building MQ (Moral Intelligence) in our children..

Last Saturday, we went to the boy's child care center to have our bi-annual "Parent Teacher Conference" with Rynus' teachers. I realized I didn't blog about it during our mid year conversation but I mentioned in a post back in Dec 2014, which was a year ago and here's what I wrote:
School life:
We had a nice conversation with his teachers during the "meet parents session" last week. Rynus has fully adapted to school environment. Although he doesn't follow instructions all the time, has short attention span, is rather picky on food and often throws tantrums when things don't go his way (sounds like his korkor? Quite!), he still managed to "survive" well for the past 4 months. And his teacher was rather impressed with his enthusiasm with learning alphabets and numbers (sounds like his korkor? Absolutely!).


And this time, we were greeted by 2 enthusiastic teachers who couldn't stop praising Rynus on his progress in school, yes you read that right! They pretty much had NO COMPLAINT about our little boy. In all honesty, we were not caught by surprise at all with all the positive feedback from his teachers, because we know our boys well and their consistency level in behaviors can pretty much compete with your experience ordering a happy meal at MacDonald's, same quality, same taste and same service, anywhere, anytime! So they are expected to behave the same way both in school and at home, as long as their emotional health is not challenged by any unforeseen circumstances.

In a nutshell, Rynus progressed extremely well academically, he has long attention span during lessons now and loves to answer questions. He proudly shared his dream with his teacher and fellow friends in class. He wants to be a teacher when he grows up, and during free play time, he even gathered his friends to the "sight words wall" and started teaching them to read! He's extremely independent and refuses to get help from teachers, yes no one is "allowed" to feed him or dress him up as he loves to do that those things by himself. He's sociable and enjoys talking to his teacher and friends. If there's anything negative about him, well, I guess, he seldom eats vegetable during meal time?

Looking at all the pictures taken by his teacher in school (a lot more on the DVD but I had to chose a few of my favorite pictures), I am very certain that he's having a great time there and he's fully ready for nursery class next year! Oh yes by then he would be alone in his childcare as his korkor is moving on to primary school life!!

So now, with Rynus progressing well in all domains, including physical, intellectual, emotional and social aspects in school, I think the next challenge we will be focusing at home, is to build his Moral Intelligence! The reason is simple, moral growth is an ongoing process that will span the course of children's lifetimes. The habits and beliefs of Moral Intelligence that we instill in our children now will become the ethical foundation they will use forever. Rynus is displaying good characters with tender loving care under his parents and teachers, but we could not shield our children from toxic influences from our culture.  We must give them the deep-seated convictions to stand by their choices and counter any pressure from inside or outside that go against the principles of good character.

"Moral Intelligence (MQ), is the capacity to understand right from wrong; it means to have strong ethical convictions and to act on them so that one behaves in the right and honorable way." 

"Three virtues form the core of moral intelligence: empathy, conscience, and self-control. The other four virtues, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness, then combine to form what we know about integrity, justice, and citizenship. These principles together create a child's 'moral compass', guiding the way towards responsible living in harmony with others."  - Michele Borba

I guess I do not need to explain the reason about why we should build Moral Intelligence in our children, the definition is self explanatory. I did mention in my post before that Rynus has relatively high EQ, but MQ is something different and I feel it's indeed more crucial to build by parents at home. It's like even a devil might have high IQ and high EQ, but low MQ is the very reason that leads him to do the wrong acts. A quick search on the internet. allows me to refer to this simple checklist, which helps me to assess my child's MQ level.

Assessing our children's moral intelligence - what does the result look like?
The Young Adolescent (without adult reminders or coaxing) regularly:

Answer with a Yes or No
 YES  Shows sensitivity and has a lot of feeling for others.
  NO   Tries to see things from the other person's view, not just his/her own.
 YES  Is honest and trustworthy; can be counted on to keep his/her word.
 YES  Feels shame or guilt about his/her wrong actions; accepts the blame.
 YES  Easily calms down when excited or angry; copes with behavioral impulses.
  NO   Behaves appropriately without reminders; thinks before acting.
 YES  Treats everyone respectfully and courteously; no back talk or sass.
  NO   Shares, helps, or comforts others without expecting something in return.
  NO   Is open-minded; listens to all sides before forming opinions.
  NO   Focuses on the positive traits of others instead of their differences.
  NO   Tries to solve problems fairly and peacefully; willing to compromise.

