Mummy Is The Best.

Two weeks ago, my friend in Dubai, asked me if I could take tuition for her son. And he studies in – would you believe it, KG 2. I was, hmm… what should I say, shocked, surprised. Tuition for a KG2 student? What will I teach him? Isn’t school more than enough for a 4  year old child?

I talked it with my husband. He asked me to help her and go on with the tuition. He might have thought that a tuition would bring a change in my otherwise boring nothing-to-do life. And so I decided to go on with the tuition.

I called my friend, S, next day to tell her that I’m ready to help her son. We talked a lot.

“I cannot make him do his homework as I have my five month old daughter to look after. ” She explained her helplessness. I thought of my mother.

My brother was five, when my mother delivered me. He never had any kind of tuition. But that was in India then, where we lived as an extended family with uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents. So taking care of the little ones was not a big issue. When I was one and a half years old, we moved to UAE. My mother gave birth to my younger brother when I was two, and then another brother when I was 5, and the youngest of us, the fifth, when I was 11. All these from UAE with no one to help her, and no one to help us. Dad did his best during these times, but he couldn’t do much because he was a polio victim and has trouble in walking.

The part that still surprises me is that, none of us went to the KG classes of our school. Mom taught us at home the lessons, and we took the exam to get admission to first standard. I think we got a strong base in our education system, because of the procedure. Mom was able to take care of our education very well, because she had only one kid to teach at a time, contrary to the school method. She was our mother-cum-tuition teacher till our 5th standard. I wonder why parents with even one child sent their little kids to tuition, as if school was not enough for them!

My student, in KG 2 now, doesn’t know the full English alphabets yet. S told me that he has missed his second and third terms of KG1 and first term of KG2, ‘coz she was in India for her delivery. To make things worse, he learned the alphabets ( a totally foreign language for him as him mother tongue is Malayalam) in normal handwriting earlier, but now its in cursive they teach him. The boy is burdened with a lot of work. He has started hating English, for the cursive. While doing his homework, he ‘draws’ the alphabets instead of writing it. Does this come in the section of child labour?

Wasn’t it best for the Mom to keep the kid at home and teach him the basics thoroughly, and then sent him to school? Isn’t it best to miss a year now and get a strong base than to miss the whole education? I think it that way, but may be everybody won’t. Parents hurry to get their first child to school, and they dream of the day he/she starts earning and taking care of them, while they can retire peacefully. But sometimes this dreams gets shattered because of their haste. I am not able to make S understand all these. I don’t know how she will take my words. May be I could change some of your minds, if you are having a child of 3-4 of age, and you are sending him to a tuition class. So I thought I would write about it.