Teaching Social Skills

I was talking with the father of three wonderful children, and I boasted how Siiri can recognize all the letters of the alphabet! Really! At 1 year and 5 months she immediately points to the correct capital letter when I ask her, "where is E?". She only mixes up letters when she's distracted by something and that doesn't happen often - she is occasionally more focused than I am. She is absolutely unnaturally focused for a kid her age. I would be worried if she sometimes didn't have completely excited and playful moods as well.

So I told about Siiri's wonderful skill to that father and he got quiet. He contemplated whether to say anything about it but then told me in a slightly concerned way that it is not necessary to educate children so much. He is actually right. Lately there has been much talk about Lost Childhood - children are no longer allowed to simply behave like children. They are constantly prepared for something, whether it's kindergarten, school, or university. Some Estonian children who go to kindergarten have already been tutored in English language to give them an advantage in life. Their parents are so eager to make them into something that they never allow them to simply be kids. He casually added that preschool children gain more from education of character (e.g. role-playing) than from the kind of education that school is meant for. I quickly reassured him that Siiri is genuinely interested in such knowledge and no wrong has been done. Learning the letters was simply a logical next step to learning different animals from books. Siiri pointed at things, whether dogs or cats or different letters, and grown-ups told her what she was pointing at, and later asked her to point to the correct picture, giving her an opportunity to show off her new knowledge. But it still got me thinking that role-playing is a wonderful idea. The following day I went to the store and bought a couple of glove puppets - Hedgehog and Monkey.

For most of my closest friends, when I say role-playing, they think: GOBLINS , magical armor, DRAGONS, priests kicking ass and vanquishing evil, damsels in distress, LOOT! For children less than three years old, it's something quite different. There's puppets and dolls, make-belief scenarios being played out and later Spiderman costumes and pretending a mere twig found from under a tree is a lazer gun. I haven't done much puppet theatre to Siiri but recently she has started to show readiness for such games. Namely she often offers snacks to her dolls and stuffed animals. One time she took a small toy cow and dipped it head-first into a bowl of snacks and made content sounds as if the cow was enjoying the meal. Another time she took the hand of a Barbie-like doll, submerged it into a bowl of snacks and pulled it out with a snack between her finger and doll's hand, or in this context, with the doll holding the snack and then feeding it to Siiri.

Role-playing for children can be quite educative because it can give them experiences that they hadn't yet gotten from real life. Lately I've been especially concerned with Siiri's paralyzing fear of other young children, perhaps because of some earlier experiences with loud children running and screaming like lunatics (something Siiri sometimes does herself ). So I got a wonderful idea . I should role-play positive social situations to Siiri so she's better prepared for when she makes her first attempts at being social with other kids. It's not absurd in any way. Role-playing is frequently used for improving social skills and it is one of the best methods for this goal, possibly second best after real experience.

My first puppet-lesson to Siiri was Sharing. As an only child, Siiri rarely has to share with anyone else and she is very unaccustomed to it, so I decided to show her how sharing works. Siiri brought Monkey a snack and Monkey happily ate it. But then phlegmatic Hedgehog came along and said, "Monkey, you have a snack. I don't have a snack, but I would also like to eat it". So Monkey said, "Hedgehog, lets share!" and they both started munching on the snack. Siiri looked at it with confusion and then with disapproval. She made an agitated sound, came and took back the snack and cave it back to Monkey. I snickered and continued with the lesson. Again came the Hedgehog, "I no longer have a snack. Could I have some, too?". Happy and energetic Monkey said, "Come! I have plenty, I can share with you!" and they both started eating the same snack. Siiri was not pleased! She came, took back the snack, pushed Monkey further from Hedgehog, gave Monkey the snack, and kept a close eye on Hedgehog. Of course Hedgehog came along and acted all hungry. Monkey proposed, "Lets split it!". I carefully made the small puffy snack into two halves and put one in front of Monkey and the other in front of Hedgehog and made munching sounds. That seemed like the perfect solution until Siiri came, took away hedgehog's half a snack, gave Hedgehog a mean look and ATE IT!

All is well that ends well. Siiri got to use her imagination to solve a recurring problem and I got a good laugh out of it. Everyone wins. Except for the Hedgehog.

PS! Siiri currently has at least 16 actively used phrases or words. There are so many that she has forgotten, but I'm not counting those. She can follow simple commands, such as, "Siiri, please put the rabbit in your cupboard". I don't point to either the rabbit or the cupboard but she does it anyway. She understands most of every-day talk. Perhaps I should have taken it into account when I was reading some child developmental stuff out loud to Erkki. "They say Children Siiri's age should already be drinking from a cup. We assist Siiri, but do they mean she should be able to do it without any assistance? They can't possibly mean that.". The entire next day Siiri demanded to hold the cup herself and by nightfall had learned to drink from a cup unassisted.

Spiritual Level-up

Tonight I feel odd. I feel like the entire day has been a journey to a next spiritual level. Actually perhaps it started on Friday. I was walking to my very first university lecture. My lecture, as in, I was giving it. I had a missed call and called back on my way to the lecture. It was my colleague who asked me if I was interested in being a Bachelor's thesis supervisor. I was all hyped up on pre-lecture adrenaline, but I gave it a brief thought - "yeah! Sounds like a totally new experience! I'm in!".

