forming a stronger parent unit

On one evening when we were strolling around Popular Bookstore, I picked up this wooden multiplication table board for Rynus, as he's obsessed with the multiplication table recently. Yes when I say he's "obsessed", I really meant he is practising it a few times everyday! We are encouraging our 7 years old Renzo to learn his multiplication table and he's still not very fluent with it after practising for nearly a month, but to our amazement, Rynus has learned about 80% of the entire multiplication table up to 12x12 within about 2 weeks times. And by the end of 1 month mark, he's mastered the entire table.

For record, here's a video of Rynus reciting the full multiplication table from 2x1 up to 12x12. There were a few missing equations as the video exceeded its limit and I had to stop and retake while he's doing his 11x.

So to reinforce his learning, I thought this wooden board must be quite a good idea since it has the questions on one side of the block and the answer on this other side. When I presented it to Rynus that night, he shrieked gaily and claimed, "I love this present, it's awesome!!".

Rynus then spent his entire evening before bedtime exploring his new "toy". Instinctively, he flip over every piece of block before thinking about the answer, the moment he realised he could check his answer at the back of the block. Daddy Chan had to stop him from doing that and show him the correct way of "playing", which is to look at the question, give an answer and then flip over the block to check the answer.

At the end of his play, I was pretty certain that this new "toy" isn't a good idea anymore, because Rynus doesn't seem to focus much on giving correct answers, but instead, he's more interested in flipping the blocks for quick answer. And although I am very certain he can easily recite the entire 9x table, he paused many times and gave the "i-don't-think-i-know" look which left me thinking about keeping this board away, so not to confuse him any further. But I kept my thought under wraps since Daddy Chan was already trying hard to explain to Rynus about how this board should be played.

The following morning, Rynus started to work on the multiplication board again. But this time, he started off by stacking up the blocks and when being questioned, he said he's trying to build a tunnel!

After watching him playing with the blocks for a while, Daddy Chan suddenly turned to me and said, "Let's not control the way he plays with this board, it might not be a bad thing that he's treating it as a toy, maybe that's just the way he learns.". Phew, Daddy Chan surely has no idea what a relief it is for me to know that we are on the same page, again!


Yes it's our habit to share our parenting views, decisions and concerns regularly. During our lunch break or journey home after work, we often discuss about our kids' behavior and how to alter our parenting style in order to help them learn and improve. And of course there are times we agree to disagree. For example, Daddy Chan believes that gaming isn't all bad as kids pick up tribal knowledge through gaming, whereas I have totally zero, ZERO tolerance with kids touching digital devices, let alone games. So even though Daddy Chan plays games, he seldom does that in front of the kids.

I believe in gentle yet firm parenting style and do not encourage scolding and spanking, whereas Daddy Chan thinks that punishment is an inevitable, and necessary part of disciplining young kids. That's obviously the reason why the boys will approach me, who is the softer, more lenient parent to get permission.

So clearly we are different in certain ways. But I am glad that we agree on issues almost all the time, we just have different styles to deliver the message. I don't think it's totally bad for our children to experience that differences, it might help them learn about varied opinions and different ways to view the same situation.

But no doubt, the closer parents are united in morals, character, discipline and behavioral expectations, the better for raising happy, healthy, resilient and rational kids.

independent reading - tips on how to teach your preschooler

Preschool is a great time to spark curiosity about reading in your young child. With Rynus finally started reading relatively long stories independently at the age of 4 years 4 months, we can proudly say that we've taught the Chan brothers to read before they enter K1.

Renzo first started reading simple books independently when he was 2 years 11 months (refer to the video below), and moved on to rather long stories like what Rynus is reading now, when he was 3 years 8 months old.

Honestly, we didn't put in a lot of efforts in coaching Renzo to read. It seemed all natural, after reading to him daily for 2 years, one day he suddenly started reading all by himself. Till we had Rynus, we realized his independent reading journey doesn't seem to be as smooth. We questioned ourselves, will the method we used on Renzo work on him too??

The answer is, YES, despite that the two brothers have quite different learning patterns, they both learned to read without the need of attending any enrichment classes. The only thing is, it seems to take Rynus a little longer, nonetheless, slowly but steadily, he's there...

So I feel that there are certain tips we can share here with fellow parents. We jolly well understand that every kid is different, but what we are sharing here, are probably going to work for every child, sooner or later..

