We started the year with Little Bomber attending 2 hours playgroup daily. It took me a ride of roller coaster with her and her temperament. No, more of walking in the landmine, explosive and threatening for the rest of her life, or mine. Thanks to Jennifer, I managed to think of a solution and overcome her resistant to new routine. She has been least headache since then, except for her explosive behavior occasionally.
That said, I have bigger headache to deal with: mothering the older child who's been yelling and wanting to run away from homework. She is P2, and it is getting tougher with higher expectation from the school. Recently, she is required to attend remedial class after school once a week. Obviously she is being remarked as weak, particularly in Mathematics. We are grateful that the teacher is willing to put extra time and effort on her.
A tiny part of me frown with that, if you must know. Being P1 or P2 myself, I was good, not smart or great, but good and loved to crack my head to understand what teacher taught and solved the equation. She, however, doesn't like thinking. "Don't know" and "Don't understand" often utter out from her mouth immediately. But I already taught her and she did the simple equation right yesterday! She doesn't see learning and overcome a difficulty is fun to do. Every night, SC and I take turns to coach her, but it seems more like have fighting show of jungle beasts at home. I often wonder what and how will she turn to in few years time, judging from her current temperament and attitude. I worry.
Interestingly, work place is becoming more complicated place to work in. Some human being are tough to convince and some are smart to twist boss' words to make it more convincing. Somehow, both are trying not to take up more tasks, in my opinion. Those fall out of the above categories, like me, take a longer time to mitigate problem and complete task. Still, conflicts occurred. This takes me longer time to repair my self after work, cause it has the unavoidable impact of not liking to deal with the world another minute.
Slowly, I skip making time to word my thought, to unpeel the emotion and call it a day as soon as I'm done with the above, and dish-washing and housekeeping. The fighting, is a great force for me to stick my head into running water, just to ease myself and get ready to switch off my mind. I doze off soon after the girls are tucked in. I lost the momentum to write. The thought of closing this space popped up several time. The most convincing part of not writing any more is, I'm not good at it.
But that thought dampen my spirit. No blogging means that I lost the power to turn my struggles to words and unpeel the layers of emotion to see the source of things. I will lose a way to boost my self with positive energies. I will lose friends too, especially from SMB, a community where I find my self instantly fit in the land to talk about struggles and joy as a mother. Love the humors and kindness of them. No blogging somehow leads to no reminder, no laugh, no craziness or whatsoever during the day when I am frustrated.
It will be lonely journey and i will move on with less fortitude.
Admittedly, this post is here to rescue me.
That is good you have a good way to 'rescue' yourself!!Me.....still struggling.
ReplyDeleteWhere and how have you been?
ReplyDelete*hugs* to you at times like these when we as mothers / parents have to struggle with work, worry about our kids & housework *pull hair*. So I still owe you a meal + coffee...let me know when u want to have a break yah :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Amie, I will definitely want a tai-tai session with you all;).
DeleteWe should blog first and foremost for ourselves! I love your writing - my fav blogs are those that are very real, and yours is!
ReplyDeleteHi Lyndis, That is a huge encouragement and a great push for not giving up easily;).
DeletePC, Don't give up blogging! You said, you don't write well but I always find your blogs nice to read because of the sincerity I felt radiating. (I'm one who pick my reads and don't read every blog)
ReplyDeleteAbout the older girl, I sense a 'despair in self'. what do I mean? Having taught kids who underperformed, I realised they all have this same trait. That is, they are NOT confident. They will escape from every problems so as not to show they 'don't know' how to do it. Even when they had done a problem correctly, they brain-wash themselves to think 'nah.. how can i be correct again?"
why do they think so? Because EVERYBODY arounds them frowns at them when they answer questions slowly trying to think. They are not given time to think things through and before they could answer, they are 'scolded', "Why don't you know how to do?" They quickly blurt out an answer without thought. The teacher then shout at them, "WRONG!!! I thought I told you before??" Then, they become sad and silent thinking, "yup, I'm stupid. I can't even get an answer right." This goes on as a cycle.
