, my parents’ generation with about 50% gap spoken and written Tamil, gen-YNOT college kids with 60% difference between spoken and written Tamil and the young school going ones with 75% difference between spoken and written Tamil.

Okay there is a gap. How do we deal with it? What are the challenges I face as a parent? What are the challenges I face as an immigrant parent? What do I do in my classroom as a Tamil teacher? Part IV people.

Technorati Tags: challenges an immigrant parent faces in developing home language, classroom techniques for teaching mother tongue as the second language, developing the home language, gap between spoken and written Tamil, Tamil Language, Tamil language development, Tamil Literacy, top

A very old post I wrote on Language Development here.

Now, the poll results.

Number of people participated – 141 (People living in India = 43.9% + People living outside India = 56.02%)

99.29% know at least one Indian language. 30.49% know at least two Indian languages. 24.11% know at least three Indian languages.

89.36% have at least one language common with their spouse. Only 4.96% do not have a common Indian language with their spouse. Some people did not explicitly specify the languages the spouse knows and there were some unmarried people. That comes to roughly 5.6%

92.19% of us feel strongly(7 or higher on a scale of 1 – 10, one being the lowest and 10 being the highest) that our children must know at least one Indian language. 3.5% rated it at 5 and 0.7% rated it at 1.

In spite of 89.36% of us having at least one common language with our spouse, and 92.19% feeling strongly about their child speaking an Indian language, only 29.07% of us speak to our children in an Indian language.

I am not specifying the % of children who can talk and understand and Indian language because some were very young children and the number would not be a true representation.

Couple of personal revelations:

After this poll, I have a new gained respect to the standardized polls with restrictive choices. I always thought the generic polls are too foo-foo, but hey one learns something new every day-huh?!

Also I underestimated the power of the blogging mommy network, I did not expect such good turn out. I spent a great deal of time parsing and organizing the data.

I would like to thank you all for your time and your valuable inputs.

Keep tuned for more on Language Development in young children.

Contd….

Technorati Tags: death of a language death of a culture, how english is affecting the home language, how to encourage children to talk in home langauge, Indian language at home, is mother tongue just the mother's tongue?, langugae development in young children, second language development in children

Edited to add: Submitted post for Shruti’s Artsy-Craftsy June 2001 Folk art challenge.

To play Feb’s “Guess the book” see the side bar.

FOLK ART.

The very first time I heard this term was in 2003. I was experimenting with various mediums. I took my Tanjore painting of Krishna and Balram to my oil painting class, people were impressed by the richness and details. That’s when some one popped the question, “Is this folk art? Some thing typical of India?”. Though I had no clue about the exact definition of folk art, some thing prevented me from saying yes. I thought hard and answered, “Well, it is more like traditional art, practiced in the southern part India.” Though I had answered the question, I had no idea about the difference between folk art and traditional art and why I chose the later term to describe my painting. But something was planted in my mind regarding the different art forms of Indian art. Ever since, people who have know me would have heard me say, “I am looking for books on Indian art that are intrinsically India.”

For the past couple of months I have been looking at Tara’s website, which by the way is my new pass time, and I must say that I am mesmerized. All their books have a unique theme and the vibrant book covers tempted me to hit the ‘Add To Cart’ button. It was at this point I happened to clean one of book storage bins and I almost squealed in delight. There, it was lying at the bottom of the bin was Tara’s BEASTS OF INDIA! I must have bought it in my recent India trip and must have completely forgotten about it or the book fairy must have paid me a visit. (In case if it is the book fairy, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, thanks for this book and all that, but you really must look at the complete list. I so want to own DO! Also by Tara.)

The book has been reviewed for Saffron Tree. Find the review here.

How can we let this inspiration pass. So we combined it with the festive atmosphere of the Lunar New Year and Satish’s review of Everyone Knows What A Dragon Looks Like and we made our own paper dragons.

First what we talked about how every one imagined their dragons. Prominent features like big eyes, horns, bushy eye brows, sharp teeth, fire were thrown out. We all unanimously agreed that the dragon is scary and the color red must feature in the dragon.

