Now 5 years 1 months and a day, Esmé is in her first year of reception class.
Her mummy and daddy moved to be closer to the school she now attends when Esmé was still only a tiny little baby in her mummy’s tummy. Lizzie tells Esmé that the upheaval was worth it, as she will get what her mummy calls a ‘tip top’ education.
She is currently learning Mandarin, which is the most common form of the Chinese language spoken today. Her daddy, Marcus says that China will be the dominant global manufacturing power for the next quarter century; and anyone in the west with an understanding of the most spoken language in the world will have a natural advantage.
Esmé is not sure what any of that means, however words such as xièxie and zhōngguó chá make her happy when she says them because when she does say them, as clear and as loud as she possibly can the whole class claps, lead by their teacher, Ms Chen.
This makes Esme very happy indeed. And when she is happy she smiles broadly, and feels all tingly on her head.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
The Middle Class Child - 5.1.1
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4 comments:
Awwww, that's so sweet. Isn't she clever?
AND... YAY, I'm first.
all tingly in her head huh? mummy and daddy might want to have that checked out - might be a hidden aneurism just waiting to burst.
She's all tingy because she's been brought up to embrace learning and take actual physical pleasure from success.
Something us bloggers could learn a thing or two about.
This is quite funny.
Having spent a week with an 8 month old and her parents, it's weird to see how they influence her. Luckily, Beanie's folks are normal people (yes, middleclass) from a working class background. They know about hard work and they know the importance of giving the baby a good grounding in life. But they're happy for her to develop normally. No stupid books, no language tapes - just cbeebies and rusks to shut her up, that type of thing. She goes to "Little Acorns" with the other kids who have got pushy parents, one of whom phoned up to say that "Luke started to crawl on 23rd December". Fuck off, you stuck up spastic. Beanie might not be crawling yet, but at least she's not bald, you little cunt.
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