marina barrage picnic with MMmamas
one of the wonderful things about technology is how it connects people. especially if we are at the same stage of life, it’s wonderful to have friends you can share stories and info with if not experiences together.
with these ladies, i have to say, we sort of have come full circle for some of us. i think we’ve known each other and follow each others’ life journeys, albeit from a distance initially… since my pitas days for me..n i guess from the angsty FMKT days, my photography phase and then my meena kawin kawin phase…and now mommyhood. the world of tweeting got us to reconnect and communicate in a way that other forms or social media platforms might not have brought (see my previous entry on tweeting-it’s as closed communication as i would like it to be right now).
these pics have been up on FB, but for records sake, we’ll have them here.
pic courtesy of nurul. n that’s me going after the boy who was malu malu kucing initially.
shad’s going to look back at these and think these must be the only times his parents allow him to play with babes in swimming costumes.
picnic & sesi berkongsi infomasi. picture courtesy of sarina.
the kids. we love them.
PTC mommy discussion
i went for shad’s PTC (parent teacher’s conference) at the beginning of the year recently. i’ve attended his PTC last year but previously i normally attended the ones in the middle of the year or end of the year where the parents will get a comprehensive update of the child’s development and also his portfolio of work.
the start of the year PTC was more of a brief intro by the school on how it is conducting its programme. we were grouped according to the level where our kid is in (nursery 1 for shad). the teacher explained the centre’s timetable, and the centre’s approach, which i think was of great importance for the parents that were in my group. maybe we started later than the other groups, but we were the last to leave the centre.
shad’s childcare centre follows a thematic playbased learning curriculum. they introduce the skills and academic stuffs (like the alphabets and numbers) through play. i think it is a common approach in a lot of childcare and preschool centres.
but it did got a few parents concerned.
one mommy would like to have more worksheets for her child. the school does not do worksheets at all at this stage for the kids. they do paper work and crafts and ‘writing’. but no homework or worksheets for the kids to ‘practice’ on or bring home to show their parents. i guess, their play-based approach means no worksheets. before i was a parent, i used to snigger and thought “why would we want to get our kids do worksheets at such a young age, when they have at least another 10 years of worksheets later on?”
but i see the mommy’s concern here. she has another kid who is currently in primary one and whom she think wasnt sufficiently prepared for it (of course she did not say that..but she did bring up that her son has to go for therapy for writing and bookwork, that is sitting down and doing worksheet. he is struggling with spelling because her son’s previous preschool never had spelling tests). and yes, i found out spelling tests are common in many other centres. she thinks play-based is great but she would like to see more structure and ‘bookwork’.
for non parents or parents whose kids are yet to be in preschool….welcome to the reality of the system.
another parent who is a teacher contributed that the school is doing great. especially with teaching her child malay. and yes, malay language teaching was also a point of discussion. arshad is attending a malay/muslim centre. the centre formally teach malay on fridays and have the children and teachers communicate in malay on fridays only (other days they try to enforce communication in english). but i guess, it is a common issue with many young families these days where parents speak in english and kids take it to be almost their first language, that even in a malay preschool centre, the parents would like to have more of malay teaching to help their kids. i was just glad that our parents are taking the initiative to push for their kids to be more conversant in malay at this age.
the same mommy also brought up that she wasnt too concern about the academics (pri school teacher can help own kid with academics in some ways. she said that, herself. to which, concerned working mom remarked, she wasnt as fortunate with three kids, and lack of time). the mommy was more concerned of how the centre was teaching her child moral values, social skills and being independent (only child) as she found some kids in primary school are severely lacking in EQ. a great point brought up there.
i think at some point of you preschool kid’s life, you will get a bit concerned about his primary school readiness. i say it’s inevitable..and i say this based on stories, and anecdotal evidences.. i have to admit i was there because i have reached a point where i would like to know how the centre will eventually help in primary school readiness for my kid..i know it’s a couple of years from now, but he’ll progress form nursery to kindergarten..and i would like to know how it was going to work out for him this year and eventually next year. so, it was pretty good for the centre to have the session for us and for parents to be honest with our concerns. i do share the same concerns about many points that was raised. the pri 1 readiness, being conversant in malay, his social skills and moral values.
i like play-based approach because i think kids learn effectively through play at this stage. make them sit and do bookwork, they will fidget and whine. given their short attention span, it is erroneous to force it to them as they would associate it with negative experience and would hate learning. but i did say, yes, i would like to have some worksheets for the kid to bring home once in awhile. i would like the things they do to match up to the expected milestones for a nursery kid. and i guess, i may be able to observe that if i have the chance to observe my kid daily…or coach him..but for some busy parents, i think worksheets or something tangible gives us some form of feedback. i would like to have things done so that i can see the development based on the milestones for a nursery kid.