First of all, before explaining more about our method, here are a list of blog posts on Renzo's blog, where I shared quite a lot of tips on reading:
Foundation - phonics
Simple 3 letter words reading
Crucial Skill - Blending
Cultivate habit - Reading with kids
Cultivate habit - 5-a-day-books 

Reading involves much more than just decoding a few clumps of letters. What's more important is that the reader is able to understand the story and enjoy while reading it. So I am not trying to pressurize fellow parents to expect a 3 years old to start reading (by the way, they don't). My purpose is just to share some tips which we found useful with our preschoolers, with those parents who believe their children (at all ages) are ready to read, so that they could enjoy the process together and have more fun!


Tip 1: Create the environment for reading
Some friends ask me for advice on how to encourage their kids to read, usually my first question to them is, "As parents, do you both love reading? Do you read often in front of your kids?"

And when I say to read in front of kids, I am not referring to reading paparazzi news on your iphone or ipad, in fact, not even e-books on kindle, you can search on scientific proofs about why printed paper books might be better than e-books. Frankly I am not an avid reader, luckily Daddy Chan loves books so the whole family has been more or less influenced by him. Our most important piece of furniture in the house, is indeed our bookshelf. Just 2 years ago it was extremely hard to get Rynus to sit through one story, but after replacing a comfy sofa with this huge bookshelf in the living room a few months back, he slowly started this habit to grab a book and flip at times.

So don't wait till your child grows up, start building your "home library" once you have /or even before you have a new born, they need different types of books at different stage of life.

Make it a habit to bring a book along whenever you are out with your child. Have a trip to library and bookstore on a weekly basis.

Tip 2: Read to your child everyday (from age 0)
Have a fixed time to read to your child every single day. As we both are working parents, we have one hour from 8pm to 9pm every night, to bond with our kids. And reading is probably the one and only one compulsory activity we've been doing with them.

Pick those books that are relevant to their favorite toys, or TV programs so to keep them interested. Or read books that preschoolers can participate in by joining in on repetitive phrases or familiar rhymes. There are books that encourage "read aloud with parents", where the words appear in the sentence which parents need to read first, repeat in the next line which the child needs to read.

With Renzo entering Primary One at the beginning of 2016, we often have to guide him on his spelling or term test during this one hour, while Rynus has his free time to play. Daddy Chan pointed out a few times that he feels, the very reason why Rynus couldn't pick up reading as early as Renzo, is because we didn't spend enough time reading to him. Whereas for Renzo, he could remember how devoted he was, reading to him every single night without a fail since he was born. Hence we quickly made some arrangement to ensure we could spare at least 15 to 20 minutes before bedtime to read to Rynus.

Reading to young children who don't seem to show much interest in books can be quite demoralizing. Do not give up just because they don't understand you, or because they couldn't recognize even a single word. And even after your child picks up the skill of independent reading,  it doesn't mean you  have to leave the reading all to your child. You still can read to him/her daily, or read whenever you are asked to do so. Children enjoy the bonding and interaction from listening to parents, even though they've mastered the skill.

Getting the elder sibling to read to the younger one is another great option. Recently I've noticed that whenever Renzo is reading, Rynus wants to join in too and he's proud and confident about himself when he's able to read. He even told us, "I am able to read by myself, just like Renzo korkor right?!"

And here's an old video of Renzo at 4 years 4 months (Rynus' current age) reading to Rynus when Rynus was a baby. 

Tip 3: Get the foundation right (age 0 - 2)
I know there are a lot of debate around when should children start watching TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids under 2 years old not watch any TV and that those older than 2 watch no more than 1 to 2 hours a day of quality programming.

Let me be honest, I made the decision to expose the 2 boys to TV when they were about 10 months old. I don't want to justify my reasons, but the truth is, they've been watching no more than 3 different educational programs on DVD and they've learned a ton!

Our family's favorite educational program is none other than Leapfrog!!

I've recommended this set of DVD to many friends, and some told me it's not effective for their toddler, so I still have this feeling that it's better to expose kid during their infant stage. Because the older your child is, the more distractions he or she will get. Imagine if your child has been watching different cartoon programs, learning series like Leapfrog might appear rather dry and boring. But I've read countless successful stories about how this series worked on younger kids below 2.5 years so I just think that it really works like magic.

Leapfrog is so far the most effective, interactive and structured educational material we've tried, to teach children the basics of phonics. Start your little one with this set of DVD in the correct order:
- Letter Factory
- Let's go to school
- Talking words factory

We've bought probably the entire collection of the Leapfrog series, the above 3 are the classic. If you start your child with Leapfrog early enough like us, by the age of 1.5 - 2.5 years old, your child will definitely be able to recognize 26 letters and know all their phonics sounds. That, is the 1st step to independent reading.  
 
