Category: Parenting issues

Sharing tips and thoughts on Parenting

Decluttering, Slowing Down and Being a “Controlled” Kiasu Mum

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I have been out of action from my blog for 2 months! The main reason for my absence on the blog is because I was stuck in migration of my blog to self-hosted WP… Finally!! While I thought it could be as simple as giving my password to the Bluehost support and have them do for me while I sit back, I was flabbergasted to know I had to do it myself. I am an IT idiot for your information and struggled much with the migration of 2000 media files (this huge number surprised me!) Anyway, while I thought with the eventual migration, I could relax and that’s it, but the next step was to design my own blog theme. That took another 3-4 weeks and several sleepless nights. Oh, I lost my momentum many times and stop-start-stop-start till I could no longer bear the itch of writing and decided to get the blog up first and tweak it along. So, pardon me if you see the tweaks here and there each time you check in my blog. And if you do see any broken links, please help me by giving me a shout on it!

Many things happened in this period too. I quit my job of 11 years…. but no no, in case you think I have realized my SAHM dream. As fate has it for me, a job opportunity came knocking on my door. So, I passed interviews and am starting a new out of comfort zone venture to a new role and new industry. I pray for good colleagues, good boss and enjoyable challenges.

While I am busy with job transition, blog migration, I am resuming my tuition teacher role to my elder kids. I realize that I perform best when I have an overflowing plate. I just cannot sit back, relax and DO NOTHING. So in the midst of all these changes, I am also looking into ways of decluttering our house, and indulging in more hobbies.

Decluttering

A good friend said to me that many people profit out of buying and selling their lived-in houses when what a house should be, is a home which your children grow up in and contains precious childhood memories. I can’t agree more. Perhaps, investment should be done only on extra properties and not the primary property. As we shall be staying in our lovely home for good, I had better declutter things and make it as minimalist, simple and cosy as can be. It is not easy to declutter and re-decorate when the house is in such a lived-in condition.  I have started throwing things I thought I would use but never. Whenever I sieve through the bags and boxes of pre-loved stuff, I would ponder over an item on my hand, pause for a few seconds and ask myself questions like:

  • Will I ever use this again?
  • How long haven’t I touched this thing?
  • Is it worth keeping for memento?
  • Do I have many of such items in the house?
  • Can I live without this item?
  • Has this item passed its days of honour?

Besides throwing things, I am putting simple decorations around the house. Similar to my blog theme tweaking, I am taking really small steps to turning our home to a cosy and eye-pleasing one that is easy to maintain. That is my target and will take months to achieve. It is also to pave way for helperless way of living in the future. I will need a home declutter plan to start with.

“Controlled” Kiasu Mum

As much as I pride myself as a laid-back mum, I can no longer be as laid-back as I used to be, not when my girl is in P5 this year, a year where she learns 80% of the entire PSLE syllabus. The reason that I am pulling up my own socks as a “tuition teacher” to my girl is the hope that she can get into a good school, not elite school, but a good school where peers are motivated to study, a good school with higher chances that peers come from a nuclear family, lesser bullies, peers with lesser disciplinary problems, you get what I mean. This concern is very real. Peers are more important to teens at the secondary school age and it is easy for them to fall into the creaks if we are not careful. I don’t believe so much that every secondary school is a good school, sorry, but not at this moment.

A couple of weeks back, I had a good chat with a few fellow mummies and Meiling from Universal Scribbles shared her experience with us on the PSLE preparation. She is selfless in sharing resources that her son is using and we gained lots from her sharing. She has similar thoughts as I do regarding entry to a good secondary school. As much as I do not believe in mugging for the examinations and do not believe that academics means the world, the thought of getting into a less than good school with disapproving peers worry me too much to be hands-off. So, I am going to be a “controlled” kiasu mum from now on to ensure all academic basics are reinforced. As my children do not have tuition classes of any kind, they will still have plenty of time for a balance share of play. So, by being “controlled”, I am leaving them room for a breather. As for whether they will enjoy PSLE year, unless PSLE is scrapped off totally, no kid at P6 will enjoy any bit of it anyway. And I do not think I can make PSLE year any enjoyable for my children too. Since it is so “un-enjoyable”, a big part of my role is to moderate the stress off my girl and, myself. Either I end up blogging lesser closer to PSLE, or I blog more to destress. Stay tune to my woes! (Some good PSLE blog posts from other cool mum bloggers are here and here!)