We picked one style that inspired us to create our dragon. Chula wanted to combine Patachitra and Gond. The little one started with Madhubani and soon changed her mind. I was deeply attracted to Gond the minute I set my eyes on one. So I stayed with Gond till the end.

The hand with its fingers spread out can be a starter for many art forms. For the most part it eliminates the, “I can’t do it like you amma, can you do it for me?”. We traced our hands, leaving out the the thumb. We converted the index finger and the pinkie in to ears. The other two fingers became the horns.

It took me a good two hours to finish my dragon and I must say that it was deeply therapeutic. The little ones lost interest after the first fifteen minutes and they moved away. But they saw how much I was enjoying myself and came back to ‘help’. For the last 45 minutes they sat next to me, one holding the pens and one making sure that I did not miss the pattern. The critique from the little ones, “Well, he kind of looks friendly amma. Not scary at all. May be he is a she.” I did start out with the mental picture of the Yali, but the end result was very different.

I know that the books touched the girls because when I stepped out I saw that they had created out of side walk chalk a Warli inspired cow

With that I leave you with some pictures.

Technorati Tags: chinese new year, community art India, drgon making at home, folk art India, India art, Tara publishing, traditional art India, tribal art India

Out of the blue, the old Shaker song Chula and Mieja sing in the school during circle time comes in to my head.

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down to
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right.

It IS a gift to be simple huh?! So coming down to where we are meant to be is a gift too? How absolutely right that it has to happen at the right time!?! Otherwise we wouldn’t have the capacity to recognize this gift. But how do we differentiate between coming down to a simpler level and lowering our aspirations and generally aiming for much lower than our capacity? In terms of life style, I understand the simpler we get, the harder it is at first. In today’s world simple is complicated. But in terms of aspirations, can doing our best and living a simple life co-exist? Are they mutually exclusive? At times is ‘simple’ an euphemism for ‘lazy’? By asking for both am I asking for too much? Or, just like lifestyle choices, simple aspirations are the most complicated? Are opposites the same?

In Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this balance. Wait a minute, I have read about something along these lines in the Swami Nithyananda newsletter. I have to put these down some where, but I realize that I am in the shower. So I quickly jot down hurried notes in the glass shower door that is misted with the vapor. Now the challenge is to get out and record the thought in something more definitive like a paper/voice memo in my phone or even better on the computer. The vapor notes are already beginning to streak with water.

But even before I open the bathroom door, Chula and Mieja come rolling in to the bathroom. Yes, they are rolling, fighting about something. Everything in my mind goes blank, there is a shift of priorities, I disentangle the children, help them resolve the conflict, realize that I have ten more minutes to get ready and leave home for work. Then it is run, run, run all day long and by 2.00PM there is some down time and I realize that the idea on the shower door has long vaporized.

It is not just one instance. For the past six years, everything, I realize, is a series of broken thoughts, interrupted processes. I have been on my feet constantly, improvising, abandoning one thing to pick up something that escalates, compromising, and postponing.

I am a visual person. The one thing that helps me is to see or to visualize with elaborate mental images. To remember numbers, I used to close my eyes and visualize myself writing the number on a paper and in the process come up with a code or a clue that will etch the number in my memory for E.V.E.R. Now I hear things and even before it reaches the brain I turn to catch the next thing and it is gone. My brain is like a sieve. I have become absolutely incapable of holding numbers.

When the uplink is happening, when the connection between the synapses is in process, to be jerked away from it and to be posed with something absolutely new that has to be dealt with….. Sometimes I can almost feel the pain from the synaptic connection that is ripped.

I badly needed time for myself and hence came up with the whole 4.00AM getting up thingy. For a while it was peaceful. At times, I would have nothing to do. I would sit with my steaming cup of ginger chai, with my devotional songs mp3 in the background and stare out through the dark window. There is nothing like hearing MS’s voice at 4.00AM. There is something deeply spiritual at that time of the day and in that voice. It was absolutely refreshing. Then one kid realized that I get up early and if they get up at more or less the same time, they can get my attention. So one started getting up to cuddle with me. Then slowly both started getting up at 4.00AM. I realize that they grow up and pretty soon they may not need me on this level. But, come on kids, be reasonable.

