Soccer... with other 6 year olds!

It's old news that we have a Soccer "challenge" going on at our house.  Aditya takes turns in winning the trophy with Dad, Mom, and his volunteers,  and is equally cool with losing as he is with winning.

In the meantime, he has been steadily improving his skills at the game (although it is still indoors).

Three weeks ago, he first played soccer with another 6 year old as part of his "twice-a-week play dates with peers"... which itself has been a great boost to our program!

In that game, Aditya was trailing 1 goals to 3 when the other child complained of being tired and requested that the game be cancelled.  Aditya was anxious at this time about losing his trophy... a surprise... given that he is okay losing it to his Son Rise playroom "grown up" friends!  Since the other child called it off, the game was declared as "drawn".

Last weekend, he played again with the same child.  This time around, Aditya won the game 2-1.  Of course, he worked very hard with us in the meantime to improve his game, primarily his ability to kick a ball that is already moving.  A few weeks ago, he had to, almost always, stop the ball for a moment before kicking  it again... which put him at a disadvantage when he played with another kid!

Aditya also had yet another play date with another 6 year old child, in which he won both soccer games as 11-1 and 4-3.

Are we excited for him winning? Certainly... as it will hopefully boost his confidence while playing with kids his age.  More important, we are excited that he now plays "for real" with other kids, and not just with his volunteers and parents who are smart enough to lose to him, every once in a while, as a way of keeping him motivated.

Poochi!

It's a weekend afternoon, and we are at Ikea after a long time.  Taking Aditya to Ikea is always interesting, as we get to see something new every time we go there with him (since starting Son Rise, of course).

This time around, he fell in love instantly with a soft toy "Puppy" that sister picked up and identified as "Poochi".

A few minutes later, A was lobbying for "Poochi" to have a new home.  "He needs love" he said, and further added that "love from far away won't work, he needs to be at our home" thereby rejecting the idea that we could come back before his birthday and buy it at that time.  "I want the same Poochi, not another copy" was another argument put forth in favor of taking him home right away!  Lastly, the twins also offered to pay from their "piggy banks" so we could buy him.

And what's special about that?

It's the fact that A was acting much more like a kid his age.  It felt cute.  And it is something that we could take for granted with his sister, but not with him. 

Cost of "Poochi"- 8 dollars.  Witnessing this subtle change in Aditya... priceless!!!

By the way, he also had a much easier time playing in the "play area" at Ikea.  At one point, he even asked a girl to "Go ahead"... as he and the girl had reached up to the slide at the same time.

A friend is visiting!

After our last post, we did play the game of Aditya's favorite singer Raffi taking a flight from Canada to come meet Aditya in the sunny California!  Aditya was the host of a TV show on "Aditya TV" where I visited him as Raffi, and we had a half hour long interview session, including Q & A with Raffi's fans calling in!

As said in the last post, Aditya and I had already decided on a list of "personal" questions to ask.  Before the show, I had researched the Internet for answers, found some interesting things about Raffi (e.g. Raffi cares a lot about the environment).... but then I did not find anything conclusive about certain other things like "what does Raffi drink in the morning":-)

In any case, during show-time, Aditya decided to ask a few different questions, and some from the same list.  We had a gala time with me playing Raffi answering A's questions about Raffi's favorites.  (I especially had fun saying things like Raffi's favorite shape is that of a phone).

A little later, we had people call in to our show, and ask questions about Raffi's "life" e.g. "when did you move to Canada".  Aditya did extremely well to come up with the following totally original question: "what did you like to do when you were young"  to which I (Raffi) came up with the answer- listening to others' music, and visiting the local aquarium to see "Baby Baluga"... which Aditya loved for an answer, of course!

Then on the last weekend we played a new game... although the concept was still the same.  This time around, I played one of Aditya's ex-team-member-volunteers who visited him for a day.  Aditya had to call me ahead of my trip, and ask me things like
1) what do I like for a snack,
2) what cold/hot drink do I like to drink
3) what do I want to do in California (e.g. check out the golden gate bridge) when I arrive
4) what movie do I want to watch with Aditya when I am with him
5) what kind of a restaurant do I want to go to for dinner
Then Aditya had to plan the day according to my answers.  For example, he would receive me at the airport at 7 AM, and then knowing that I like to drink coffee and eat scrambled eggs for breakfast, he would take me to a place where we could eat/drink both!

Again, Aditya did very well with this game, although it took him some time to appreciate that he had to wait and find out these answers ahead of time so he could plan how he wanted to spend the day with his friend!

It's fun to know more about your friends!

Aditya's Son Rise Program Goal: inspire him to ask friends something about themselves, e.g. their likes and dislikes (as opposed to telling them about himself)

So, Aditya and I are preparing for an interview of his favorite celebrity:  Raffi-- of the Bananaphone fame.

We have come up with a list of questions to be asked in the interview which we will conduct tonight/tomorrow. (I will be playing Raffi with a phony beard and a hat... and a toy guitar, and he will be the interviewer.)

Questions include:
1) What instruments can you play?
2) What songs are you making now?
3) What is your favorite fruit? (And we already think we know the answer:-)
4) What do you drink in the morning?
5) What is your favorite color?

I have volunteered to find answers to these wonderful questions with help from the Internet, so we can use them tomorrow in the real (I mean, the pretend) interview. If you guys know the answers, feel free to help me out:)

By the way he found it challenging to come up with original questions. It was amazing to see this because he now has a great vocabulary as well as a love for "talking".  However the idea that it's fun to know more about someone else, is probably new for him, so we need to model this for him.  More work to be done for us in this area... but hey... it's so much fun!

Cheered up his volunteer for "trying to be" on time!

Aditya gets anxious every time any of his volunteers is late by even a minute.  He would typically say anything from "he is sick" to "she has a new job" to "he died".

On one such occasion, we suggested to him the possibility that he could cheer and celebrate his friend for trying to be on time.  We also suggested that doing this may help his friend see how much Aditya appreciated him coming on time, and he may try harder.  Aditya did not do this right away (to which we celebrated him for trying to cheer his friend), but then the next time it happened, he did say to this friend: "Thanks for trying to be on time.  I hope you will do better next time".

The best part?  This volunteer has never been late thereafter!

One of the greatest gifts of the Son Rise program to our family is we have learnt that happiness is a much more effective motivator than is anger.