For those who don’t know, my daughter is seven years old. She is in first grade and is a livewire, she also has Down syndrome! Yesterday during her PTM (parents’ teachers meet) her teacher shared an incident which was unimaginable for me and should’ve been a matter of concern for any parent but it made my day. I was so happy to hear it and not only me, but her teachers also had a hearty laugh over it and I couldn’t help but smile all the way till home.
As told by the teacher, it happened three days ago when they had a sports class in the playground. Everybody was supposed to be in a queue and go to the ground for the activity already planned for them. There are about 30 children and 2 teachers in their class and Aarshia is generally happy to go out for activities. So everybody reached the playground and the sports teacher told them what they were going to do. And that’s when it happened, according to the teacher, Aarshia quietly sneaked from the ground once she saw that the activity was not of her interest. And she made sure that nobody saw her (she is hardly to be missed though). She went back to the classroom on her own, climbing two set of stairs (which is pretty commendable considering her class is quite far off) and sat at the last bench in the empty room.
The teacher, who was following her, was pretty amused at this new development because we’ve been teaching her to be on her own in this new session as she is still getting acquainted with new teachers. So instead of going in herself, she decided to send another teacher to check on her. And as soon as this other teacher went in, guess what Aarshia did? She shushed this teacher by keeping her finger on her lips as if trying to make her a confidant.
This new teacher was so happy seeing Aarshia doing this that she didn’t ask her to go back to the playground. This is when her teacher decided to face the little monster. But to her utter surprise as soon as she got in the class, Aarshia got up and ran back to the playground. She told me it was hilarious! (I can only imagine) so she followed Aarshia back to the ground and got hold of her there. And asked “why were you in the class?” to which Aarshia replied “No Aanya” (her best friend) her teacher asked again if she was looking for Aanya and Aarshia said ‘Yes’! What a liar my little girl has become! And what a sweetheart she is to be able to pull off something like this.
I am not going into what is right and what is wrong, or if I should encourage or discourage such practices. We did have a talk about the incident at home where I told her whatever she did was wrong but deep inside I was super happy that she bunked the class, went back to her own classroom, asked a teacher to be quiet and lied about all of this (I am happy she is getting smarter!). I loved the incident and it made my day so much that I kept smiling all day along and thought of sharing some happiness with you all!
Have a good day!
