About a week ago, we moved to a place closer to the school Aditya and Shreya go to. Makes for much easier transportation back and forth if Aditya does have to go reduced hours later, and even without, given the participation we as parents (want to) do at their school.
As for Aditya and Shreya, they got separate rooms, thus finally giving them a break from each other... and we are only partly kidding here!
The separation allows the two kids who clearly have different needs to get more of what they want. e.g. more Son Rise program for Aditya with his awesome grown up friends, without Shreya having to leave their room. Also, Aditya is an early riser and can now do so without waking up his sister. Lastly, Shreya can perhaps have her own play dates at the same time or at other times, in her own room! And add to this a nice backyard!
As of this week, the twins also began their school year. Aditya began attending first grade, while sister moved up to second grade.
It was the first time ever that Aditya did straight 6 hours of school. It was not easy. But he made it. Baba was in the class when the day began. Actually, all parents were allowed to be with their first grade child for the first hour and a half or so. Then, we were to leave.
Later, Aditya got a special something. Aai showed up for aiding in the class, and stayed till end of the day. Kudos to Aditya's new teacher for allowing (in fact asking for) it. Kudos to Aai for doing this, and kudos to us for moving, which actually made providing this level of support a whole lot easier than when we were living five and a half miles away.
This morning before school, Baba also took advantage of Aditya's separate room, and son-rised him exclusively for an hour. What a treat for both... combined with a fresh omelette breakfast served by Aai!
It was a session where I (Baba) did mostly joining him with his talk about geared bikes and cars, but then I celebrated him for the 2 amazing feats he accomplished yesterday:
1. Working on my feedback about raising his hand and waiting instead of talking out of turn or talking over the teacher or other kids. (Actually I was pretty amazed by how much he did that. He used to be much more cautious and as a result appeared either disinterested and un-spontaneous last year. Now, it was hard to stop him. The gas pedal was ON, and the brakes off. (Using an analogy related to his current ism of talking about cars:)
2. Going up to a grown up and asking for help when he did not know something. Including the time when he felt over-whelmed by the noise at the lunch table and went up to a parent aide to say "Please tell them to not be so noisy as I cannot handle it"!
He said he had fun yesterday. We know that by end of yesterday he was clearly tired and spent most of his time there without a clue as to what's expected of him in the relatively unstructured and high-intensity environment of 7 year olds.
I then told him about 2 new things he could do, if he wanted to have even more fun at school:
1. Be totally interested and listen to others speaking to him, and even others speaking to each other. Listening more can lead to an easy experience (because you know more and learn more when you listen)
2. Get help from other experienced people in his class. At this point I paused due to a hiccup. He guessed that I meant the second graders in his first-second grade combination class! Very smart!
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