Less than 8 "yes" = the Moral IQ needs some boosting. 

As I was answering these questions, I know many will say Rynus is still young so it's highly unlikely I would get more than 8 "yes" but if this set of questions are applied on Renzo, I am very certain he would easily score about 9 to 10 "yes", thus it's never too early to build their Moral Intelligence so they have deeply developed sense of right and wrong from young, and can use it to stand up against the influences they get from the society when they grow up. And even if we just look at the short term impact, if you have a toddler who tells lies to get treats like extra TV time or candies/toys as rewards, that's an immediate sign that you need to put in some efforts in Moral Intelligence building.

So in a way I think we've probably done a good-enough-job to teach Renzo how to tell right from wrong at a very young age. As for Rynus, there's still a huge room for improvement. He's still not willing to compromise whenever he needs to share things with Renzo; he often requires reminders and even if we preempt him in advance before bringing him out, usually he would forget about everything he's promised us once he's overwhelmed with even the tiniest little thing that he doesn't get to experience at home. And sometimes though he feels ashamed doing the wrong act, he refuses to admit and accept the blame.

There's definitely a lot to work on and I've been referring to the ways to build strong moral character in kids from Dr. Michele Borba, many tips here are pretty "common sense" to me but I am sure we parents need to be far more intentional in applying these at home:
http://micheleborba.com/blog/building-childrens-moral-intelligence/

a bit more on disciplining toddler

A few weeks ago, I was at the skin clinic waiting for my appointment with my beautiful doctor (nope there's nothing wrong with my skin, it's just regular treatment for maintenance), she came in with another lady and a small little girl, later I found out that the lady is my doctor's friend and she's a teacher (well in fact her occupation has nothing to do with what I am going to share next).

The mummy and little girl got my attention immediately, because the girl was probably a year or two younger than Rynus, which means about 1.5 to 2.5 years old. She went into the clinic with a sulking face, I have no idea why but it seems that she's just not interested in that place at all. And what the mummy did next, blew me away completely. She squatted down right in front of her little girl, looked into her eyes and talked to her in an extremely firm tone, "This is not a place for you to whine and cry, so please, you know what to do. And now, it's time for you to go to toilet so stop whining and come with me." Then magically, the little girl picked up the pieces and followed her mummy to the toilet silently. Later on I heard the nurses complimenting the little girl for cleaning up the floor with tissue when she dropped some biscuit crumbs accidentally.

For a little toddler who's able to be potty trained or even to clean up the mess independently at such a young age, is definitely amazing. But what impressed me even more, is how the mummy interacts with her and disciplines her. She's been treated just like an adult and the mummy gives precise instructions in firm voice. Kids at such age are often seen carried by the parents and stuffed with snacks, toys or digital devices in a situation like this, but all this pair had, was an effective conversation followed by an appropriate action. As a mummy with young toddler, I could totally imagine how much efforts this lady has put in, in order to form such a routine with her child so that the little one knows exactly what she's expected to do. Because trust me, even though I've been practicing the same way all the time, it's no surprise that Rynus would throw himself on the floor in one pile and refuse to respond or take action when the same thing happens, sometimes.