the thing about preschools, they are not standardised in curriculum or their approach. the issue has been brought up as to whether MOE should regulate preschool education. the argument for this is to allow for a more equal footing when the kids reach primary one. the current stand is MOE wont regulate, because it wants to allow for a variety, so that parents can choose-montessori, playbased, drilling pre-school, church based, mosque based etc. as parents, we would chose based on our needs, our beliefs and of coz budget. i guess whichever we choose for our kids, we have to know what the kids are experiencing, be aware of how the schools are conducting the lessons, whether it is helping in their development (whichever areas we deem important-religous, billingualism etc) ..and to find out..whichever part is lacking , it would be up to us,the parents to help or make up for in whichever ways, within our means.
enrichment,transformers and revenge of a kid that got denied
when i first became a mother, i was initially unsure and not confident of myself and my parenting style. if you read my earlier entries, i grappled with a few issues such as SAHM versus working mom..and fret on my decisions such as putting him in childcare at such an early age. what is more confusing are the differing sometimes conflicting opinions and advice on what i should or should not do most times from well meaning family members and friends or from articles and books by the experts.
three years later, i cant say i have it all figured out..but i have learnt that there is no one prescribed ‘method’ or ‘way’ to raise our kids. they dont come with manuals and the aren’t models for us to experiment on. what i am feeling now, and yes…i think parenting involve alot of the head and the heart…a lot of it can be based on intuition and responding to the cues given by our child. and it is just not that alone. i prescribe to sensible parenting. sensible parenting involves the head. this arise from the desire to raise a kid who will become a sensible and well-functioning adult. so my parenting style is a mix of trying to be sensible and trying to respond to my son’s cues.
and boy, was i tested of this today.
as i had blogged earlier, we had signed arshad up for speech and drama enrichment. i decided that we shall go for this together as i want him to develop better communication skills and gain more confidence interacting in groups. today was the fourth lesson. for the past three lessons, arshad normally would require a few minutes to warm up but with some encouragement, it would go on pretty smoothly thereafter with him interacting actively and responding well to the teacher..
today, we had a bad run. we went in and he gave me nasty glare and eyed the door when the lesson began. when i pull him towards me to join the activity, he ran behind the curtain to hide..shouted out “So Noisy” when the teacher read out loud and asked the class to repeat. we tried to get him to participate and to encourage him. i carried him forward for an activity.which he did reluctantly. the teacher taking it as a positive sign and wanting to encourage him, took a sticker out for him..but my cranky boy still had other things on his mind and in his foul mood, took the sticker reluctantly..he still wanted to vent his bottled up frustration and his hands in some sort of reflex action to address his unhappiness, swung and landed with smack on my face.
yes, i got smacked by my own kid infront of other mommies and their kids. it was like a stinging rebuke..my face turned red instantly. revenge of the fallen? how could that happen? it was like a moment of shame? a petulant ill behaved child resulting from bad parenting?
i could say he is normally not like that (he isnt)..
we could walk out and appease him. we could stay and risk having other parents to believe that i am forcing my child to be there against his will.
was i? yes, perhaps i was. right before and during the most part of class all he had on his mind was “TRANSFORMER CAR.” teacher asked the kids to act out an animal. he went to tell the teacher he wanted to be a “TRansformer”. he kept asking when he could go to toysr’us to get a transformer. he kept saying he wanted a toy. so i WAS forcing him to stay in the class.
i had made the mistake of wandering around the mall and walking pass toys r’us before the lesson.
it was embarrasing but i take it as a ‘teachable moment’ for me. i could have done a lot of things after that. i could have read his cues and demands, and bought him a transformer car to shut him up. or we could go out of the class since he wasnt going to enjoy the class. make me look like a better parent if he could just shut whining. but i see another need for him to learn…and live with being denied. seriously, his behaviour isnt much different from the boys i see sometimes who have bad days in schools, who get moody…but hey, they still have to go through what they need to go through as we see the benefits of him going for this. we know he enjoys it but it just so happens that this is one of those bad days. because he had something else on his mind which was much more appealing than speech and drama.
different kids have different personalities and temperaments. some parents can just wait for the cues and respond by guiding their kids, and they will blossom. my son needs me to be a guide as well as a cheerleader. of course all kids need parents to be their cheerleaders, at varying degree. i know he is only a lil kid, but i do know he sometimes gives himself excuses and self-defeating thoughts..he doesnt need me to force him do things but he needs me to cheer him on, nudge him in the right direction. some parts of this had been really tough for me. i get my dosage of mommy guilt trips. i am made to feel like a bad parent. exasperated one at that.
but i think, i am pretty sure what i want to achieve and i have faith in my kid. we all should. it’s not easy, it’s tougher at some parts for some of us (in getting them to school, in getting them to live less with tv or video games, or sit down to some bookwork when it’s time to), but it’s something which we should stick with it if we are clear of what is needed to be done. alot of that for me depends on my understanding of our child, our faith in them and our beliefs. with a dose of sensible parenting. yes, a lot of head work and heart there.
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and we never got to toys r’ us or got him a transformer car today. he whined about it after class. i went straight to the carpark, we drove off and few kilometres later..distracted by the traffic, transformers was soon forgotten by the boy.
