H's colouring nightmare

I must have underestimated how much H dislike colouring. I know he's not a big fan of colouring but his procrastination when it comes to finishing off his homework that requires colouring is driving me mad!

I'm not sure when this all started. He's never been unwilling to colour, in fact when in a good mood, he will try to colour in nicely. But recently, I realised that he's just unwilling to pick up those colour pencils. Over the weekend while I was supervising him with his homework, he did eveything quickly but left out sections requiring colouring.

"Can you please finish off your homework? Just a little more, you only need to colour the boxes."

No reply and went off to play with his sister!

"Come back H! You can play later, just this little bit more..."

H came back, and sat there playing with his colour pencils instead (pretending they were stick men fighting).

Me getting impatient, "You better finish it now cos I'm not going to remind you again. You can go to school and explain to the teacher why you didn't finish!"

Reluctantly he started colouring, but instead of just filling the boxes with one colour, he had to draw stripes. Sigh, I was really losing patience. And he was doing it really slowly as well, getting distracted all the time. I just couldn't sit there any longer and walked away before I snapped.



When I came back after 1/2 hour, H still wasn't done. Instead he proudly showed me what he did, "See mommy!". H drew the ants and bees game (ipad game) on paper, complete with different levels some more! *slaps forehead*



"Very nice dear, but why haven't you finished your homework? No need to do in colourful stripes lah, just use one single colour so that you can do it faster!"

"In school you don't waste time like that ok else your teacher will say you're slow in colouring!"



Opps, blurted out too fast!

"My teacher didn't say I am slow in colouring. She said I was lousy in colouring."

I wonder if that's the reason he's rejecting colouring. It's terrible how teachers make such comments even if it's unintentional cos you never know how those words can affect a kid's subconscious mind.

"Well it's ok to be lousy, not everyone's good at everything, but with practice you can be good too..."

H finally sat down to finish off his homework. He coloured the rest of the boxes with one single colour and finished in no time. See it's not that hard. I'm not sure why he just refused to do it.

Flip flopping decision on H's education

Sometimes I think we parents think too much. I wonder if our parents ever put that much thought into which school to send us to when we were younger. I think my dad's decision was based solely on convenience, i.e. the closest school to home.

Once again we find ourselves debating on which school to send H to. I thought we had it all figured and concluded that H will go to a public chinese school for his primary years. But this subject is now open again...

Public chinese school was a clear option when we weighed all the pros and cons earlier. Granted there are all these horror stories about chinese school teachers, crazy workload, etc. but we wanted H to learn mandarin and are prepared to supplement his school time with outside activities to ensure that his creativity and command of English do not slip. Besides, we figured that kids should learn how to take hardship, life is not always rosy and they should not be over-protected. We do not want out kids to turn out to be brats with the sense of entitlement.

But our observation of H is getting us worried. H is just too passive or reserved. It takes a whole lot of cajolling before he would speak up or participate. He's afraid to bend rules, make mistakes and be judged. Simply put, he lacks assertiveness. And this is a problem. No matter how good you are academically, you will not fare well in life if you lack assertiveness. Although we've known this about H all along, we thought we could help him boost his confidence by enrolling him in drama and sports classes, but so far we've not seen much improvement. The trigger point was when I asked him about school a few nights back and he just kept quiet. I had to probe, probe and probe (in a nice and playful manner) before he divulge about his friends. I'm not even sure why he can't or won't talk about what he does in school, about his teachers and his friends, etc. He's only 4+ now and he can't talk to his mommy. I can't even bear to imagine what it will be like when he's a teenager. Will he then shut us out of his life? Is H afraid that he will say something inappropriate and that we will judge him? We've never judged him or belittled him before, ever, so how can this be so? All these unanswered questions are bugging me. So I talked to Hubs and we think that perhaps H, with his personality, is not suited for the chinese school environment as it will only reinforce his passiveness. We're still not sure if a private or international school will do him good but at least he'll be forced to speak up and express himself (hopefully). And with the many years of training he should be able to change.