Tip 4: Start with 3 letter words (age 2 - 4)
Once your child has mastered all alphabets and their phonics sounds, move on to 3 letter words. Leapfrog's words factory introduces basic word building, rhyming, vocabulary which helps your child to read and spell easy words like CAT, BAT, PAT, BEG, BED, etc.

Or, if you notice your child likes to tell stories based on the books he/she reads, then it's a sign that your child is ready to learn how to read independently. 

As I mentioned in my post about our experience with "I CAN READ" school when Renzo was young, majority of kids at the tender young age of 3, are better at identifying first sound, some can recognize last sound, and a few advanced ones can even recognize middle sound. Renzo was able to identify middle sound, which is the reason why he could read early, in my personal opinion. Because with such skill, he could easily decode the 3 letter words, sound out the 3 individual phonics sounds and blend them together again to form the word independently. Rynus was only good at first sound, sometimes he could identify the last sound but most of the time, he's pretty lost with the middle sound. So we knew we need to give him longer time, while at the same time, explore other methods to inspire him.

Rynus enjoyed playing with his Leapfrog cards to form different 3 letter words, before he started to show more interest in books.

Tip 5: Focus on high frequency / sight words (age 2 - 4)
True enough, the two brothers have different learning patterns.
Renzo:
Verbal (Linguistic) – These individuals learn best through words, verbal and/or written
Rynus:

Aural (Auditory) – These individuals learn best through sound and music

We realized it's pretty difficult to teach Rynus how to read by showing him the word, and expect him to decode it like what Renzo used to do. But interestingly, he is much stronger at recognizing sight words, those words appear frequently such as YOU, ME, HERE, AROUND, WHO, TODAY, MUST, WITH, etc. And because he learns really fast with sound and music, and such kind of words appear very often in nursery songs, he was able to read them before he turned 3, although he couldn't really read a story. So we tried to look for books with more sight words, or read together with him, pause at sight words, and encourage him to read it. It's important to boost their confidence level and keep them interested in reading.

Tip 6: Decode words (age 3 - 4)
Once you notice your child is able to read simple sight words and some of the three letter words, you can try to help them "decode' the word, by sounding out phonic sound of each letter, and blend them together.

There's also a tip here, if your child can make the phonics sound of "H", "U', "G" individually, but cannot sound out the word HUG, then try "H", "U", "G" first, then "H", "UG" because some kids might find it much easier to blend the middle and last sound together first, then sound out the first letter, and add on the "middle+last" sound as one sound.

And from the video below, you can see how Rynus "decode" his words by covering part of the word with his finger, and sound out the letters one by one and blend them together again.

"An early walker isn't destined to be a great athlete, and an early reader isn't destined to be more intelligent." But as parents, reading with our children is one of our greatest passion. They boys are having so much fun reading and learning at their own pace. These experiences are treasures that hold the key to becoming successful learners for years to come.

a guilty mum's confession towards my 2nd child

Daddy Chan: "Mummy, mummy didi is calling you..."
...
..

Daddy Chan: "Mummy are you busy with something, can you play with didi??"
...
..

Daddy Chan: "Mummy I noticed you've been checking your phone all the time...."
...
..

These, were what I've been hearing from Daddy Chan throughout the last day of our long weekend holiday.

YES I AM EXTREMELY GUILTY....

Let's face it, I am not trying to paint a perfect picture about how awesome a full time working mother's life is. My friends all know that I've been sharing a lot on my facebook account about my family, my kids as I enjoy tracking down our daily memories in chronological order this way. It also helps to update the relatives, most importantly the grandparents, about our little ones' growth.

And I am not kidding, those moments where we have peaceful afternoons with both boys working on their own stuff quietly, those moments where the whole family plays board games after dinner, those moments where Daddy Chan talks about science with Renzo and I hug Rynus to read Thomas storybook in one room, those moments where Renzo practicess his piano and Rynus watches his Leapfrog DVD side by side and not get distracted in the living room, are 100% for real!!