Yes I know I mentioned he seldom throws tantrums and is a very cheerful kid, but occasionally, I do need to give him time-out when he misbehaves and refuses to admit his mistakes. Sometimes he understands what he did wrong and admit it before I send him to the thinking corner. But recently I've noticed that he knows he's at wrong and he knows I'm not accepting his behavior, but he's trying all possible means to shun away from the thinking corner. I guess maybe he's developed more self awareness and feels he deserves some dignity and respect, and facing the wall is quite a shameful act, but I strongly believe in this saying I've read recently:
"5 minutes in the corner is better than 5 years in prison. Discipline them now so I don't have to later"

We've gone through this phase with Renzo years ago and it's proven that he's grown up to be a very sensible and understanding kid who has pretty good self discipline. And self-discipline is a process that takes years to hone and refine, we shall definitely start shaping our kids' behavior with a more age-appropriate strategy from young. As Rynus is not able to read independently just yet, the educating with books method we used on Renzo might not really work for him at the moment. Instead, I'm re-introducing this "good habits" chart to depict right/wrong behaviors, coupled with the one I created using the boys' own pictures, and of course, most importantly, we need to engage in more sensitive conversations to help our little one understand and reason better.

But of course, if he has not reached the age of reason (Renzo reached that around 3 years old), then we shall just wait patiently. Which means if he reacts better while hugging his pillow or milk bottle than facing the wall, I am more than willing to let him do what makes him feel comfortable. So he could calm down and function properly again. I don't think I am being permissive by dropping all the punitive methods, but rather being firm with my knowledge that a kid's misbehavior is socially unpleasant and frustrating to him, and being kind in my method of helping him deal with it.

"When a method has really worked with children, they feel empowered and motivated to improve from an inner desire and locus of control (as opposed to control from others), and they develop skills that will help them solve problems and improve behavior."

When a method has really worked with children, they feel empowered and motivated to improve from an inner desire and locus of control (as opposed to control from others), and they develop skills that will help them solve problems and improve behavior. - See more at: http://www.positivediscipline.com/articles_teacher/PositiveTimeOut.html#sthash.GcuzDxec.dpuf

When a method has really worked with children, they feel empowered and motivated to improve from an inner desire and locus of control (as opposed to control from others), and they develop skills that will help them solve problems and improve behavior. - See more at: http://www.positivediscipline.com/articles_teacher/PositiveTimeOut.html#sthash.GcuzDxec.dpuf

their children can understand and benefit from conversations about emotions and mental states - See more at: http://www.parentingscience.com/mind-minded-parenting.html#sthash.ujjv6vkJ.dpuf

Rynus taught us to be happy everyday, for no reason...

I was browsing through some old Facebook status updates I shared back in 2011/2012 and I was shocked to realize that during that period, I seemed to grumble a lot about my life, be it work or family, and honestly I couldn't even accept that "ME" with my current state of positive mind. And interestingly, I couldn't stop attributing that change in mindset to the arrival of our little boy, Rynus Chan!

Yes since he was born, we often use the word "smiley" to describe him. I said this many times in the past that "Rynus has this amazing ability to make us happy simply by not doing anything at all!". At the age of 3 years 4 months, I see him with high emotional intelligence level as he doesn't just stay in good mood most of the time, he also has ways to influence people around him and his smile is totally contagious! Not just us, even Renzo started to laugh more with Rynus around.

I searched on Rynus' blog trying to figure out if I've mentioned anything about his tamper tantrums but nope, it seems that we are not experiencing that as often as we had when Renzo was at this age. Or maybe our experience with Renzo prepared us well in dealing with Rynus. 2 years ago I shared this post about how to stop temper tantrums before they start as I truly believe in what the author mentioned since it worked like magic for Renzo:

"Children are naturally curious. Their job, as a child, is to learn about the world and how it works. That’s what they start doing from the moment they are born. Our job is to help them. And yet sometimes I don’t think we parents give room for our children’s natural curiosity. If you can channel it into something healthy, then they’re far less likely to start screaming in Wal-Mart."

"I do believe in consistent and firm discipline, but I think if we started off, when the children are small, talking to them and really interacting with them, discipline would be much easier. And a toddler throwing a temper tantrum would be a far more rare occurrence."


So back then I was asked by other mummies if the same method works for Rynus, or if it has something to do with individual kid's character and personality. And I couldn't answer back then because Rynus was only 1+ and couldn't communicate well with us. But today, I am proud to say yes, the parenting style I used to turn Renzo to a relatively tantrum free toddler, worked great on Rynus too!

