TRAINING WHEELS!!!

Kai is REALLY riding a "Two-Wheel" Bicycle all by himself now! The idea came about last Thursday. Tina saw an entry on another family's blog about a young girl learning to ride a bike without training wheels and showed it to Kai. Kai decided that he wanted to learn to do this now. Tina took the training wheels off for him and he messed about with the bike on the back deck for a bit. Tina says she has never seen a child learn to ride a bike the way Kai did. He did not want assistance with the process, which is probably for the best as he is SO wiggly. He started by trying to kick off and start peddling. Tina worked with him a bit to help him learn to bring the pedal up around with your toe to get it in starting position and he figured that out quickly. He made a couple runs down the yard, and the length of the deck. It's a narrow deck with lots of obstacles, so apart from being level and smooth, it's a tough place to learn to ride a bike. By the time Tina suggested going out front to the cul-de-sac, Kai was worn out and done for the day.

The weather this weekend was pretty brutal. We actually had snow! This morning there was lots of it on the ground, trees and roofs in the neighborhood. It melted quickly, but still, SNOW on April 20th! Anyway, as we were driving to Chinese School this afternoon, Kai said he wanted to take the training wheels back off his bike again when we got home. So we did! He started on the back deck again, but there just isn't enough room to really get going there so we headed out to the cul-de-sac. He kicked about a bit on it and then just rode away! The video above is actual footage of his first real successful bike ride!

I will now tell you the secret of how to teach a child to ride a bike. You can't teach a child to ride a bike, you can only help them to learn it on their own. One of the best tools I've found for this is a bike that is a little too small for the child. You want a bike that the child can clear the seat when standing over it. This size bike let's the child put their feet down and still have the bike in balance position. They feel much more confident because there is much less risk of falling over. Ben taught me this 14 years ago when he learned to ride a tiny little bike Tina bought for $5 at a garage sale. That little bike became legendary as we saw nearly half a dozen different children learn on this little beater garage sale item. I see people again and again, buy children this age a bike to grow into, but I really believe if you want them to learn to ride without training wheels you want to start on a bike that's a little too small.

Kai is VERY pleased with this new accomplishment, and Tina and I are just amazed that we're seeing him do this already. He is truly an amazing little kid!

An American teenager who is obsessed with Hong Kong cinema and kung-fu classics makes an extraordinary discovery in a Chinatown pawnshop: the legendary staff of the Chinese sage and warrior, the Monkey King. With the lost relic in hand, the teenager unexpectedly finds himself traveling back to ancient China to join a crew of warriors from martial arts lore on a dangerous quest to free the imprisoned Monkey King.


I don't care what the critics say, I am looking forward to seeing this!

This is a fun video I found on another blog. You may have seen this already, as it has over 1.5 million views, but I thought it was funny and so did Kai and Shen...

I met with the assistant director of special education for the local school district on Monday. I went into the meeting well armed with a printed list of my concerns, as well as copies of documents from the previous meeting we had which was so upsetting to Tina and me. I think the meeting went pretty well. We had a calm, rational discussion in which I was able to clearly state all of our concerns.

We discussed that the speech pathologist had made a number of insensitive remarks which were offensive to us. Her supervisor stated she didn't believe the speech pathologist to be a racist. I told her that I believed this was most likely true, and that her remarks were probably made out of ignorance. I did not really want to belabor this point, but was clear that the comments she had made left us with little confidence in her.

The big issue for us was that while the "team" had agreed Kai would receive speech therapy service, they were going to be provided without any kind of standard testing first. And that the this speech therapist was who was going to be structuring and providing the services. Our main concern here is that she has clearly stated numerous times that she believes Kai's early exposure to Mandarin is the main cause for any issues we raise.

The supervisor assured me that Kai will now be given a "formal" standardized evaluation. So on this point, pursuing this meeting was worth it. The evaluation will be administered by the speech therapist in question, but she is supposed to be consulting with some of her colleagues first. After this test, there will be another team meeting with me and Tina. The supervisor will attend this meeting. And if we aren't satisfied with this evaluation we can have the district pay for another evaluation by an independent speech pathologist.

I was very clear about our concerns regarding this therapist and the way she has been so antagonistic to us in every meeting. At one point when asked what we would like to see happen, I told her we would like to see a different therapist working with Kai. She replied by saying this wasn't going to happen this school year, but there was a possibility of staff changes next school year. There was no real commitment in this comment, and it could have been said just to placate me. But who knows? Maybe we aren't the only ones who aren't happy with this woman. Either way, I know that our concerns have been heard by the appropriate person and that the way things were going has changed, but it's going to be a slow process.

In the meantime we have contacted the local university about getting an evaluation for Kai through their speech pathology department. We don't know what this will cost, or what services specifically it might lead to, but it's another option for us to get Kai the help he needs.

Today we went back to Mei Hua Chinese Language School. We have had the boys taking lessons with a private teacher since last fall, and we really liked her format a lot. The schedule was a much better fit for us as well, but our local Chinese language school changed their preschool format around and we decided to try it again. Instead of having to pay the whole quarter tuition, we can buy a punch card so we only pay for the sessions we use. The class is only an hour long now - from 3 to 4 on Sunday afternoons and they are offering an adult class at the same time. This arrangement is absolutely perfect for us, so we were very excited to try it out. We weren't sure who else would be there, but as we pulled into the parking lot Laurette Rasmussen pulled in with her daughters Lily and Lana. Lana is the little girl Shen knew in Xi'an. Kai and Shen were very excited to see them, and while Shen was a little nervous about Tina and I leaving him in the class, so I asked Lana if Shen could sit between her and Kai. This put him at ease and we went off to the adult class where we worked on Pinyin and tones. When the kids were done they came and found us and we took them out to play on the playground for a bit. We all had a really good time, and look forward to continuing with this program. We hope that more families start to come as well. I think it's a great way for us to improve our Chinese, and to connect with the local Chinese-American community. If you're local and interested, here's the link to the school's website: www.meihuaschool.org.

To augment the experience we played two different Chinese DVD's for the boys today too, one before, and one after school. We watched Follow Jade! Learn Chinese: Let's Go To Market in China, and Play & Learn CHINESE with Mei Mei Vol. 1. So far we have liked the Jade videos better than the Mei-Mei ones, but we had just picked up this Mei-Mei one at the library today and we liked it better than the other ones we have seen from that series.

We still don't feel like we have a good routine in place regarding working on Chinese language with the boys, but we are trying to continually expose them to it. I think having this adult class time for Tina and me will help us to focus more on this.

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