But sometimes, just sometimes, we do need our "ME" time to enjoy some privacy. We have already formed a habit to attend to our own stuff only after kids go to bed because after work, we have about 1 to 1.5 hours of bonding time with them so we do treasure that a lot. But things get a bit tougher during the weekends, when kids occupy every single minute of our time. For the fact that I need to wake up before 630am and prepare 3 meals for the family, I am cutting myself some slack and thinking there's nothing wrong to leave the kids playing on their own. Of course I am feeling the immense guilt from spending too much time on my own stuff, and neglecting the boys, or rather Rynus in this case for the past few days. I do give Renzo a lot more attention more because he has more worksheets that require parents' signature each week, if not everyday. He has bitesize tests to go through starting from P1 term 2, so getting him ready for his tests is my priority as compared to watching Rynus tracing his letters. We mentioned not once, not twice, but many times about the 2nd child syndrome, and inevitably, poor little Rynus seems to have became the victim.

Rynus has all along been a very sensible boy who doesn't seem to seek for much attention from us. We are truly blessed that he's independent and understanding.
But...

Each time I see Rynus singing along with his Leapfrog DVD, not bothering about whether I am busy on my phone, or cooking in the kitchen, or sitting next to him singing together... it hurts!

Each time helper mentions I am doting on Renzo so much and poor Rynus is not mummy's boy but aunty's boy... it hurts!

Each time I chat with Renzo about his daily life in school, Rynus skips to me like an eager beaver and asks: "Mummy, ask me, ask me how's school!??"... it hurts!

And I have absolutely no excuses here, my boss allows me to have work life balance and I don't even need to worry about work stuff once I am home. So it's often just whatsapp messages or facebook updates that keeps me occupied. Ironically, when many other parents are struggling with kids spending too much time on electronic devices, worrying about the effects on them, and wondering if too much screen time will slice-and-dice their attention spans, change their brains, hamper their social skills, disrupt their sleep and affect their learning. We don't have that concern at all as the boys do not touch any gadget, but I, am the one whose face is buried with touchscreen rather than my kids.

"To be in your children's memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today." - Barbara Johnson

To my dearest Rynus, I am sincerely sorry for those instances of ignoring you by staring at my phone. When I tell you I love you, I don't say that out of habit, or to start a conversation, I want you to know that you are the best thing ever happened to me and you deserve all my time, efforts and attention. It's not just about feeding and caring for your physical needs, but also to ensure that you are looked at, listened to and understood. I will change for better, for you my dear son!

our little saving grace..

Yes "saving grace" is what Daddy Chan would call Rynus at home, whenever Renzo gives us a relatively difficult day, at times.

By now we are fully aware that the 2 boys have very different characters and we, or rather say I, have almost, completely accepted Renzo's personality of being slow in doing everything, and often needs to be nagged reminded on every single task of his. Well I know that sounds pretty horrible but nope it's not really that bad honestly. He's a good boy in general, just that Rynus has never given us the same set of worries although he might give us equally frustrating moments,  make us feel like giving ourselves a double face palm and pulling our hairs out at the same time. But but, Rynus has this amazingly innocent voice, innocent look, innocent thought, innocent.. everything! that is pretty soothing, or probably hypnotic especially when we are at the end of the rope!

When Renzo gets disciplined by me for his mischievous behavior, Rynus is often seen sitting alongside me and making efforts to cheer me up. He would sing a whole list of nursery rhymes which he just learned at childcare; he would give Renzo a stare and tell him "Renzo you never listen, I listen, right mummy?!"; he would pat my cheeks, hug me tight and tell me it's okay don't worry mummy; he would do the sweetest thing I could ever imagine just to make me happier.

With Renzo starting Primary School this year, we've been putting in a lot more time and efforts to bond with him, be it to chat with him more about his school life, or to coach him more on his studies. Inevitably, Rynus has been neglected but he's never made any noise. Instead, he learned to keep quiet when korkor needs to practise piano; to play on his own when korkor needs to do his revision; to write every word he knows on whiteboard when korkor is preparing for spelling test.

If being the first child, Renzo has to live up to high expectations and set good example, which leads to higher chance of him getting an earful from us, then Rynus being the second child, is definitely our saving grace who often manages to make that "earful" a less unpleasant one for his brother.

ways to handle a tantrum or meltdown...

Like I've always been saying, if a kid misbehaves out of sudden, usually, there's a change in his routine. I can't emphasize enough about how important a routine is, for kids of any age, no matter he's 4 or 14. I've heard a different school of thoughts that routine is less important than discipline, as parents we just need to discipline our kids well, frequent changes in routine will teach them to be more independent and adaptable.

Well let me tell you (though I am not the expert), I am not saying my kids do not have random temper tantrums, but if "routine doesn't matter for kids" is what you believe, then be prepared for unexpected; and don't complain if your 6 years old whines and cries over dropped cookies.