I had my lecture. At first I was trembling a bit but then it passed and I even stopped looking at my lecture notes. I walked back and fourth, clicking on next slide, sketching on the blackboard and pointing at diagrams with a long wooden stick. A wooden stick beats a trembling little red laser dot any day. It went quite okay! There were a few things I explained horribly because I realized during the lecture that I missed some important details when I was studying the slides, but I think I explained the important things well enough. I had 49 slides for 90 minutes and I still finished 20 minutes early. But when I sat down and assembled my notes I felt at peace. It was a conscious effort not to grin as everyone was gathering their things to leave. I was suddenly a grown-up. There was only a few years gap between me and the people leaving the classroom but I felt like those are pretty damn important few years. My growing up had nothing to do with getting married or even having a child. I grew up when I gave my first lecture and accepted my first Bachelor's supervisee.

Today I gave my second lecture, also the last lecture this year. This time I knew exactly what I was talking about. I made more slides just in case and I finished the lecture in 88 minutes with only 2 minutes to spare. I had so much to tell that I rushed through some things that deserved more attention but I paid enough attention to things that will be in the exam. At the end of the lecture I met my supervisee. I invited him to the lecture because he wanted to do the thesis on the exact same topic as my lecture. He seemed potentially lazy, but motivated to finish school. I think he'll do fine. Curiously, I'm not at all intimidated by the task. I'm actually eager to find out more about him - what his strengths and weaknesses are and I'm even more eager to show him all the cool tricks that help with writing the thesis. There will also be a co-supervisor who is more experienced so I won't be alone.

Perhaps it's not by chance that I was strongly pushed off balance by a lecture that I attended today. The lecturer told us about near death experiences and events that can only be explained with the existence of a soul that does not depend on any brain activity. The course is called Science and Religion. It's my yet another attempt to find faith. I've been on strange terms with faith for years. The last time I was a good Christian was when I was about 15. Then I got interested in psychology and learned about suggestion. After that I never felt comfortable in a church sermon. I felt I was being manipulated into thoughts that were not quite my own. I still kept trying to keep my ties to church. I even went to a minister one day - I was walking past a church and I just went to see if he was there and if he had a moment. It seemed like one of those moments from movies where the main character does something impulsive to find faith and she finds it. However, life is not the movies. The minister gave me some boring politically correct reply which was so unspectacular that I can't even remember what the question was, let alone the answer. I thanked him politely and walked out just as unwisely.

I had been baptized nearly all my life so I went to confirmation for some "real" faith. My quest was never about not believing in the existence of God. I simply really had a problem with Christianity. Jesus was great, but he lived a whole lot of time ago and his view of the world might have been progressive then but it was completely too restrictive for me. I simply couldn't fit his teachings into my world view without distorting one of those to a point of nonrecognition. It was completely unfair to distort his teachings and I wasn't willing to completely change my world view for some dude who lived 2000 years ago!

Anyway, confirmation steered me toward a more balanced liberal Christianity but it still wasn't enough. Christianity has so many inner flaws that no one could possibly take it seriously. For one, Jesus was a pacifist. And Bible teaches more evil violence than any other book I've ever attempted to read. Whenever I saw a "pink and fluffy" quote from the Bible, I felt like quoting something from the Old Testament. And don't tell me Old Testament is not a part of Christianity because the entire creation story, ten commandments and much else came from there and it's all a part of this religion. Simply, someone is preaching their own version of an old and outdated semi-evil religion and calling it Christianity. I never really agreed with most of it. I felt more and more disconnected from God and oddly, more and more at peace with myself because I didn't have so much Christian guilt wearing me down. I was nearly an atheist, except for the minor little detail: I still intuitively assumed there was God.

So finally today at the Science and Religion lecture I saw a picture of a soul leaving the body and I thought, "who am I kidding. Of course there is a soul and a God and all that. I'm not a materialist! Not by a long shot. I have to find a way to connect my body and my soul." It was little more than a mental note. In the evening I went to see "Eat Pray Love". It was quite good, except with a target audience 40 years old, female and divorced (At least I got the sex right). It still had some wonderful thoughts about one woman's journey to find herself through Hinduism.

So I walked out of the movie theater, ears whistling from the loud speakers in the movie theater and my steps echoing in the empty streets. I continued my thoughts about finding more inner peace. Happiness is not about what we do or what we have. A lot of happiness comes from within. I am a happy person by most standards but I feel I have the potential to be much more happy if I figure out my spiritual beliefs and find peace within myself. I have tried so long and I have failed. So it seems I have been going about it all wrong. I will not find faith in Christianity. I have to find my own way. That's it. Yes, that is my big revelation: Christianity isn't for me. Seems so common when I see it in writing.

Now I have a lot to think about. At this point I feel I'm much more likely to end up worshipping Taara, an ancient nearly forgotten Estonian god, than a Christian god. Perhaps it would even be the more respectable choice in Estonia, the official least religious nation in the world .