his progress in academics, is pretty much like his brother..

This morning, as usual I was chit chatting with my sister about academics and we somehow touched on the topic that academics is not everything, though it's definitely important. I had to confess, I always claim that I am not a tiger mummy and I don't like to force my kids to study, looking at the kids' blogs, it's not hard to find there are many posts and photos about their academics for sure. So yes, I cannot simply relax and let them enjoy a childhood without grilling them a bit on their studies.

But, for Rynus, let's just say we did cut him some slack from day one, just look at how often we talk about his academics here as compared to on Renzo's blog. It could be due to 2nd child syndrome, but also, it could be the fact that Renzo was rather fast in learning and Rynus didn't show much interest till he's about 2.5 years old.

Recently, I start to notice more and more frequently about Rynus' hunger and curiosity for knowledge. He's been repeating the songs he learned at childcare center everyday, though 70% of the time I couldn't understand him as his articulation is still not too clear yet. He tries to speak in full sentences and get extremely excited when we could understand him. He enjoys watching Renzo doing his homework though sometimes he might mark his presence by messing up with Renzo's worksheet. He mumbles and recites and sings along with Dora, Thomas and Tad (from Leapfrog) countless times a day. He gets involved with our conversation with every possible means and seems to enjoy that a lot. He grabs books and reads with us, asks for puzzles and number games during bedtime.


And starting from about 2 weeks ago, he suddenly gripped on his pencil and started to scribble, from numbers to letters to shapes and fruits, I had to dig out the old posts on Renzo's blog about his first writing exercise at home, to confirm that Rynus indeed started writing proper letters/numbers earlier than his brother. That, is quite a surprise to me, because so far besides walking, he's been slower in achieving all his development milestones as compared to Renzo. But that, also serves as a great reminder that every single child is unique in their own way, even for our own kids, we shall never compare them.

Well not to compare the boys, they do have very distinctive characteristics of their own. But interestingly, when comes to academics, they share so much in common!! They both love numbers and alphabets to the extend that they can watch Leapfrog DVDs till they could recite the scripts. They don't even fancy the usual cartoons or movies. They both mastered all alphabets and their phonics sounds, as well as counting from 1-100 before their childcare starts teaching them. They both enjoy reading bus numbers and could easily spend 30 minutes at the bus stop watching buses come and go,  making small cheers after getting their bus number right each time, including the "Off Service" bus!! There's one time Rynus made his favorite bus number "518"with number blocks, my mother saw that and immediately recalled when Renzo was 2, he did the exact same thing but he made "34" instead as that's the bus brings him to his childcare daily back then.

Here's a video of Rynus chanting his alphabets and he memorized that after reading them from an alphabet chart for less than 2 weeks.

So believe it or not, I think at least for academics, our children's learning behavior and learning habit, could be a direct result of our parenting style. Because we are using the exact same way to coach and influence the 2 boys at home and so far the results are pretty much similar despite them having pretty opposite personalities. So for almost 6 years we've been investing time and efforts to learn to be better parents, and help our kids build strong foundation, cultivate their interest and great habit in learning. So far the result is still quite promising based on our experience with Renzo, and I definitely hope what worked for Renzo, will work for Rynus too!