I truly believe that every object has a place. Even in the house, everything has a place. I wouldn’t say that everything is 100% organized, but for example, washed clothes go on in to the guest bedroom and wait to be folded. Even if it takes a while to be folded, even if it is in a pile for a week, that pile has to stay in a certain place. There is a place for newspaper. There is a place for mail. The mail mixes with the newspaper or if it is lying in the middle of the house, I just cannot think. I cannot take misplaced clutter. Oxymoronic huh? But, hey, that is me. Now, I have clutter in my brain and I don’t have time to organize the clutter. I can almost feel the corrosive clutter sitting in my head ever so slowly eroding my brain.

So with this in mind, I am trying to do some changes at home.

When kid 1 or kid 2 comes to me with another end of the world problem, I ask them if it is something they can solve by themselves. And the answer I get is always NO, no exceptions So, unless there is physical pain, I give them a choice, ‘You can either think and try solving it or wait till I am done with whatever I am doing.’ Works sometimes.

I also ask them, considering that it is going to take me a while to get to them, if they can think of another adult who can help them. I have stopped the blunt, ‘Go ask appa’ kind of blunt redirection. Because the kid1/kid2 when she approaches me, has already made a visual image of me helping her. (Apple does not fall far from the tree. Arrrrh.) So if I abruptly rewrite it, it leads to more drama. So I have to let her think and let her rewrite her own visual.

If I am starting something that needs to be done in one shot, no matter how trivial it is like transferring idli batter from grinder to vessel (The husband begs to differ. Under no circumstances he refuses to think of idli batter as trivial), I give them advance warning. I tell the kids that I am doing something and that I do not want to be pulled away from it till I am done. So they better behave themselves and not kill each other in that five minutes I am occupied.

Blackmail works wonders. I tell them, if there is a problem/conflict, then it means that they need to think about ways to solve/resolve it. Then I look straight at them and say, “This is what your teachers tell you in the peace lessons right? Can I call R/J and ask her how she feels about it?” They just scram when I mention teachers.

Thanks to a friend, I tried some empathy lessons last weekend. It was hilarious and I enjoyed doing it. Chula was sitting and watching her usual weekend end quota of TV. I sat next to her and pestered her to cuddle with me, get me some water from the kitchen, asked her if she can play with me, fell on her and in the process hiding the TV from the line of sight, every three seconds I whined ‘Are you done?’, when she will be done watching ‘her TV ‘ and if it is time for ‘my TV’ and demanded attention. She was just about to throw up her hands up in the air in frustration and I told her this is E.X.A.C.T.L.Y how I feel. Will work with Chula, but Mieja would probably think that this is how things are done, so I can’t do this with her.

Last but not the least, sharing. I am sick of being passed half eaten fruit, children usurping interesting food from my plate, once tasted and rejected cookies, cold soggy dosas, lukewarm idlis, left over cake with cream licked off, deflated pooris and the likes of it. Last Sun we were eating in a restaurant and I swatted hands away from the appalam that came with my thali lunch. I AM NOT SHARING MY APPALAM ANY MORE. So, deal with it kids.

Technorati Tags: finding my balance, how to lead a simpe life, how to teach kids to solve conflicts, my share of pie, top

Part 6 of many.

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Books like Pranav’s Picture, Harold And The Purple Crayon, Dot and Ish are very helpful for the parents to understand the creative process. I have reviewed these books for Saffron Tree. I reviewed, also for Saffron Tree, a few books that have open ended art exploration ideas.

You can find some awesome projects in Sheela’s blog. Some how god gave her 44 hours in a day and an extra truckload of patience. I especially loved this and this. Imagine the fun you and your child will have doing this.

If you are planning on introducing art history or working with your child to recognize elements of a painting books, don’t fear. There is a cartload of books available. My personal favorite is Lucy Micklethwait and Usborne’s The Children’s Book Of Art.

