My kids go to different schools with different education board !
Every time I mention this, I see people reacting only one way , and that is with great astonishment slowly turning to pity my state, suggestions and help never intended to give :).
But trust me, it’s not as difficult as it seems !
It has infact given me the opportunity to spend time with each of my child separately for their various needs.
I get to spend time with only the elder one (who goes to 1st std St Mary’s) in the morning as he wakes up at 5:30 am. It’s easy to get him all ready and make him eat his breakfast peacefully. He is off to bus stand at 6:45am. Now handling two of them would have driven me nuts as both are still totally dependent on me for all their chores.
The second one who goes to Nursery class, DPS, wakes up at 7:00am. I get time to do some study or activity with alphabets etc before getting him ready for the school. I spend good quality time with him too while feeding him breakfast and changing him into his school uniform. His bus picks him at 8:40am. So his study is over in the morning. 🙂 🙂
The St Mary’s bus drops my elder one at 2:15pm. I am again giving him full attention till he completes his 30 min homework or browse through his class works. He eats his lunch with both of us watching tv together. He shares his stories from the class and bus while eating. Then we have a 10 min Talk Time, where he can tell me anything bothering him in his class or bus or in the society.
At 3:20 pm, my younger son is back from DPS. Since he is fussy about food, it takes me an hour to feed him. Meanwhile my elder son is busy with his craft work, drawing or paintings.
At 5:00 pm they both go to football practice. But since it’s raining, they are at home. They play together or with me, fight, run around, call their friends or go to their friend’s place. SO till 7:00 pm I allow them to do whatever they want to do with little supervision.
AT 7:30pm they are back home, without my calling them back! Am I lucky 🙂 !!!
This is the time when they sit together and eat dinner together. I try to put the elder one off to the bed by 9:00 pm maximum and the younger one by 10:30pm.
I am starting to appreciate the ability to spend quality time with both my kids separately and be able to focus on their individual needs too separately. Food, Play and Study are the most important things that we mothers have to focus. And, I get to justify good undivided attention to both of them for all these important needs.
When they grow older, their study and extra curricular activities will demand more attention. That the time paying quality time and justifying our role would become difficult. But when both will be having exams at different dates/months, I think my life will be better off as compared to having both my kids exams together.
The only problem is their holidays, which never coincides. St Mary’s has lot more holidays as compared to DPS. So it’s difficult to convince the younger one to go to school when his bhaiya is happily sleeping :).
I am infact finding how two different boards teach subjects so differently.
Looking at the temperament of both my kids, I think they have got admissions in the right kind of school they deserve. My elder son is inclined to learning academics very easily. He picks up study at one shot. He is a delight to any teacher. The methodologies in St Mary’s being of traditional way of teaching, he enjoys being taught every day new topic. One browsing is enough for me to know and be relaxed. He reads just once and is able to repeat the whole chapter back to me. Concepts, if told to him just once, he picks them fast and builds upon them his own stories. Now you know why I write stories which have facts and concepts from science to english. Also the study has to be done each day, as studying for maths on a science test day is very much possible b y him :). There are questions like what is a soul, that I have to answer till he has no more questions. Hence, I have to keep abreast to meet his highly inquisitive mental demands.
The younger child thinks laterally. He will come up with answers that are unconventional. He makes people around him including adults, stop for a while and grasp the meaning and intent behind his answers. There are times when people around us have had to change our thinking from the usual mindset to give way to his thinking! Am I proud of my baby :).
And people, I am not exaggerating. Now his mental needs have to tackled differently. He does not agree easily, just because we are his parents or his teachers or older than him. He has to be made understood as to why something needs to be done, is there any other way it can be done, and if he understands the logic behind the task he may or may not do, as he may not be interested in doing that task !!!!!
For him by not wasting food in his plate, in no way makes sure that some poor child will get food to eat. He would rather throw more food, if that ensures that some poor boy will be eating from the garbage ! And trust me, he has done this frequently :O)