Hobbies and learning new things

To destress during the preparation for PSLE is to engage in healthy hobbies. My girl does craft work and enjoys lots of outdoor play during her free time. My boy reads, plays Weiqi by himself, plays my handphone games (if I am at home) and goes for outdoor play during his free time too. For me, I am happily reading one book after the other and into my 9th and 10th book together at this moment. Here are the books that I have read this year:

1) Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
2) When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
3) It’s Easy To Cry by Subhas Anandan
4) Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph
5) 最美的一课 by 杨红樱
6) Charlotte’s Web by E. B White
7) Your Time-starved Marriage by Les and Leslie Parrott
8) When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us by Jane Adams
9) It’s OK to Go Up The Slide by Heather Shumaker
10) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K Rowling

Besides reading, I am running and brisk walking to keep my body and mind healthy to run the household. I am also much motivated by our group of Racy Mamas and more mums are joining us for this common interest. Sometimes we need like-minded friends to push us along. It is wonderful to have these friends.

Slowing Down

Whenever I walk too fast or hurry the kids along, I am reminded by my kids on why I am rushing like this. Often times, it is the kids who reminded me to slow down. I like being led by my youngest. Our one on one time are usually on my off days or Sunday mornings. I like to stay half a step behind him and let him lead the pace. When he stops to marvel at an earthworm, I stop. When he strolls, I stroll. When he walks backwards, I do the same. When he hops, I hop. It is wonderful to have unhurried moments like these. What’s the hurry anyway?

So, each time I hurry my pace, I would remind myself to WALK SLOWLY.  I really have lots to learn from the young ones.

I am glad that the blog is finally up again. I certainly miss writing and sharing my thoughts here. I miss the interactions with readers too! Do leave me some ideas on decluttering and your take on PSLE preparation or experience! I would love to hear your thoughts!

The Tween Years – How to talk to tweens

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As my kids grow up, I am gaining interesting experience by and by with each day. Someone told me the new teen years are between 10 to 21 years old. I prefer to refer the years of 8-12 as tween years when the kid is not so much a child anymore, yet not exactly qualify as a teen.

As a FTWM, I only have weekends and holidays to spend good bonding times with my children. It doesn’t have to be outdoors and excessive treats to MacDonald’s or spending on entrance fees to qualify as good bonding time. Many of our good bonding times are quiet times spent at home, so I realized. With the kids’ homework increasing by the level, sometimes they may even ask if our weekend programmes can be shortened so that they can have enough time to finish their homework. The first time my girl requests for homework time, I was pretty shocked and reminded myself that I need to plan around their schedule and cut down blog events or be more selective in our weekend places to go. Kids are growing up fast. At this stage, they need more down time and private time to do their own stuff. That indoor playground or art museum may not be their thing anymore. I need to be sensitive to their growing up preferences. Continue reading “The Tween Years – How to talk to tweens”

When Mum Reads, Kids Read

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You would have thought that if my kids were read to every night when they were young, they would be avid readers when they grow up. I can tell you that in our family, we are living proof that this is a myth! When my little ones were one year old and fidgeting about, I would bring a book to him and try reading out loud in the most interesting way to capture his short attention. Then, I found out the best time to read quietly to babies and toddlers was when they were drinking milk. I made it a habit to read to them every night and even had to negotiate with my kids on the number of books. They love my reading even up till today. While I thought once they reached Primary 1, they should be reading a book on their own. Reading chapter books. But Primary 1 came and went, they were still not so interested in Chapter books and hardly followed a series.