Well in fact the result is even better for Rynus' case as in general, he's not a "temper tantrum kid" by nature, so it didn't take us that many years (2 years for Renzo's case) to get him understand it's not the end of world if things do not go his way and he surely has many other alternatives. So yes once a while we do need the time out method and send him to face the wall, but most of the time, with frequent chatting such as asking him how's his day in school every night, or who is his favorite teacher or best friend, he learned to express his needs well in front of us and we also get him to understand what's our limit and boundary by taking every possible opportunity to "educate" or rather say "demonstrate" to him what kind of request is acceptable and what is not.

And most of the time we see this cheerful little one roaming around the home in really good mood. He often showers us with his random hugs and kisses, and even occasionally we both have our hands full with Renzo, like last night all 3 of us were busy playing piano together, Rynus quietly went into his room alone and played his Thomas train on the floor while waiting for us to return to the room. When I apologized to him for neglecting him, he responded with a generous smile and "It's okay Mummy!".

Of course we do have our struggles, Rynus seems to respond very well to me, but not to Daddy Chan at the moment. We are not really sure about the reason but I do think it's worth figuring out because to certain extend, Daddy Chan is the one handling Renzo most of the time and Rynus follows mummy so I probably know about his needs better. Nonetheless, with his happy-go-lucky character, Rynus has definitely made us more patient parents over the past 3 years and just thinking or talking about him together brings great smiles on our face each day!

Growing up well with full day childcare..

It's been slightly more than a year since Rynus started full day childcare at the same center as Renzo. I've mentioned a few times that everything is great so far and he's truly blessed with great teachers, who are extremely caring and capable in handling him.

It's amazing to see how much he has grown over a year.

- Getting more emotionally intelligent
When Rynus first joined full day childcare, he was pretty famous in his class for throwing himself on the floor and not doing anything when he's not in the right mood. Sounds not as bad as those who screams and rolls around on the floor right? Nope! Not when a 18kg boy lying in the center of the classroom!! Teachers commented that he's too heavy and strong and it's hard to move him to a corner in order not to interrupt other kids from doing their activities.

But as he slowly gets used to the childcare environment, we seldom see him throwing temper tantrums nowadays. Indeed his TERRIBLE TWOS phase was, almost seamingless to us. Yes I've mentioned that many times and I also have doubts that maybe it's not even started, but I've decided not to over analyzing him, and instead just to count my blessing for now.

He often tells us "I am so happy, korkor sad face" when we returned home after work. Yes most of the time he's like a happy bunny hopping around the house in full smiles. And even if he misbehaves, before we start disciplining him, he usually covers his ears with his hands and tells us, "It's okay" in a chirpy tone, though everyone in the house, including he himself, knows that it's NOT OKAY!

Once a while when he knows he's done something seriously wrong, and seeing us with extremely crossed expressions on our faces, immediately, he would turn away from us, or hide at the corner of the room and refuse to have any eye contact with us. Sometimes he could even give this resentful look as if we were the ones at wrong (in disciplining him), and "locks" himself out somewhere (planter in this picture) and refuses to come in and talk to us.

Fortunately, all these don't happen on a daily basis, perhaps, just once or twice in a month and the rest of the time, he's absolutely a little angel who never fails to make us laugh with his cute voice and actions. I used to have a bit of concerns bringing him out in fear of him making a scene in public, but ever since he turned 3, he has improved so much and yes he still gets excited and loves to run about like a headless chicken when he's outdoor, but it's way easier to manage him as he listens well and reacts well to reasoning now.

- Being more independent
Just like Renzo's time, we didn't purposely put Rynus on potty training as we strongly believe they will be easily trained once they are ready for it, nope that's not because we are plain lazy, not at all! And just as expected, Rynus was potty trained during the day within a few days after his childcare teachers suggested to bring more underwears and train him in school. He didn't struggle with it like his Renzo korkor in the past, instead, we saw his changes overnight and before we even noticed, he started rushing to the bathroom on his own, chanting "I want to pass urine or I want to poo poo!" while climbing up on to the toilet bowl and clean himself up with tissue paper after he's done with hsi business.

