And the school related problems begin. We had a good run so far.
Daughter managed fine to catch up on the portions that she missed out on – she joined 2 months after schools here started. Hindi was the only thing in which she was clueless. Since Grade 1 is the beginning of Hindi, that looked manageable too. I spoke to the teachers, and everything looked under control. Notice the past tense? Well, we got a note saying that they have a test, and we had three days to prepare. Three days to prepare, no notebook/textbook, and a child who seems clueless.
I’m a hair-breadth away from going crazy. They keep the notebooks at school, so there is no or little work being sent back home. Which is fine, provided all the learning is taken care of, at school. The problem happens when you realize that the portions that the children are expected to know, they don’t actually know. Then the onus falls on the parent to ensure that the child knows what she is supposed to know. We had no trouble in the other subjects. They were stuff she had done already in her previous school, and stuff which she could make sense once she read it. But Hindi is a completely different ball game. Initially, when they had to catch up with the others, they used to bring home the notebooks, but soon that stopped, so we had little idea of what was going on in class, only to find out that there was a whole load of stuff that she has no clue about. When they brought the books home, I would go through the letters with her, but when we don’t have the notebook, it gets difficult to try and go through the lessons with her. At best, we could try and teach her in our own way – but what if it conflicts with what the teacher is teaching. As I said, it’s been a bit crazy.
The only saving grace is that I am in touch with another mum whose child joined at the same time, and both these children seem to be in the same position. So we are not all alone, we have company. I’ve got just today to try and get her co-relate the sounds and the letters. Sigh! I’m not too fussed about her not doing well in a test, but what worries me is if she gets demoralized in case she doesn’t fare well. So I’ve got to try and keep her morale up, while getting her up-to-speed. Wish us luck!
As my friend was saying, it seems so unfair that English, we spend 2 years understanding the sounds, learning the alphabets, and for Hindi, which seems far more complicated, it is such a sudden and quick jump. Is it because they assume that everybody is a native Hindi speaker and can easily grasp the language? I remember finding Hindi very tough, even though technically both English and Hindi were foreign languages for me – at the starting point.
ok, I’m done, just needed to get that out of my system!