Thursday, April 14, 2016

Renzo's afternoon routine with helper at home...

[WARNING: LOADS OF PICTURES]

A few days back, we bumped into an upstairs neighbor, whose elder son is going to primary school next year, he casually asked us about our opinions on Renzo's primary school, and then he popped an interesting question, which I've been getting often from my own friends recently too:
"So, your son is at home the entire afternoon with your helper alone? Won't he run riot with your helper?!!"

Well, the answer is, NO..

So yes starting this year, Renzo has been on this new routine where he needs to spend the entire afternoon at home with helper. We do have other options like many other families, to leave him to grandparents, or student care. But personally I feel no where beats his comfy own home. And I trust my help to do an equality good, or probably even better job than most other care givers. We prepared Renzo half a year in advance and he's fully aware that if he's not able to follow a proper routine at home, he will then need to attend student care. I've been telling him that our helper is his home teacher so, how dare is he to "run riot" with his teacher?!

Fortunately, Renzo has established a really great routine as he's been attending full day childcare since 19 months. All he needs is just a fixed timetable. And a "comm book" which is a notebook I use to communicate with him, sometimes I ask him about his day in school, sometimes I assign him tasks to do and all these are done through this "comm book". I always believe if we want to put kids on a routine, we parents need to have a proper routine too, so I always start my day with writing down a few questions, or tasks for him to work on.

And interestingly, sometimes he would correct my spelling mistakes, sometimes he would give me questions instead, and very often, I get answers which are totally unexpected, yet funny. But all these answers also help me understand him better.   At the same time, I secretly hope his writing skill will improve through such kind of writing activity. And English composition would be much easier for him to handle in the very near future.


Recently, he surprised me with answering the below random question 100% right, it's heartwarming to know he's realizing my love to him which I am trying to show through all the breakfast I make for him every morning.

My friends suggested me to chat with him over the phone but I never fancy that idea. I told Renzo that my time at work, is for my boss and my company. Everyone has our own roles and responsibilities so if there's anything urgent, his "home teacher" aka. our helper is the right person to address his concerns. Come to think about it, what if he calls me because he wants to watch TV but there's no slot allocated for TV on his timetable, and helper refused to budge, what would I do? Of course either to allow him turn on the TV or to allow that with certain condition attached to it, such as to watch TV after finishing a few pages of assessment book, otherwise, how to expect him to put down the phone? So nope, I won't allow myself to get into such kind of dilemma.

Kids being kids, he spends most of the afternoon playing, drawing his customized gundams (sometimes his favorite dragons or cars which he's not been drawing for a long time), or reading, because I do not have much work assigned to him. I still do not like the idea of assessment books as I rather they enjoy the learning process than to kill their interest for learning at very early stage with repetitive questions and exercises.



As for his school work, he's been coping well in general. Spelling and tingxie are not as difficult as what he got during K2 in childcare, so I only test him one day before the test date and as usual, I do not really give him time to prepare. If he makes any mistakes, he just correct himself from there. But no doubt, I do feel parents need to get more involved especially now he's in P1. As I always say, parents are their best teachers.

English
So far he's been doing very well although there are small mistakes here and there. He seems to love his English teacher and his English lesson the most.  His teacher also praises him often for good penmanship and nice drawing. Oh yes he's putting in a lot of efforts to draw on his English worksheet!


Recently he's tasked to prepare a script for his English pick and tell. I was very impressed and proud with the 1st draft he came up on his own. Being "very responsible" parents, we tried to help him edit his script but eventually, he decided to come up with 2nd draft on his own after he learned more from his teacher, his books and some video clips on animals. I especially love the way he shares his knowledge, informative and interesting at the same time with some trace of his humorous perosnality there.

Mathematics
This is the subject taught by his form teacher so I didn't really pay much attention, as there's no homework given up till now. I was a little surprised with some mistakes on his school worksheet, but eventually I found out that he's just having some struggles with "fact family", which honestly speaking, I see no reason why they were taught in such a complicated way, it's just simple substraction/addition which he could easily manage at the age of 4. Anyway it serves as a wake up call that nowadays kids learn their mathematics in a very different way and maybe he really needs additional assessment books at home, to reinforce what he's learned in class. After all, practice makes perfect!

Chinese 
Interestingly, Renzo seems to know that this is his weakest subject so he's been extra careful and scored full marks for most of his Chinese worksheets. So when we missed out the date of his very first weighted Chinese test (听力测验), I was pleasantly surprised that he scored full marks without any preparation. That's indeed my goal, to get him into the habit of revising daily and be prepared for test at any time.

