At a random moment my son approached me to say, “mum,”

“yes” I answered by default not completely paying attention

“Animals are letters” He through this statement which captivated my full attention.

“How?” I said interested in his logic

“Animals have sounds and letters have sounds so animals are letters” 

I laughed so much at his observations and was excited to catch a glimpse of the way he think by how he made the connection.

My eldest son turned 6 years two days ago. The years went by so quickly and I feel I did not capture all the moments that passed by as much as I wanted. This is a reminder that time does not wait for you to spare a moment

I know that this year will be a challenge as I was eager to teach my son so many different things and I have to take into account his mood and interests that could restrict my ambitious plans. It helps that he can read by now

Yet how much should one expect from a 6 years old?

“He is still a child” I remind myself constantly. Just because he can talk back and express his feelings it does not mean he can cope with situations like an adult. Even adults don’t seem to cope or even understand their potentials.

So, my dear son, my pride, I promise you more patience this year as we embark on a new year of learning. I teach you few things from my view to learn from your view.

My younger son is obsessed with all technological things. He loves to quietly test buttons and see what they do and try again to confirm.He started crawling when he was 11 months and was not much bothered with moving around except at the site of any laptop especially my macbook. He will try to move in anyway to get to it semi crawl, move his hands hoping that it will magically bring it to him and magically it did arrive to him some how. He would even attempt to fly if that was possible.

As he gets older now he sneaks to laptops or when he sees me typing he would come close, hug me, kiss me and then politely point in the air as if he was pressing a virtual button and nods his head at the same time. His cute way of asking permission to use it. And again I give in to his cuteness.

Lately he extended his obsession to the ipad. He know how o use it and has few favorite apps that he keeps on using. He gets frustrated when his little tabs are not sensed by the screen and would say “this this” and points at the application that he wants me to press.

I remember 20 years ago children played with different things. Now every day objects for them to fiddle with have changed and I wonder how does that affects their development. Would it make them smarter? Would it develope certain characteristics such as patience as things load onto the screen or an increased imagination with the plethora of images they are introduced to? How does that affect their sense of reality?

I would not know but I am enjoying the moments as I observe my sons discover the world around them

I am always eager to learn something new. As one friend once described that I have an ability to make subjects appetizing. I have collected several degrees over the years and still have more on my list.

The world wide web also opened a plethora of access points to all sorts of information. Yet it still remains that there are things I feel I want to be more engaged in learning or even revisiting. An opportunity is arising as m son is growing up. I cannot wait to teach him many things as we could explore all sorts of subjects together in particular subjects like history and geography. He is already an eager learner and I am looking forward to this new stage as I feel it is very true that in “teaching you will learn”  (quoted from a song)

I am very thankful that I live in a time where I can have video calls with my children. So while I am away in London I can still be connected online. My almost 2 years old boy keeps on calling out to get my attention followed by pretend conversations, while my six year old keeps on updating and to feel that I am around he suggested that we play together during one of the calls.

So he starts off with I spy game. Which was fine for few guesses then he moves on to hide and seek?? So I say how can I seek. He said that I will have to close my eyes then guess which direction he is hiding, left, right or below? I enjoyed his creativity and how his sense of achievement at fooling me when I pretended I didn’t know he was hiding under the desk.

It is great the we can connect and felt wonderful to work with them playing at the background

I am not sure if it is a practicality issue or some childhood association from diary covers that made me always want a pocket watch. So on one of my London walks I spotted a necklace watch so I decided to buy one instead and my 5 year old son also wanted one so, as always, I wanted to promote the notion of sharing and told him to pick the design and colour that suites both of us and we would agree which days we would wear it. We bought the one above and since he was going off for a camping trip for the weekend, we agreed that his turn to wear it would be after he comes back.

I was happily wearing it through out the weekend glancing at it each every once in a while regardless of whether I wanted to know the time or not. Afterward, my son came back and as agreed I handed him the necklace to wear. He was ecstatic and kept on opening and closing it. He went out with his father while I sat at home working and later he came and apologized as he told me that he broke the opening button.

I appreciated his honesty and sincere apology and thought to myself that somethings are worth sharing with the right people only and this example was one I would use to explain to him why I can’t share everything I have with him. Although I can already anticipate some of his counter arguments especially since sharing is a big practice in our house and I am eagerly promoting it so he can do the same with his younger brother. Nevertheless, it is important to learn few other rules that go together with the concept of sharing. So we set up some rules

1) Not all things can be shared

2) We must take care of things we share

3) to value and respect the privilege of sharing

Not all things must be sacrificed in the name of sharing

It took my elder son some time to pronounce things well but he has a big vocabulary. He loves talking and so he would find ways to communicate his ideas to the extent that sometimes he would say a word and then define it. He would say that it is his word in his kharbootah (messy) language.

One of the words he uses is “Jai ho” – which is Hindi for may you be victorious or you are my destiny.

In his language, he said it means I don’t love you and would not give you a flower, while “jai ha” means the exact opposite. His words are usually descriptive and translate to sentences. They might be inspired by other accents or languages but usually they sound very valid and as long as he defines them we would know what he means.

He always wants to venture and create his way of doing things. That is why I think he will make a fine linguist among other things