I was concerned when our Morning Glorie, a preschool in South City 1 , Gurgaon, started by my daughter and wife in 2011, had to close operations in March this year due to the pandemic lockdown. We were not alone. There were many others in a similar situation. The parents of toddlers were also concerned. They did not know what the future held for their little gems. To be honest, I was sceptical when the team decided to start online interactive sessions for their toddlers in April. I could not comprehend 2-3-year olds sitting in front of their screens, even if it was only for one hour in a day. They needed someone to sit with them during the session – who would that be? Obviously, one of the parents – a mother or a father. Classroom days seemed to be a thing of the past. How would the educators design activities which would ignite little minds virtually? More importantly, were the educators themselves trained in imparting the required stimuli to the little ones through an online mode

I am an avid F.R.I.E.N.D.S fan. I first watched that series as a teenager in school, and have since watched the entire series like a 100 times. Ok. Maybe I exaggerate a little. But I am sure that my mom (who is also my partner at Morning Glorie , Daycare and Play school in Gurgaon) will whole heartedly say that I obsess a tad too much with the series. So there was this one episode, in season 9 I think, where Ross and Rachel are looking for a nanny for their daughter Emma, and in comes Sandy, who was this amazing nanny, with a bunch of references, and who was really really good with the kids. But, for Ross, what ended up being more important was the fact that he was a man. Now first up, I have to say, I found it amazingly wonderful, that in the west, early childhood education as well as care could be taken care of by the same person - not taking into consideration the gender of the person. Sandy was not just a nanny, who would feed Emma, or change her diapers, he was also part of his pr

As adults, we come across many problems in life. To think of something basic, let's go with, say, a tube light not working in the living room. How do we solve this problem? We may take this in a sequence of simple steps. First, we may check out the mains of the house, and see if any MCB has tripped. If it has, then we will try to lift it ourselves. That should hopefully solve the problem. If it doesn't we may try to identify some major appliance on the same circuit which may be giving us a problem and shut it down. If that works, then great, and if that doesn't then we will end up calling an electrician. Alternatively, if the MCB hasn't tripped, then we will try to move the tube light to see if it works, then check for blackening edges to see if the tube is too old to be used anymore, and if that is the case, then we will either buy a new light ourselves or once again, call the electrician. Seems simple enough? At our age, it probably does, but looked at in such detail,

Public Speaking. The moment you read these two words in the context of a child, it appears to become a heavy concept. After all, why should this be important for a 2 year old, or even a 5 year old, fundamentally speaking? Agreed that in due course these are important skills to acquire, but why should that be the case at this age? Bear with me, as I put across my point of view here. When Morning Glorie's physical premises were open (I am talking about both our preschool and daycare in South City 1 , Gurgaon), we prided ourselves on being absolutely screen free for the children. No smart boards, no tv viewing, no mobile videos! Notwithstanding the fact that this could be extremely tough for us caregivers and educators at times, we felt that this was crucial for the development of children across all ages. For the toddlers, this facilitated language development , and for the older ones, it ensured that social skills and communication were the focus points. After all, when there were n