He showers himself and it's not the 2 seconds kind of wet body dry and come out kind of shower. He makes sure he put shampoo and massage his hair and rinse off thoroughly. In fact I often need to send Renzo back for a second round of washing as he tends to forget about his dirty neck or armpit, but Rynus wins his korkor hands down in ensuring he looks clean and smells good all the time! And he even attempted to wash his own clothes on a few occasions.

If he spills drinks/food on the floor, the first thing he does is to get tissues or table cloth to clean up the mess. I honestly have never seen Renzo doing the same though he's 3 years older. If he sees Renzo playing with water, he will remind him, "Hey Renzo Chan, stop! Cannot waste water!!". Oh right just for record, he addresses his elder brother by his full name when he gets angry or dissatisfied with Renzo.
 
- Learning fast
Yes I know in the past I mentioned a few times that I foresee Rynus will be harder to coach when comes to academics. But within the past half a year, he has proven me wrong again and again with his amazing capacity to pick up things fast. I won't really say he has learned as much as Renzo at the age of 3+. Because Renzo was able to read short stories by this age but nope Rynus still couldn't do that. But he's absorbing very well and he has developed great attitude towards learning over time. I couldn't believe just 2 years ago he would throw the books we try to read to him and show absolutely no sign of interest in anything we tried to introduce to him. But now, he asks for pencil and paper all the time. And when he sees Renzo doing his school homework, he asks for homework too!

Recently, we have been slowly introducing him to blending words with simple 3 letter words as I mentioned in the previous post. And one night, he decided to surprise us with spelling/writing the word MONDAY all on his own. He said his teacher taught them and he could almost spell out Monday to Friday though not 100% accurate. I don't believe teachers will teach them spelling at such young age, but they do introduce days of the week and put the date/day on the whiteboard daily in both English and Chinese, so kids get to understand the concept slowly. But for Rynus, I am pretty sure his phonics knowledge helped and he is probably the same "silent learner" like Renzo, basically they observe, then they absorb. And that's how he figured out and probably also memorized how to spell MONDAY.

He also enjoys communicating with people and it's pretty funny to see how he tries to put the words he knows together to form a proper sentence structure. And he often say things like "hey what's going on here?!", "Oopsy daisy!" in the right context. Which again leads me to believe that kids around the age of 2-4 have really strong ability to manipulate what they hear and see as I am pretty sure he learned those from Disney Junior shows.

As I am writing this post, I start to realize how much Rynus has grown and improved over the past one year. I feel really glad that although he is very different from Renzo, the same upbringing method we used on Renzo, is showing great result on Rynus too. And not to forget his wonderful teachers in the child care center who have played an extremely important role in his early years of development.

When Renzo was young, he didn't share anything about his school life with us but knowing that he has no difficulties in learning, we didn't have much concerns. And Rynus is totally different, he enjoys "showing off" to us what he has learned in school and he tells us about his likes or dislikes, his favorite teachers and best friends with his limited vocabulary too. Boy, never would we expect the teachers to introduce so much about the world to these young toddlers. And we could see clearly that Rynus is totally enjoying his time in school, what's more to ask for??!!

3 letter words, foundation for independent reading

When Rynus was 17 months old, I wrote a post about how difficult it seems to be, to coach my little man, and putting in extra efforts to introduce alphabets and numbers to him. I often tell my friends that Renzo is rather easy to coach when comes to academics but for Rynus, I could foresee we will probably go through a tougher journey as he's rather playful and less serious about academics stuff. But our little man decided to prove us wrong just a month after he turned 3. Well I am not saying he proved us wrong by grasping a new skill of spelling/pronouncing words earlier than his korkor, indeed Renzo was able to do the same when he was only 25 months old, Rynus proved us wrong in the sense that we thought it's going to be tough to coach him, but it seems the whole journey is rather fun. 