Of course I know exactly how poor his Chinese is. Because we seldom converse in Mandarin at home, his vocabulary is extremely weak and his sentence structure isn't quite there yet. So I've been trying to dedicate 1 hour every Saturday for his home Chinese tuition. Boy that's totally not easy as we do have a younger one to manage at the same time too. This week Renzo is having his 2nd official test in school, which is his Chinese 听听说说 - situational dialogue. I am not sure how the test is structured but with some sample questions given by teacher on the left side of the picture below, I came up with sample answers for him on the right side.

It's definitely a long way to go still. And reading some other bloggers' sharing on how they manage home studying with their kids, surely make me a little nervous as some of the parents went all out with daily tuition at home. That's a challenge for full time working parents like us, so we can only entrust our son to manage his own responsibilities well in this case!

Monday, April 4, 2016

we don't need a perfect child...

During Renzo March school holiday, I treated him and my older niece to Universal Studio and it's a super fun day for all of us. My twin sister and I have very different personalities and being the most adventurous and sporty one in the family, she was having so much fun with her girl, my elder niece. They tried on every single ride in the theme park. And just that horrifying Battlestar Galactica roller coaster itself, they went on it for 10 times!

Renzo and I stayed away from most of the rides. Well I admit, the previous time when we visited USS with Daddy Chan and Rynus, the 4 of us went on the "Puss in Boots" ride without knowing what to expect, and boy it scared us out of our wits, except for Rynus who seemed to enjoy it. So I do know where my limit is, and of course Renzo's too.

Renzo was not attracted by most of the rides there, he's rather happy with the "Accelerator" which is the spinning whirling twirling "cups", nothing fast and furious. He had rounds of good silly laugh watching a live Donkey show, rather kiddish, yes I know that. And he surely prefers the Easter Egg painting time, or simply chasing after bubbles, or taking pictures with famous cartoon characters. For the entire afternoon, he's roaming around the park solving Easter Egg treasure hunt questions. He spent a good 2-3 hours trying to locate all the hidden eggs and by the time he got all his answers correct, he's all sweaty and exhausted but the bright smile on his face, was simply priceless!

So I happened to read an article today on parenting, in Chinese, it says.
敏感的孩子有艺术气质,有极为丰富美丽的内心世界;胆小的孩子懂得判别危险,逻辑性往往很强;好动的孩子体力充沛活力无限,行动力和勇气往往都很强。
It basically explains the different concerns parents have for their children, and interestingly, out of the 3 major concerns, it relates Sensitive = Artistic; Timid = Logical; and Active = Courageous.

Well this is very interesting because we have noticed the homely, introvert, sensitive personalities in Renzo since young. He's definitely sensitive, but he has this knack for drawing, he is observant, detailed and creative in his artwork. He's definitely timid, but he's super logical, he stays away from danger and knows his limit.

Very often, after viewing a video clip or a bunch of pictures of my nieces' achievements, be it that the older niece won a medal in her Taekwando competition, or the younger niece managed to cover a 5 meters distance in her roller shoes, subconsciously, I start to ask myself this question, "even the girls are so actively involved in sports, how about Renzo?". It's not to say that doing sports is a must but no doubt, it helps our kids to grow strong both physically and mentally.

But after reading the article, I start to feel less concerned about Renzo. Sensitive, timid, or active, are supposed to be great virtues in kids but often, we adults see them as problems. And why? Because we compare with others!

We often hear from fellow parents that we should let our kids participate in more outdoor activities, give them more exposures, but likely, those parents are extroverts who can see the importance of such activities and, those introverts like us, won't even speak up and voice their opinions probably. So while parenting our kids, we gradually fall into this trap where we set high self-imposed standard. Whatever other kids can do, our kids should be able to do, whatever other kids cannot do, our kids can at least try!

From the poor kid's perspective, who knows they might be struggling with giving up their own unique sense of self in order to comply, and be the child whom the parents would adore? When I feel it's a battle to convince Renzo to learn swimming, some other kids might find it a piece of cake to self teach the skill by dipping in the pool every other afternoon, but then, who knows their parents are not struggling with getting them sit still in front of the desk and finish reading a 10 pages long story book
 
We parents take great pride in our children. When they succeed, it makes us happier than if we’d done it ourselves.  But sometimes we have to ask ourselves whether intervening is in their best interest. Because in the short term, we might celebrate over little milestones our kids achieved, but we know that what will matter as they turn 25, 35, 45, is not how perfect they once delivered a speech during a class show and tell, or whether they made it to the final round of singing competition, but how they treat others and what they think of themselves. I rather see Renzo building his own character, confidence, strength and resilience, through any form of exposure he enjoys, experience the pride that follows and come out stronger, than to force him to do what we parents think is good for him. Again, as one of my favorite parenting philosophies goes: “Prepare your child for the road, not the road for your child.”
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