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.
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..
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.
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!
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!
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 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
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
