The child turned eight earlier this month. For days I went around my eyes all saucer-like, at the wonder of it. Eight years old. Gosh. I have nearly forgotten those initial days when she was that tiny lump. She is this strapping girl, in her yellow glasses, and full of opinions now. I look at her though and feel that same familiar lurch I used to feel when she was that lump of a baby.
I was not in the frame of mind to have our 'usual' birthday party. Which, frankly, is not a particularly relevant child's birthday party. We have a large number of friends over and hang out. The friends have a large number of kids who are the child's friends. The kids hang out, watch some videos, the boys invariably get on the child's nerves because they do things like throw lego pieces around.
Last year, I had a 'painting party' which was a bit more relevant. Bunch of kids came over and made some drawings and spilled some paint over the floor upstairs while we parents hung out and drank and ate and laughed downstairs. It was fun, and she did have tons of memories about that, but this year, I was not ready for the 'commitment' of having so many people around.
"I would like to go to the planetarium" she said. That sounded like an awesome idea to me! Especially since the place is like a five minute drive from our house, is open 365 days a year (+1 for leap years), and the ticket costs some 10 Rs. a head. We had been recently, the chairs are a bit broken, the 3-D show sucks big time, the exhibits are all giant posters like we would make for research meetings, and well, the dome show is not spectacular either.
But what the hell! She doesn't know any better. And there is a play area there with swings and slides that she loves despite the oppressive heat and sun. And I knew just the right set of kids who would appreciate this local neighborhood experience and not act all hoity-toity about things or complain about the heat...
So we had 5 kids. Two of them are her absolute 'best friends' They are the main reason she has settled in so well in Chennai. We also love the parents who are the coolest people on earth, and definitely ready for something insane. Then I invited the two kids associated with my home. Kids of my cook and gardener. These girls are the same age as my girl but they rarely hang out with us, I figured this is a good time!
The only thing was, there were 4 girls and 1 boy. RRJ is also a 'manly man' type of boy. At least he tells me he is. But he bore it all bravely. They seemed to enjoy the show (although it was really bad. It was about the telescope and so very very badly made that my husband & I were really squirming in our seats and making mental notes about how to make a movie about telescopes ourselves). They played in the park. I gave them the juice which they consumed in double time.
At home, the girls gravitated towards the kitchen set which annoyed RRJ. Actually my minx is also not a big fan so soon they found the balloon game to play. Its the simplest birthday game ever but something they always seem to enjoy in all the parties. So they did that. And then we cut the cake and the parents (the mommies blog over here and here) came over and we chatted downstairs. It was all awesome and relaxing though the child had tons of tons of fun and was super excited for days...
Which brings me to language. The two prof kids-best friends speak almost exclusively in English. Though one of them speaks Bengali as well, her parents were saying, thanks to her grandmum. The other two girls know English a little bit through school, but converse in Tamil. So my minx of a child was the 'go between' so to speak. Since she can at least make sentences in Tamil, and translate between the languages. To the extent of saying 'lets play with bubbles' or 'lets go downstairs' or 'here is your return gift' (which was a simple set of crayons, sketchpens, and colour pencils for some summer fun.)
Especially since I was thinking about this whole conscious effort of raising multilingual kids (and sort of lamenting the fact that I had failed in that): see my post at SimplyBike: Raising Multilingual Kids; I was particularly happy to see that at 8 years of age, it doesn't really matter. When it comes to playing and having that brand of fun that kids specialise in, language is really no barrier for children...
I was not in the frame of mind to have our 'usual' birthday party. Which, frankly, is not a particularly relevant child's birthday party. We have a large number of friends over and hang out. The friends have a large number of kids who are the child's friends. The kids hang out, watch some videos, the boys invariably get on the child's nerves because they do things like throw lego pieces around.
Last year, I had a 'painting party' which was a bit more relevant. Bunch of kids came over and made some drawings and spilled some paint over the floor upstairs while we parents hung out and drank and ate and laughed downstairs. It was fun, and she did have tons of memories about that, but this year, I was not ready for the 'commitment' of having so many people around.
"I would like to go to the planetarium" she said. That sounded like an awesome idea to me! Especially since the place is like a five minute drive from our house, is open 365 days a year (+1 for leap years), and the ticket costs some 10 Rs. a head. We had been recently, the chairs are a bit broken, the 3-D show sucks big time, the exhibits are all giant posters like we would make for research meetings, and well, the dome show is not spectacular either.
But what the hell! She doesn't know any better. And there is a play area there with swings and slides that she loves despite the oppressive heat and sun. And I knew just the right set of kids who would appreciate this local neighborhood experience and not act all hoity-toity about things or complain about the heat...
So we had 5 kids. Two of them are her absolute 'best friends' They are the main reason she has settled in so well in Chennai. We also love the parents who are the coolest people on earth, and definitely ready for something insane. Then I invited the two kids associated with my home. Kids of my cook and gardener. These girls are the same age as my girl but they rarely hang out with us, I figured this is a good time!
The only thing was, there were 4 girls and 1 boy. RRJ is also a 'manly man' type of boy. At least he tells me he is. But he bore it all bravely. They seemed to enjoy the show (although it was really bad. It was about the telescope and so very very badly made that my husband & I were really squirming in our seats and making mental notes about how to make a movie about telescopes ourselves). They played in the park. I gave them the juice which they consumed in double time.
At home, the girls gravitated towards the kitchen set which annoyed RRJ. Actually my minx is also not a big fan so soon they found the balloon game to play. Its the simplest birthday game ever but something they always seem to enjoy in all the parties. So they did that. And then we cut the cake and the parents (the mommies blog over here and here) came over and we chatted downstairs. It was all awesome and relaxing though the child had tons of tons of fun and was super excited for days...
Which brings me to language. The two prof kids-best friends speak almost exclusively in English. Though one of them speaks Bengali as well, her parents were saying, thanks to her grandmum. The other two girls know English a little bit through school, but converse in Tamil. So my minx of a child was the 'go between' so to speak. Since she can at least make sentences in Tamil, and translate between the languages. To the extent of saying 'lets play with bubbles' or 'lets go downstairs' or 'here is your return gift' (which was a simple set of crayons, sketchpens, and colour pencils for some summer fun.)
Especially since I was thinking about this whole conscious effort of raising multilingual kids (and sort of lamenting the fact that I had failed in that): see my post at SimplyBike: Raising Multilingual Kids; I was particularly happy to see that at 8 years of age, it doesn't really matter. When it comes to playing and having that brand of fun that kids specialise in, language is really no barrier for children...
5 comments:
I was thinking about this when filling out forms for the kids' new school. Do you know if you put you speak a 2nd language here, the child has to do all sorts of extra testing. I found out that the hard way with oldest child in MA 10 yrs back(pss she is turning 13 in a few days OMG OMG)
So now I choose to write english.
And sadly I who speak 4 lanuguages, have kids who only speak in one. I suck(oldest does understand Hindi and is taking Spanish) but still I suck!
PS:did blogger implement a new commenting form?
Sraikh- You stop that. You are rock-star-chick.
Happy Birthday and Janamdin Mubarak and (sorry I dont know the Tam version - please insert) to the big little girl!
Happy birthday to your little girl. I can relate (as I'm sure all parents can) to that feeling of awe. My little one turned 4 this month and one of her activities was the planetarium trip (we later had a big family party with all her cousins). The show was horrible (two pieces of glass of something on those lines).
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