Okay. What I meant was, GIVE encouragement. GIVE time for them to think or help them with PROMPTS to achieve even a tiny step in the problem. Then, praise them when they do that tiny little step. When they progress more, they gain confidence and next time, they will answer correctly. I always say, "Try. Try your best!" and "it's okay" when they get it wrong and ask them to try again. Don't ever outright scold them once they make a mistake. It mars their confidence.
Usually, children who can't perform well do so because of teachers at school who isn't encouraging. Back at home, they face parents who are not encouraging too. That makes them even more afraid of doing anything wrong or attempt anything because they will be 'wrong' no matter what they do.
Alright, I wrote too much... but I want to say all this for anyone reading this. Kids don't perform well mostly because of your own attitude towards their learning. I know this because I had improve the performance of many 'weak' kids with simple stuff to help them. They are not stupid. JUST lack of confidence and encouragement to do well.
Hi C! You are right about her lack of confidence. I am losing mine too, before your notes.
DeleteFor some reason, I see a lazy little bug sticking her. Almost every time, she conquered a difficulty, she thought that's that! She built the confidence but very soon after slacking, she forgot it and "don't know" how to do happened again. The process of relearning is defeating, I believe.
I remember I did many of "try your best" and "good job" and "it's ok", even have been telling her that, we learn right thing from wrongs and "don't afraid of making mistake now, you are learning". If it does help to give her encouragement and confidence, lazy bug is doing an evil job to ask her not to proceed further. I lose my stand as encouraging mum, blow up badly.
How to get rid of it?
While I am ranting my worry of her, she had just got her result for Maths test last Friday, it's 22/30! It gave me a sigh of relief, secretly. Those fight pays back. Hehehe.
Well, I did the praise before she went to bed. Yes, I need to build her confidence. At the same time I need to kick the lazy bug out of her & plant seed of "learning is fun" in her. Slowly, grow and bloom. The last thing I want to hear her say "I don't know" again.
I will continue to put more encouraging words on her, perhaps we didn't put enough. Perhaps she needs more than any other kid needs it.
All I hope for her is get the right attitude of learning.
Hey, I look back at my comment and it sounded really ermm 'pompous'...Hope you don't think I'm teaching you how to parent! sorry! I swear my comment is directed as a general remark for parents and not to you specifically. The 'teacher side' got into me that day and I just typed one whole chunk rambling my compaints about parents and teachers who don't understand. *chuckle.
DeleteThe reason being, as a teacher before, I was greatly saddened by many children I saw who were so well-behaved, humble and willing to learn but kept thinking they are so poor at their subjects because their parents or teachers had higher demands.(that's why they got me to tuition their 'weak' kids). Sigh.
Anyway, as a parent I totally understand because I had blown up at my son many times too after being encouraging.. ha. It's hard to be patient after a long day at work...
So glad that she's doing better now and I would like to say, you are amazing as a parent because you bothered. You bothered before she gets worse and face bigger problems in Primary 3. (the leap is great)
Do you give her encouragement stickers or stationery? Well, I had given even a tiny sticker/stamp chop (that writes 'well-done') on an exercise they had done and the student would beam like they had struck lottery. They are encouraged to get the next stamp on the piece of work so they would quickly complete it well. They are even happy with just a tiny eraser which often surprised me. ;p
Hey, Not at all, you are not pompous! I like your sharing, in fact. It gave me another prospect of the issue here that I am not persistence to encourage her. Coming from a rigid Chinese family, scouting and pushing hard are always come in my mind after several 'kind' attempt. I have started to keep remind her about her 22/30 *Smile*, I have start being nice (;p), I hope it helps to boost her confidence as well as chase away the laziness.
ReplyDeleteSo you do tuition? hmm...
We give fun activities as encouragement, as in iPad, tv prog, outing, McD or things she requests and love to do. It motivates her, but sometime, it distracted her concentration to complete the task. Maybe I should work on small and tangible kind of reward for her instead.
See, you bring up one valid point again~!^^