How hard do kids have to work at school?
As much as we would like to think they are enjoying themselves in school, we still try too hard to impress upon our children to study hard.
The education system is not designed for your child to be smart at everything. At best, your child will do very well in school. At the very least, they know how to integrate with society.
Too many children are still unable to ask good questions.
“I don’t know how to do”. That’s the most famous statement.
“How to do?”
That’s the most popular question.
“Don’t know. ”
That’s the most ignorant attitude towards learning.
You cannot pay the system to fix children’s behaviour and attitude.
Live up to your parenting potentials.
That leads us to the next question about your problem-solving skills.
How did you figure out what to do about your problems?
You simply have to think.
For a child, thinking is a process that cannot be seen and therefore it is hardest to understand.
For an adult, f you think a lot, you may stress out. If you think too little, you can’t get started with solving your problems. Sometimes, if you don’t think about it at all, the problem may go away.
Kids don’t like to think. They like to discover.
Pay attention to the suggestions you give to yourself when you try to look for solutions to your problems.
What are you anxious about?
Should you feel anxious about your child’s schoolwork, remember two things.
Anxiety is contagious. Your child will not understand that when anxiety takes over, it will lead to low self-confidence due to lack of control of personal responses to situations.
Secondly, keep your expectations in check. Your past failures and successes are the reasons you want your children to do things better and differently.
There are people who pursue higher studies even in their 50s and 60s. Kids are extremely supportive of their parents who want to pursue education. Tell your child or children you’ve never stopped learning too.
There is no better person or persons for you to inspire than your child or children.
How does your child experience life through culture and languages?
Apart from the occasional funerals, weddings and burning of incense, my daughter has not seen or experienced culture the way I did as a child.
I could sit in my neighbours’ houses and watch Chinese television programmes with them all evening till bedtime. And watched the Chinese operas from their kitchen windows. We had Indian, Malay and Chinese kids to play with and learn so much of their culture in such a short time, we comprehended our textbooks faster simply because we experienced the life first.
What if there’s no environment to support your child’s language development?
When a child does not understand the difference between “poor” and “pour”， “will” and “were”, “付” and “福“ or “glass” and “cup”, help out by opening the dictionary and search for the words with them. It’s a time-tested, ageless process to studying any language. Use a dictionary.
Allow your child to experience life.
