its fun growing up with her

Recently Jispa again had an elocution competition in school. This time too we searched for poems and one we specially loved was on Television by Roald Dahl. It was quite a nice one with scope for interesting tones to be used. You can access the poem here. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/television/ So well in time we normally get her to learn the poem by heart. This time it was even more important as the poem was longer than your usual poem. So Jispa took a copy of the poem and submitted it for the competition. She was even shortlisted for the contest basis the poem. After which her teacher asked her to change the poem. Too many kids say Roald Dahl poems and this one is possibly common. So please get something new. So we began our search or another interesting poem. We sent ‘oh captain my captain’ to school along with my favorite Psalm of Life. The first was too common and the second was too high for the kids to understand. OK. In the meanwhile the dates for the final shortlist was coming up and we desperately needed a poem. Vinu tried to help and shortlist a few. Jasmine and I frenetically started searching the Shel Silberstein books again. We found one – The Nap Taker. That was also an interesting poem with plenty of fun stuff in it. But we hardly had enough time to prepare it. Just enough to learn it by heart and then a few days to put all the tone and correction in it. Jispa is now much older and wiser then from when I first taught her elocution around three years ago. Now she understands the poems and the fun she can have with it. Also I think I have grown as well in the few years. I have learnt to be a little more patient and have a little less drive. To sit behind and say its ok. Let it be. Some of the tones may not be completely right and the pitch may have been a bit low but I guess I have learnt to be a bit detached. I think this realization first came to me when a friend asked me to just get her kid to emote right for her elocution. Since I couldn’t really scold her, it taught me tons of pateience, and then I realized how demanding I have been on Jispa when she was learning her poem. What an ass I was. So this time around I scolded less. Far less. Only when we argued and especially when she argued needlessly or gave some random excuse did I shout. But all in all it was a slightly more relaxed experience. Easy does it. She knows she has to be clear, she knows she must give out emotions, she knows it’s important to change voices. She also has now seen enough elocution competitions herself to figure this. In the run up to the contest she was making a mess of her poem. Jasmine and I wanted to hit our head against the wall and cry. But we both decided to have an attitude that said ‘to hell with it’. When the date was nearing, we gave it a few corrections and told Jispa where she was going wrong. We had to lean on each other quite a bit for support, to prevent us from tearing out hair apart. When Jispa has something in her head it’s very difficult to get it out. She can think of many reasons why it must be in a particular way. And when we have just a day to go before the contest – there is normally no reasoning to be done. PLEASE JUST FOLLOW AS I HAVE TOLD YOU. The contest was done – Jispa won the second place. We always take this thing as a badge of achievement. Most other competitors got o speech and drama class. They are trained in this regularly. I for one hated this concept. You don’t need classes to teach you to act. I learnt that on my own. I think overacting and theatrics was something I was born with. And I am not spending money on someone trying to teach my daughter the same. In any case this one was especially special – as I see as an award that Jispa won more than us. As I have explained, her own role and her own thought process was much larger. We only gave direction this time around. The last few years we rehearsed and fine-tuned the delivery a lot. Now we are only, what… the facilitators? It’s nice to see Jispa grow up and manage a lot of these things. She is a smart kid. She looks around and learns. Like one cousin of mine said – there is one thing I told him and he never forgets as regards parenting “monkey sees, monkey does”. Jispa not only learns from us but from everyone. She has ears and eyes that senses cues and picks up signals. This cuts both ways. Like she learnt begging from a cousin – when she begs for something – like playing time on the itouch, and good things, like how she must be loud and clear on elocution. To end – not that it’s a complain – in fact I love training her – but in my times the school teacher used to take a lot of interest in elocution and the parents hardly knew of it. These days, it seems, that its parents all the way. Or possibly it’s the role of the special coaching classes.