So, a friend of mine asked me what to do with young toddler's meltdowns, or temper tantrums, yes I praise my kids often but that doesn't mean they do not experience such moments. Basically a lot of experts would suggest a few ways:
- time-out (usually most effective if your child is trained to calm down this way)
- offer alternative options (2nd most effective because kids are often easily distracted)
- use words (yes effective communication it is, but this might be the toughest one)
- count down (yes 3, 2, 1... shut up, oops no aggressive parenting in our house)
- offer a reward (as bad as giving in to their request in my personal opinion)

And in another post on Renzo's blog I mentioned about the 3 different ways of parenting, you can see the methods above are pretty much in alignment with those ways of parenting I mentioned there.

Of course Assertive Parenting is what we would love to cultivate at home, so I usually use a combination of time-out, alternative options/distraction and selected words. But just a few days ago, I spent more than 30 minutes (or at least it felt that long) to coax Rynus after he became distraught, the moment I told him to go to bed. Oh yes you might say, who doesn't struggle with sending young kids to bed??!! But nope, we don't. Our boys have a pretty standard and good bedtime routine which they could follow well since young. So I was pretty much caught off gaurd by Rynus' reaction that night. Because he snapped right after I turned off the TV and told him to go to his room. And before I did that, I've passed him my iphone, nope I do not allow kids to play with gadgets but Rynus recently has this habit of watching his concert dance video clip right before he goes to bed. And since it makes his bedtime routine easier, I am pretty cool with that fast 2 minutes clip. I thought that's enough prep considering usually he doesn't fuss around even if I off the TV without prior notice. That made me believe that his sudden change in behavior, might be due to the change of routine recently, since his elder brother Renzo, has just started Primary School this year.

Time-out method has not been effective to him since a couple months ago. He has developed this new emotion that whenever we mention about sending him to thinking corner, he feels ashamed and simply refuses to go for it each time. It's a method I still believes in strongly, just that it doesn't work on Rynus now and Renzo doesn't need it anymore.

So up next, it's about using the correct words to distract him with other alternatives. But trust me, it's not as easy as what experts advised. The "I know you are upset because mummy does not allow you watch TV anymore.". "I understand your feeling and why not we go to the room and watch your concert dance together?" kind of "model" questions suggested by experts, totally didn't work on him! Right, at that very moment, I was wondering, do those so called experts who studied kids, raised up any kids of their own successfully??!! How is that possible that their advice sounds so straight forward but it doesn't seem to work on every child??!! And Rynus just made it tougher for me when he changed from crying to begging, "I want to watch TV, I don't want to sleep, please mummy, let's go! Please I want to watch TV mummy please...". His voice sank to a whisper, misery was written all over his face, tears blinded his eyes and choked his voice as he begged again and again, my heart was broken. But I know once I compromise, the next time he's just going to act out this way to get what he wants.

When I continued to stay calm and press on, while accepting his 50 shades of emotions at the same time, it caught my attention that whenever I mentioned that "I understand you are upset", he seemed to settled down a little. His eyes softened as he gave me a tighter hug. So I decided to add that liner in front of every single alternative option that I offered to him, from my iphone to watch his concert dance, to his milk bottle and pillow for comfort. He refused to budge. But trust me, I know all I need to do at that moment, was just to repeat what I did again and again, till he finally got the idea that no, mummy is just NOT going to turn on that TV for the rest of the night! Keeping him comfortable definitely helps throughout the bargaining process, and as soon as he allowed me to hug and kiss him, I know I've won my battle.

Boy it's a super tough 30 minutes, probably this has been the biggest ever emotional meltdown I've had to handle so far. But the good thing is, I've learned about his limit, 25 minutes is probably the maximum amount of time needed to win over him.

So again, I do believe Rynus will get better slowly, after all, it's only been 2 weeks after he switched to this new routine of staying in childcare, without his brother's presence. Like my favorite quote from Gary Chapman, the famous author of The 5 Love languages series stated:
“Inside every child is an ‘emotional tank’ waiting to be filled with love. When a child really feels loved, he will develop normally, but when the love tank is empty, the child will misbehave. Much of the misbehavior of children is motivated by the cravings of an empty ‘love tank.’” -Gary Chapman

We did neglected Rynus' feeling a bit because we are too busy chatting with Renzo about Primary School life on most of the nights. I know it because Rynus took his own initiative to speak Chinese, sing National Anthem every now and then, in order to catch our attention. Those are things he seldom does at home. So time to work together and make daily family bonding before bedtime more fun and engaging for Rynus as well!

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/

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??!!