Most kids around us are reading, some voraciously. Their cousins finished Harry Potter series at age 9. I was so impressed! I was getting worried about my kids who were not so interested in picking up books. Most of all, I worried for their English language. The only way to improve English is only to READ, READ and READ! No shortcuts!

I tried all sorts of methods to get them to read. Mind you, it was hard work and futile work! I printed reading charts, gave reward stickers, allowed redemption for a small gift upon reading X number of books, brought them to the library every 2 weeks, nagged at them, cajoled, encouraged, left books lying around, did book exchange, and many more. All these failed to get them to read. Sometimes, I wondered whether I was such a good story teller that my kids refused to read by themselves.

Finally, one day, I started to realize there was one common thing these avid reading kids have! They all have mums or dads who love to read! Maybe that is it! Continue reading “When Mum Reads, Kids Read”

Train the kids to handle failure? Let them be raised by the Dad

A few weeks back, I attended a parenting talk by David Seah, Family Life Educator and Counsellor, engaged by my kids’ school for parents. The topic was on IQ, EQ and AQ. I really took away some very interesting points that made me think hard about our parenting style at home. He said,”If you want your kids to have adversity quotient (the ability to deal with failures), let them be raised by the father.”

Before you go all out to protest against this seemingly racist statement like how we mothers felt at the talk initially, you must give a chance for the humorous speaker to make his stand.

1) Mothers are protective by nature

Have you seen mothers throw up babies in the air for fun? Usually the image of fathers doing it will surface when you think of it. In fact, we mothers are good in churning out academics due to the fact that we are competitive by nature. Think of how we react to exam results vs the fathers. Once the child comes back with less than 100 marks, mothers’ first reaction is probably to furiously flip through the pages and scrutinize those questions with marks deductions and then do a fast calculation and conclude that without such CARELESS MISTAKES, the child could have gotten so and so marks. So well-observed and that’s ahem saying about me too…

When our child runs or cycles or moves at fast speed, or any actions that risk falling on the pavement, we are the ones who shouted instructions from behind like “Watch out for the pillar!”, “Beware of that little dog’s tail in front!” Fathers are rarely the ones who shouted warnings or maybe they do, under their breath. But you get it, the Fathers are usually the cool ones. They are less inclined to fret over small injuries. Similarly, kids’ cry harder when they see Mothers rushing to their aid than when they see Fathers strolling towards them.

2) Fathers are natural risk-takers

Get Dad to be involved more if you wish to instill some toughness and the ability to handle adversity in your child.

I guess this is hard for mothers like me to teach adversity toughness. When I saw how my son at the age of 1.5yo, my hubby allowed him to walk up and down the overhead bridge by himself with him being an arm’s length away, I almost freaked out but decided to cross my finger and watched in fear. I trust my hubby to be taking controlled and supervised risk but I definitely would not risk it myself. I am often been chastised for doing too much for the kids. Hence, I certainly agree that with the Dad around, Continue reading “Train the kids to handle failure? Let them be raised by the Dad”

To give or not to give – smartphone

Steve Jobs’ invention of the iPhone is probably the number one devilish invention in this modern day in my own opinion. I love it and I hate it. But the hate factor is much higher than the love factor. I love it because it helps to move the world so much faster in terms of news outreach. It rekindles long lost friendships. It helps people to stay in touch with family and friends. It provides entertainment to young and old. It saves time for people on the go answering mails, tabulating spreadsheets and reading up news. It boosts sales, boosts blogs, and it even plays a big part in rallies for international support for humanity cases, swayed voters in presidential elections. It also replaces the need for another gadget- the camera, to pack in the bag, serves as a calculator, etc etc etc.

But with it, comes many problems that I hate to deal with and many social ills too. While it gives a chance of socializing on the go via apps, it inhibits human face to face interaction. It causes compulsive disorder Continue reading “To give or not to give – smartphone”