Meantime, I've bought this book "Cool, Calm, Confident : A Workbook to Help Kids Learn Assertiveness Skills" so that I can start teaching H how to be assertive. Can't wait for the book to arrive, this will be our new bedtime story!

Developing confidence and self-esteem

Following from my earlier post about my suspicion of H being bullied, I made a call to the school. It turns out that I was being paranoid after all. Well a mom can't be faulted for being over protective of her kids right?!! Anyway, I asked the principal about H and how he is like in school, and whether he has any friends.

I always knew that H is somewhat shy, and I really wanted to know if he participates in school and that he enjoys school. H is always so cheery and chatty at home and I wonder if he is the same in school. I mean, he doesn't resist going to school except for that one morning recently and maybe another 1-2 times in between since he started school in Jan this year. But whenever I asked him about school, about what he did in school, he will say he doesn't know. If I rephrased and asked if he enjoyed his day in school, he will say yes but no more than that. I just can't get him to elaborate. It's not like he doesn't know how to talk. Even his 2 year-old lil sis can tell me what she did in nursery.

So this is what I learnt from H's Teacher J. H is really good in class - he participates, he speaks up and he even helps his friends in their work. This is because he is ahead of his classmates academically and so he is confident of his ability. However, outside the classroom he tends to be more reserved. Teacher J says H is afraid to make mistakes and he seeks approval. For example, while waiting to be picked up, most kids will just play freely in the school compound. H will not do so unless the teacher urges him to go ahead. It's as though he's afraid that he will be doing something 'wrong'. I'm not sure if this is simply about following rules. I read somewhere recently that 4-year olds adore rules - in fact this can sometimes border on the obsessive. I hope this is just a phase. I can't have H shy away whenever he's faced with uncertainty or challenge. He needs to learn that it's ok to make mistakes and that he will learn from these mistakes and that mummy and daddy will always be there for him and that we will always love him no matter what.

So once again, momster me will have to come up with bedtime stories to reinforce these important life lessons. I find that stories are a great way to impart life lessons since kids love stories. Thinking up stories do require some creativity though - they cannot be too direct else the kid will know that you're referring to him/her. Hence they need to be cleverly disguised as an interesting story - a story they can relate to and sympathise with. After the story, we'll then discuss about what the little boy/girl/animal did, what else could he/she/it have done, etc. I will share some of these stories another time...

Is my pre-schooler being bullied?

I haven't been able to concentrate the whole day. Is my baby boy being bullied in school? H woke up this morning telling me that he didn't want to go to school. Hubs and I were just discussing the night before about maybe taking H out of school for a year since he didn't want H to "burn out". I'm not sure what he meant by being burnt out since kids are just meant to play in preschool. Anyway, I didn't really want to argue so we left it at that, i.e. to be further discussed... haha. So, back to my earlier point, when H told me that he didn't want to go to school I wanted to know why. It took quite some persuading before he told me that he didn't want to go to school because his friends didn't want to play with him.

H, unlike his toughie little sis, is rather sensitive. He gets upset easily. I also noticed that he doesn't quite play with other kids. I mean, he loves playing with his cousins, and even my neighbour's older son, but with other kids.. hmmmm... he doesn't immediatly gravitate towards them. Then I remembered asking him about his friends in school a few nights back and he told me that there's this boy in class (let's call him N) who's mad at him. He claimed that N gives him the stare when he gets into class every morning. I didn't think much of it then and suggested that he asked N why he is mad. So everything sort of fell together with this morning's episode, and it suddenly dawned on me - what if H is being bullied in school? I need to prepare him on how to face/handle bullies!

So it being first thing in the morning (I didn't have time to google for parenting advice and I needed to get him ready for school), I made up some scenarios and play acted how he can react in an amusing way. I figured if I made it funny (he started giggling non-stop) then he won't be afraid or upset when put in such circumstances. Instead, at least I hope, he will be able to imitate what I did and avert the situation without aggression.

Perhaps I'm just being paranoid and this whole episode is nothing more than a typical playgound squabble. Well... better be overly prepared than be sorry I'd say. No one messes with the Momster's kids! :p

Picture courtesy of Childcare Education Institute