Last week, I shared about how Rynus learned to write his own name in about 20 minutes. And this week, he progressed on to start simple 3 letter words spelling.

First of all, let me make it clear. This post is not to boast about how a 3 years old could read/spell/write words. Trust me that's nothing worth showing off, there are definitely other kids who could do the same and even my own son, Renzo, was 1 year ahead of Rynus achieving milestone like this. I never had any intention to "drill" or "train" my kids to be scholars, what I am doing is purely to observe them closely, give them right exposure at right time to help them achieve what they are capable of doing, and provide a healthy family bonding as well as a conducive learning environment at home. Rynus is surrounded with educational materials often,  though he might not touch them all the time. Yes milk bottle sure wins hands down! But at least by exposing him to all these, he has higher chance to pick up something, right?! Of course as parents, our role is to pay close attention and help them discover their own ability. It's just like he could recognize letters, their phonics sounds, but without our intervention, he's not able to tell what's next, when is he suppose to pick up reading or writing.

Another school of thoughts suggests that we should not over teach our kids. I definitely agree with that, because I got feedback from Renzo's teacher that he's less focused in class when he already earned the knowledge about the topics being taught. I don't think I am anywhere near over teaching the boys. Even for our 6 years old Renzo who's going to start Primary 1 in next January, we have never given him any assessment books to work on at home. He's given enough at his full day childcare, and he's been coping very well with weekly spelling and 听写, so I do not see the need to over prepare him. He gets to choose whatever activity he wants to be involved, including watching TV with his little brother most of the time.

Now you might want to ask, then why do I need to teach Rynus anything now?

I've mentioned many times that I am not a fan of enrichment lessons or tuition. We are just trying our best to learn together with our kids (they learn knowledge, we learn their learning patterns). When we see that they are on the right track to achieve a milestone, we help to push them and guide them to reach the finishing line. By doing this, hopefully they are well prepared with the right learning attitude and learning skills, and have the ability to cope well with school curriculum without the need to go for extra lessons. Renzo is a great example and the efforts we put in during his pre-school years, get well paid off when he entered K1 because he sees learning rather fun, and never once struggled with homework or weekly spelling tests. I wish Rynus can enjoy the same learning process just as his korkor so setting the foundation right is always important! And looking back at Renzo's growth, and how we brought up Rynus, I realized what we have adopted, is indeed the Montessori method which I loved and believed since Renzo was a baby. The concept suggests parents to act as observers who are always there to guide, and keep kids' enthusiasm alive without interfering with their efforts to teach themselves. Although we didn't send Rynus to a Montessori school (Renzo attended about 4 or 5 lessons when he was young). We got the idea about how it works for young kids, and decided to pretty much follow that method when it comes to early education.

Of course every kid learns at different pace, some of them might not show great interest to anything, others might be more inquisitive and are willing to learn and know everything around them. Just like both of our boys were exposed to Leapfrog at very young age, and they enjoyed and learned almost all the basic stuff from there, but the same set of materials don't really work for all kids, some of the kids couldn't even sit still to finish watching a 30 minutes episode. There's definitely no right or wrong in terms of the methods, or materials we use to coach our kids, just that since I noticed that Rynus is ready, after he went through the phases of learning alphabets -> learning phonics sounds -> tracing letters -> writing letters independently -> "spelling" words with phonics apps, I know it's time to prepare him for the next phase - reading.

Kids being kids, they absorbs fast at this age but at the same time, they might not have full self awareness to understand what they can really achieve. And I often hear mummies complaining their kids only like to play, whose kid doesn't?! But we must understand,  kids learn through play too. So we give the boys all the freedom they need at home, with proper guidance and control of course (yes that;s Montessori method). I don't nag at Renzo for playing his toys as long as he has finished all his homework. For Rynus, since he's still young, we let him decide what he likes to do, and we just participate and join in the fun together, even if that means to lie down on the floor and stare at Thomas training round and round on the track. Or to sit besides him, listen to him answering Dora's questions one by one. Rynus started using this "Phonics Rocks" app on my iphone about 2 months ago, for about 10 to 15 minutes a day. With my own experience coaching Renzo in the past, I felt that he's ready to spell some 3 letter words after he mastered the skill to figure out how to spell 3 letter words based on phonic sounds of each letter. So these few nights, we started guiding him with simple 3 letter words spelling.