Books like Can You Find It, When Pigasso Met Mootisse, Oooh! Picasso and Look!Look!Look! are very effective when you can follow it up with a trip to a museum.

One thing I am constantly struggling to achieve is a definitive art space for the kids at home. Also what are the basic supplies one needs? If you have the same questions, don’t fear the Camp Creek Blog is here. Check out the right hand side links for ART LESSONS and also posts under CARD CATALOG ->in the studio. That was the basic I started off with.

That pretty much summarizes all that is in my mind. Now I am throwing the subject of art appreciation open to you all.

On the subject of appreciating your child’s art, what do you do when you child shows you her art? Do you say good job? Do you define what she has created? Do you say, “Oh is that a butterfly?” In that case are you prepared to meet an answer like, “No it is you amma. I drew you.” Do you ask her to define her own work and in the process tell her that what she creates must be something that fits in to definition? What do you all do as parents?

Another thing I am trying to get a grasp of is how to store all the art they churn out. On an average day there are atleast 5 papers per child. On top of this there is their usual academic work from school. What do you all do?

So long folks. Have a great day.

Contd 7 of many.

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Technorati Tags: art appreciation, art boks for children, art exploration, art history, how to appreciate your child's art, how to introduce art to children, how to store your children art, what to read before a museum trip

Part 5 of many.

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Okay the survey results are as follows:

92% played with Fevicol and loved it.
44% loved coloring and erasing with markers, 20% yes on only coloring, 20% yes only on erasing.
92% loved pencils and sharpeners.
Candle wax seems to be the biggest hit with 96% love.
57% did not like ripping newspaper. What a bummer?! I strongly recommend you guys try it. It is such a cathartic release.
50% love swirling paint, 28% like it, 14% are okay with it.
72% make rainbows in the shower and I am happy to announce that we all believe in showers and soap.
57% rolled chapathi dough and then ate it. 38% played and discarded the dough.
62% did not scribble in the house, no experimentation and wondered about my mother’s reaction.

My grand conclusion based on the poll results…….

As children, most of us just played for the sake of playing, without bothering about what we produced at the end of it. These are the found memories that we carry with us. These are the memories that we might have forgotten, but when kindled, put a smile on our face. This is process orientation. This is what your young child is doing. Just doing something and taking pleasure at that moment without a bother about the past, future, accolades, recognition, praise and the mess. Soon they are going to grow up and slowly get in to the product oriented mode. For now, just let them be.

This, my dear peeps, is the ulterior motive behind the survey.

Give them the art materials. Give them the space. Give them the freedom. Stand back. Let go. Let them play. Let them discover, understand and love their material. If you feel like they have to create something meaningful to an adult, get in touch with your Fevicol days. Set limits. Like for example, paint only on designated area. Because, not many of us have studio work space. So, parents need to set limits to protect the walls, furniture and carpet. If it is their first time with paint or messy material sit with them to make sure that they understand their limits. Children and mess, many a times it is not intentional, they just cannot help themselves. Even better, sit with them and participate without taking over or interfering. It provides the children with a good model and you get to realize how much fun the whole process is.

The first six years of their life, children learn their world and express their thoughts through art. So it is essential that parents understand that the process is ‘learning about the world and communicating through art’ which later, around age 7+, becomes ‘art through learning and communication’. You cannot ‘formally teach’ a three-year-old-child to make art, but you can show them the different ways to explore.

When it comes to tips, techniques and pointers, there are overwhelmingly large number of resources. But when I look for open ended art exploration for the preschool age, I carefully avoid projects that have a finished product to show for. But, hey, it is just me. Given my personality, I have to consciously stop myself from controlling what the children do. In my opinion, when we follow some one else’s instruction and strive towards a finished product, it is craft. Not that craft is any lesser, but it is some one else’s baby, not mine.

Coming up next: List of resources for open ended art and books on art appreciation.

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Technorati Tags: art exploration, difference between art and craft, process orientation and product orientation, survey result