Thank God It's Friday - 1!

Today was Friday. I (Baba) worked from home, and also showed up in Aditya's class to support him during the last 2 hours of school.

I also did the same thing last Friday. I did not write about how that went either, so I am going to write about that Friday in this post.  I will write about today in my next post.

Last Friday, I saw the following:
1. It's just after lunch as I reach Aditya's class. Aditya has spotted my car long ago, and welcomes me with a smile, and tells me how he spotted my car. We sit outside his class in a line formed by other kids. He is not talking to anyone else. He is either talking to me or not doing anything. I ask him "who is this?" and he tells me X when it is in fact Y. He then does say he misunderstood and X is over there.
2. Still on way into the class, D sticks his face into Aditya's face and says something. D either loves to do this or has his own sensory overload issues. In any case, Aditya steps back in a sluggish manner, and says "Stop doing that. If you don't then I will step back." Not very sophisticated there, but he is awesome at taking care of himself!
3. It's Agenda time. Similar to the issue mentioned in the last post by Aai, last Friday's agenda had a group of kids complain about 3rd graders who came and ate lunch in their garden, and went away without cleaning up the seeds that they had made piles of. And so the kids in our class "had to" clean those seeds up. The class offered solutions like "speak to a grown up", "speak to the teacher and ask her to email the other class teacher" (this was the most popular solution by the way), "get help from W whose sister is in that class", etc. The kids who had brought the problem before the class acknowledged if it was a valid solution and if they had tried it already.
At this point, my son throws his hand in the air.  He does it when I least expect him! The group gives him a chance.
"You just ignore them and walk away!" says Aditya.
I AM JUMPING FOR JOY INSIDE.
But no one gets it. I think even the teacher did not get it. I later asked Aditya what he meant. He confirma what I had thought he meant. (And that's why I had jumped for joy.) Aditya had basically suggested to them that they did not have to see this as a problem. They did not have to pick up the seeds. They could choose to pick them up OR they could choose not to. In either case, complaining was okay on one hand but not going to get them anything on the other hand.
(It's amazing what 3 years of SON RISE can do to you and your child. Both great minds begin to think alike:-)
So the teacher says to Aditya that his idea (i.e. walking away) would be a solution too but she added that perhaps Aditya meant walk away and get a grown up to help. Aditya did not object to this.
In general during agenda, Aditya was very quiet and seemed to be listening and taking it in.

4. Also during agenda, the teacher says, "If they called your name already you can put down your hand, and speak when the person before you is done." Aditya was great in following this agreement once she made it clear! No more constantly raising and waving his hands to get attention, the way I saw on day 1.
5. It is time to finish unfinished work from the morning. The aiding parent thinks he is not done, and asks him to do it. The idea is to write about how the family spent the summer. Aditya has apparently already written about it. But he does not question her why he has to still do it. He continues to the next page, and then seems to stare into space. I just sit next to him after a while. He says," where did we go this summer except for Lake Tahoe?" I say, "we did make a day trip to Monterey". And so he starts on the next page about a trip to Monterey. In the meantime the aiding parent comes and apologizes saying she thought he was not done, when in fact he was! Now I see. I see the first page where he has already written about the family's trip to Lake Tahoe. Now that he has been given clearance he erases what he has started writing on page 2. He is totally methodical, and is following the rule to the letter. Any parent's dream... except it is not! What am I thinking? I am wishing he felt okay about answering back and saying he was already done! (And a light bulb goes in my mind. We never ask or encourage our kids to do that to us... answering back! It is worth considering letting them do it. The home is where they can safely do it, and make mistakes too. Then in the world, they will feel more comfortable standing up for themselves.) 

6. Jobs time. He does not know what his job is. I wonder aloud what he will do since he does not know what he is expected to do. "I will ask" comes the reply. SMART BOY! He goes up to his teacher and asks what job. She puts him together with another child, a girl named A, and says together they will be doing lunch monitor duty. Both are first graders and do not know how to. M is a second grader and does know. So he is assigned the task of going out with them and explaining to them how to do it. I follow the three into the lunch tables area. I see that M explains how to use this long pronged instrument to pick up trash from under lunch tables and put it in the appropriate bin-- landfill, compost, or recycle.

Aditya starts doing it.   He has questions, and a lot of them. Where do you put this? That?  That? And that? And that?

M explains patiently, but later says he does not have to because Aditya can read it from the picture that shows where to put what.

But Aditya is thinking about things like what do you do with a yogurt tube? What about a banana which has a piece of plastic stuck to it?  First things first, do you put a banana into compost even if the picture shows an apple but no banana? I spend a bit of time explaining to him how they could not have shown every fruit, so if he sees a fruit but wants to throw away another fruit it still can go to the compost!
He does seem to have some rigidity to his thinking here. Soon he is more aware of what has to be done, and does it enthusiastically. Picks up all things trash, and puts them into different bins to the best of his and my ability. The other kids want to be done, but Aditya and I are loving this, and so we keep doing it just a bit longer.   The other kids go.  Once we are back, I ask Aditya to go ask the teacher where to put the prongs.  He goes and asks. He does not wait for his turn though.

 7. After jobs it is time to celebrate K's birthday. K is a girl, a social butterfly, a second grader. The teacher asks a few questions about K and her favorite things, as a way to generate interest about the birthday child. Our hero raises his hand 3 times. Once he guesses correctly that one of her favorite colors is purple. Another one is in answering "what does K like to eat?" and he says PIZZA but it is not the right answer. And he seems okay with it! The third time he raises his hand is to answer "what is K an expert at?" and a lot of the kids have answered with things like "comforting other people", "holding a chicken", etc.
"She is an expert at the monkey bar" says Aditya, and K smiles big time, saying that's correct. Aditya looks delighted as he even earns the teacher's praises for observing so well. At one point during this celebration he also clarifies that purple is not his favorite color but he guessed it was K's favorite.
A general observation here, is a lot of the kids seem bored with the questions and answers.
When the birthday song begins Aditya becomes a bit more light hearted and easy. The class votes to sing "Happy Birthday Cha Cha Cha" and so they do, including shaking their body etc. Aditya is loving this. But his expression is milder than the huge giggles from the other kids.
Soon it is treat time, and K is giving blueberries and strawberries to everyone. Aditya asks me with a voice not too loud but not too low (NICE!) if he can eat them. I show him a YES with my thumbs up. A burden seems to be lifted. Aditya is now definitely a lot more easy and relaxed, as I think.  I realize that giving him his own packet of birthday treats to eat when other eat the conventional stuff, would go a long way in helping him feel easy around this issue.  (And so we submit his treats-ziplock-bag in the following week.)

8. A small giggle and an exchange between Aditya and another boy D.
9. Towards the end the kids are being chatty,  but Aditya is not.  But there is a conversation about a cockroach happening around him, and he seems to catch it and laugh at it.

All in all, Aditya seems to be doing okay, but seems to have a challenge dealing with the energy of another 7 year old who got in his face. Other than that, he was also not using the name of a person when trying to get their attention. As in, he would say "Hey..." instead of "Hey John" to get someone's attention. This was actually great because he saw it not work, so he gets to decide if he wants to be more clear using a person's name instead of just HEY!