My One Cent Worth of Thoughts

I just came back from my holiday (yet to put the photos together – will publish on my ailing travel blog when I get my act together, if ever…). During the trip, my travel mates were shocked to know that I ditched my kids in Singapore and came on a holiday without them and worse, one of them was having her exams while I was gallivanting in China.

“Huh! She’s having her exams and you are here? Don’t you need to be there with her?”

“For what? She’s the one taking the exams, not me! I can’t take her exams on her behalf leh!”

“To do last minute revision lah! To give moral support!!”

“Aiya, last minute revision no use wan lah… Already revised with her! Her fate is in her own hands!! Plus she doesn’t even like the taste of chicken essence… ”

Even during the “supposedly” revision period, she was happily playing with her brother at the playground with a few equally “bo chap” friends while her peers were caged up at home. Well, that’s provided that she’s finished whatever she was assigned to do.

Some parents argued that the pressure put on the students was exerted by the school, the society and well, they themselves and that they had no choice. I attended a camp by T. Harv Eker and this was something that he said, “Everyone has a choice, even at gunpoint. It’s just that some choices are more difficult to make than others, if a man points a gun at you and wants you to hand over your money, you have a choice. Either you hand over your money or you can choose not to hand it over and face the consequences.”

I believe that children take the cue from their parents. I admit that I am a very result driven person. I do try very hard to curb that instinct, whenever she presents me with her exam papers. Instead of focusing on the results, I am trying very hard (yes, trying extremely hard, I’m getting better at it now) to focus more on the process of learning, which I believe that once she acquires the skill, it will follow her through her entire life. Who even uses modelling schemes to calculate stuff when they are working? I used zero calculations that I learnt in Uni in the course of work (think triple integration… strength of materials.. duh!!), you just punch in a string of numbers and some software will automatically churn out the answers for you.

And, in the future, who knows what kind of new industries the world will have? Who’d ever thought that being a blogger, or influencer (not influenza) now would make a decent buck? My parents probably would have said, “Simi lai eh! Go and be a doctor/lawyer/engineer!!”

Yeah yeah, i know. Some of  you are saying,” Hah! You are not at the PSLE stage yet! Now you yaya papaya!” Well, who knows. In 2 years’ time, I may sing a different tune when I come face to face with the terrifying PSLE! (According to 小小宝贝, it’s Please Stop Learning English… sigh. 😑). As of now, as long as she finishes whatever she’s supposed to do, she is free to explore activities that she loves doing. Right now, she’s crazy over table tennis, and her “aspiration” is to play table tennis with her equally table tennis frenzied friends everyday.

And if, she isn’t able to do the 3 difficult Maths questions during the PSLE, I just have to accept that she doesn’t belong to the top 1% of the brilliant kids who are meant to be mathematicians in future! I doubt it will traumatise her for life. I hope that my daughter is a lot more resilient than that! (Sorry, just can’t resist taking a swipe at the kiasu Mom who wrote an open letter to the MOE for traumatising her son because the Maths paper was too difficult. Being catty here! 😜)

Our favourite pastime is to play around with snapchat. So bimbotic! 😘😜