Okay so how does this help with his reading skills exactly? 

I've mentioned this, in a post about Renzo's assessment at "I CAN READ" school when he was 3+..
"... Lastly he was tested on the first sound, last sound and middle sound of words like "elephant", "fish", "hen", etc, I heard that kids usually struggle with middle sounds, but I bet Renzo's ability to recognize middle sounds, must be the clincher for the teacher to decide which class he's qualified to attend at the end."

Back then Renzo couldn't write words (fine motor skill not as good as Rynus and no strength to grip pencil well), but he could pretty much read and spell well, and I strongly believe that has something to do with his ability to recognize first, middle and last sound of the words. With that experience, I have always been paying attention to Rynus in the same aspect. Rynus is very good with his first sound, but for the middle sound and last sound, he's still not able to break the words down that way.

For example, I asked him to write the word "CAT", it took him a little while, but just by hearing the word, "CAT", he managed to spell it out independently, that's a sign that he could tell the phonics sounds of each letter in this word, "C", "A", "T".

But another 3 letter word like RUN, he could only spell it as "R", then turned around and said to me, "Mummy, I am stuck!". So I had to make the phonics sound of "U" and "N", before he could write down the letters "U" and "N" which make the phonics sounds of /ŭ/ and /n/. 

At the same time, he did form some weird words like "CUG", "CIT" randomly, and wrote some words like "BIG", "BET" based on his own memory as those words appeared in the "Phonics Rocks" app. But I have no plan to correct him for now, with my experience on coaching Renzo, this is just another phase, I am sure Rynus will gradually  move on to the next level. I also mentioned this in Renzo's blog after his I CAN READ assessment:

So I strongly believe that Renzo reads mainly by sight words, his strong phonic foundation helps but it's not all about phonics, when they are not trained with a proper system on how to read, breaking down the words or relating them to something they know, is the way most people learn to read. For example, if they know how to read "rice", most likely they will figure out words like "price", "thrice"..

Back then we didn't quite know how to teach Renzo to read, but after we decided not to send him for I CAN READ enrichment lessons, we did started our own way of guiding him to focus on first and last sounds, then figuring out middle sound with simple 3 letter words. 

For Rynus, most of these 3 letter words he wrote, he needs some help to break down the word by sounding out the phonics sounds. But that's already a great start to build the foundation, what will happen next, is that slowly, he will be able to break down the words and sound of each phonic sounds of the first, last, as well as the middle letter, of course the middle letter usually is the toughest. And by doing that, he will then be able to blend the letters together and sound out the words, yes that's READING! Of course,  I don't mean to just "read" like this..

 

P/S: just for record purpose, Renzo was able to recognize/pronounce 3 letter words at 2 years 1 month old, read simple sentence like "The cat has a hat" independently at 2 years 5 months old, spell out 3 letter words at 2 years 8 months old. Of course when comes to writing he was slower than Rynus, I am hoping that baby Rynus could start reading in another 1 year time!

blessed with great school, great teachers..

Last week, I received a call from Rynus' form teacher, 杜老师 in his childcare center, she shared with me that Rynus was a little bit emotional recently, one minute he wanted all attention from his teacher, next minute he's rolling on the floor, refusing to get up and making a big scene if anyone "dares" to touch him. 
 
So the first, and only question his teacher asked was, "Mummy, did anyone discipline him at home, by either scolding, or even beating him?"

