Being Social

As some of my followers would know by now, one of my biggest worries is the idea of Raiyan not mixing in well in class or when being around other kids in general. This concern was especially heightened when he had such a rocky start to the school year with there being complaints of his loud voice and his resistance to turn taking and sharing.

So it is no surprise that ever since then, we have been going on overdrive trying to instill in him one social skill rule after another. Every time he does something that I would perceive as rude or socially unacceptable, I would drill it in him to not do that again and if he doesn’t do something that he should be doing, like not responding to others’ questions, I would incessantly remind him to look at the person and then answer the question.

All of us around him, including Kerri and Jo gets kinda edgy over this that you can practically see the nerves on our faces every time somebody new asks Raiyan a question as we are just waiting with utter anxiousness for his response! Which is why I still laugh at one moment during our Hari Raya open house when Jeff’s boss was asking Raiyan his name, and there was Kerri and Jo on the other side of the room stopping cold in the middle of eating, anticipating Raiyan’s response and as soon as he said “Raiyan” they BOTH just exclaimed “good boy!” LOL!

However, I was recently reading up on social skills in the “Work in Progress” book and learnt that the best way for these children to pick up natural social language and incidentally social “rules” is through mixing in with their peers and not so much learning it from adults. It’s because children do have this innate desire to please their friends much more than their parents or teachers. Furthermore, the “natural” social language amongst kids are clearly so different from the “natural” social language of adults.

And then it hit me that it may not be such a good idea for me to go TOO overdrive with teaching him social language and rote teaching social rules because at the end of the day, being social is a spontaneous and natural thing and as soon as it looks planned, it ends up looking contrived and NOBODY likes fake people right?

And in terms of his language, the systematic way that he is taught inevitably leads him to sound very “prim and proper” when he talks which is completely fine with me as I am just content to have him talk. But the thing is sometimes he does end up sounding like a middle aged English professor! So lately, instead of forever correcting his broken English and making him speak in longer sentences, I’ve also taken a step back in that because I realize that I personally do not know any 5 year old who speak in a grammatically accurate 6-7 word sentence anyway!

Raiyan is at a point now where his personality is shining through and though I do accept that his language is not completely there and he still tends to talk on and on about his interests without really attuning to his audience, I have to accept that he’s still a kid, he will eventually learn all these so called rules slowly but through experiencing them and not just by being told about them but most of all, I have to be confident that despite all the shortcomings that I only see because I’m so stressed out over them, other children are also children, who are not cynical and who will be able to just see Raiyan for the sweet and delightful boy that he is. InsyaAllah he will get through this and at least for now, I’ve taught myself to not be so worried about it anymore. :D