And here's my answer to her: 
"I am very sorry 杜老师, scolding or beating is not our way of parenting at home. I know this might make your job tougher. Many other kids might behave well in school because they are scared of reprimand. My kids might not react to that well because we do not discipline them that way at home.We reason with them and let them differentiate what is right and wrong, and when they agree with what we tell them, they will learn to behave well. Of course Rynus is still young so reasoning is never easy, it requires a lot of patience, but in school we understand teachers have to take care of other kids and might not have the time to handle him that way. But so far he has been doing very well at home and no mischievous behaviors. I will try to slowly talk to him about it.."

I said that with a deep sense of guilt because one of Renzo's teachers used to comment that no beating and scolding at home is in a way, spoiling our kids. And to certain extend, she could be right because the kids might simply have no fear of adults and insist to do things their way. But I always believe as long as we set the boundaries and be firm with our principles, it's way more effective to reason with them but of course, I cannot expect others to agree with me. And especially now Rynus is behaving differently in school but as his mummy, I don't even know what could be the cause and how to better deal with it since he's perfectly fine at home.


To my biggest surprise, 杜老师 replied: "Thank you mummy thank you! I wish all parents think this way and now I am not worried anymore. I was only concerned that maybe he was somehow being punished at home that's why he might not be in good mood. So if that had never happened, let's just monitor and give him more time, it could be just a growth sprout and he might outgrow it any time soon! And I also noticed that he responds to reasoning very well, the moment he realized he's wrong, he's very willing to correct himself but of course for now it's a little harder to let him realize it, but I will try!"

After we got off the phone, I couldn't even believe that was the conversation I had with Rynus' teacher. I felt like talking to Rynus' mummy (yes I know that's myself) who truly cares about him, observes him and understands him well. The teacher must be really passionate about her job and loves all the kids just like their parents!

I recalled what teachers shared with us couple weeks ago during the meet parents session, and looked through the presentation slides they prepared for us, I feel really blessed that my kids are in great hands of awesome teachers.

I couldn't thank them (especially the form teacher 杜老师) enough for instilling discipline but at the same time, handling little Rynus' fragile emotions so well, and always keeping us parents well informed.

P/S: Of course I brought this issue up and discussed with Daddy Chan. And we both agreed that likely the change in behavior could be a result of change of "caregiver". Well recently my mother in law has started to fetch the kids home together with our helper, as I am struggling with heavy workload and a bit of health issues. Usually it's common for kids to behave differently when their routine get changed, so that's another challenge we need to tackle.

learning to write his own name

About 2 years ago when Renzo was 3.5 years old, I wrote a post about "learning to write his own name" on his blog, sharing our excitement when Renzo started to write his name in English. We totally didn't plan about when should we teach Rynus to write, well if ever we have plans, I guess I would use Renzo as the best benchmark and start to teach Rynus when he's 3.5 years old. But to our biggest surprise, after Rynus finished writing 1 to 20 & 100, A - Z independently before bedtime this evening, I tried to encourage him to write his own name, since he knows how to write all his letters though he still needs to work on his handwriting. And he managed to do it in less than 20 minutes!!

I first wrote "Rynus" on a piece of paper and asked him to read, he recognized that's his name right away. Actually for the past few weeks, he has been sharing with us about his classmates' names by repeating often: "A is for Adele, K is for Kyler, Z is for Zander, G is for Gabriel, J is for Jovina, etc, etc..". So maybe that's why it wasn't hard for him to figure out that R-Y-N-U-S is Rynus, his name!

I then asked him to try and write the word Rynus. He continued writing for at least 10 to 15 minutes and refused to let me teach or help him. He kept saying, "no mummy, I can do it!" when I was trying to guide him by spelling the letters out. On the 3rd or 4th try, I was very certain that he could already remember how to spell his name.

In no time he could write his name nicely and he was as proud as punch when we praised him in joy.

I am not sure if he could still remember how to spell/write his name tomorrow. But I am very pleased to realize that he is willing to learn and he's extremely confident and independent. He couldn't even grip his pencil properly but he puts in great efforts to make sure he applies enough pressure to make his lines smoother. Well done and way to go  my little boy!