What To Do When Your Child Is Bullied In School

Bullying. It only happens to other people's kids. Not yours. Not until your child is bullied. Then you realize
that bullying is a rather common thing that happens in many schools. When your child is bullied in school, then suddenly you are at a loss about what to do. Where do you start?

This is a problem that has been brought up over and over again on our Facebook group - The Malaysia Primary And Secondary School Parents On Facebook. So, we did an infographic of the steps which we hope will help the parents.not claim to be experts on this very difficult topic. These are merely the author's view based on her own parenting instincts on what is the right thing to do.

In this post we will discuss the steps in more detail. Firstly, we will talk about...

WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN YOUR CHILD IS BULLIED 

• Keep Quiet - Do not keep quiet and hope that it will go away. It won't. It is likely to get worse. Besides, you do not want other children to be bullied like your child
• Teach Your Child To Fight Back - You can teach your child how to stand up against bullies but do not teach him to fight back. It may worsen matters and you are teaching him that aggression is the right response. You want to teach him how to be assertive, not aggressive. You can send your child to martial arts classes like tae kwan do, not to become aggressive or to fight the bullies but as a way to build his own self confidence and make new friends.
• Approach The Bullies Or The Bullies Parents Yourself - Much as you'd like to do this very thing, avoid it. Meet up with the bullies and or their parents only with the school or other third parties acting as intermediaries. Many parents actually report success when approaching the bullying kids or their parents but this is the wrong way. You are an adult and the bullies are kids who sometimes do not know better. For example, they may be 7 year olds who come from a poor family background or who learned at home that aggression or bullying is the way to get attention and what they want. Who are you as a parent to approach and threaten the kids yourself? Always speak with the parents or kids with a third party present. When bullying happens in school, the school must act as an intermediary. Do not approach the other party yourself.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CHILD IS BULLIED

So what do you do when your child is bullied? You can read our infographic below for a summarized version but here is the detailed flowchart.

1. Support Your Child - First of all, support your child. Talk to him. Hug him. Show him unconditional love and let him know that it is not his fault (Of course you must also establish that he was not the one who started the fight if there was one). Bullying is never right, even when provoked in some way. Talk to him about bullying and how to prevent bullying. Teach him to stand up for himself. Help him build confidence and make new friends. Bullies often like to bully those who are alone.
2. Talk To The Teacher - The first thing you should do is to inform the teacher. Do not assume the worse (ie. the teacher will not do anything or penalize your child). Inform the teacher in a matter of fact manner giving facts, times and names if you have them. Work together with the teacher to resolve the bullying.
3. Inform The Headmaster - If you are unable to resolve the bullying at class level, bring it up to school level by informing the headmaster. Again, stay calm. You want to get results, not vent your anger or frustration. State facts. This is not the time for name calling even if you feel extremely frustrated that the teacher has done nothing to resolve the issue.
4. Report To The Authorities - If the bullying has not been resolved at school level, then bring it up one step further, to the State or District Education Office, the Ministry of Education and the Police. However, you may need to do this step first of all if your child sustained injuries.
5. Change Schools - Bullies are everywhere so you should consider this only as a last resort. However, trust your parental instincts. If you feel that your child is unhappy or will not be able to thrive in his current school, even after the bullying has been resolved, transfer him out of the school.

SAY NO TO BULLYING! Share this post with the hashtag #Saynotobullying or embed the following infographic on your site by copying and pasting the code below it on your site.

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<p> <strong>Please include attribution to http://mumsgather.blogspot.com with this graphic.</strong><br><br><a href="/http://mumsgather.blogspot.my/2016/02/what-to-do-when-your-child-is-bullied.html" onclick=""><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVjO57W7p4zhMH2WKM87KGyR9b8WU-7ezh4SlM76ml6tHOmI0ZOQF-YVOMjYTozKUEJIo3sWLzXj8v3jdc53M3VUj5tW9kYAjkzwfnntTymBMM8Wwv4BqulEqss0tNDMQXh3T98g/s1600/Infographic+on+Bullying.png" alt="Infographic On Bullying" width="540px" border="0"></a></p>

All parents should educate their child to stand up against bullies. Not only that, you must stress to your children that bullying in any form is wrong. 

Encouraging Creative Thinking In Kids

Each night before we go to sleep, we will have a little game.

We call the game "3 sentences". Each person will make 3 sentences. The first person will make 3 sentences to start the story, then the next person will make 3 sentences to continue it until it is time for bed in which mummy will make the last 3 sentences and end with "and now it is time to go to bed. The End."

Sometimes the story we make up is about us and current events that affect us. Sometimes it is about something that we read. Sometimes it is about something totally fictional and nonsensical. Whatever it is, it always ends in fits of laughter.

Bed time is always a fun time. Previously, I always stressed over how little sleep the children are getting and how they should go to sleep as soon as possible so when I turn off the lights I always just tell them to "shut up, no talking".

Now, I find that chatting or playing our 3 sentences game is the best time and it doesn't take more than just 10 minutes. So why stress over 10 minutes? The children go to bed much happier and easily after that.

How To Stop Your Child From Making Careless Mistakes During Tests

There is an old martial arts movie called "The Bride With The White Hair". Well, when I wed, I was The Bride With The Black Hair. Now, I'm turning into The Mom With White Hair.

You see, you spend all this time coaching your kids for their tests. The spouse is on your back to make sure they do well in their studies.

The day of the test comes and goes. Your child says "It was easy mom because I studied so hard" so you breath a sigh of relief and then they come home with the test paper and says......

"Ma, I forgot to do 10 questions." 

That's right. The boy missed out 10 questions on the last page which was on a separate sheet of paper but stapled along with the rest of the test papers. I wonder how he could have missed it. Each question carries 2 marks.

Then the girl comes to you and says

"Ma, I forgot to write my name on the answer sheet."

Aaarrgggghhhhh!

If anyone has the magic formula on How To Stop Your Child From Making Careless Mistakes During Tests... I'd really like to know it! Obviously my methods aren't working and they include

• coaching
• teaching test taking skills
• telling them what to do
• reminding them to check their papers thoroughly 
• testing (in actual test environment)
• trying to instil good habits
• reminder checklist
• training them to proofread their work. 

Nothing works. They still keep on making careless mistakes.

Raising Independent Kids

I have not been feeling well for the past 3 weeks. First I was down for two weeks with some virus that my son passed on to me. After recovering for 1 day, I fell sick again. This time it was chicken pox, passed on from my dear daughter to me. I had adult chicken pox.

It has been a tough 3 weeks. Despite being sick, things around the house still needed to be done otherwise there will be no meals to eat and the family would not have clean clothes to wear. The kids have been good. They have been helping me to cook the rice, to wash the dishes, hang the clothes, wipe the tables and shelves, sweep and mop the floor.

I realized that the trick to raising independent kids is to close one eye. Being sick and down with fever, I was too tired to hover around them checking their work so not only did I close one eye, I closed both! All I could do was lie down and give instructions and to my surprise, it was done. They helped with the housework and did their own homework without fuss and they did it rather well too.

When I was down with really high fever, I closed both eyes as the man and the boy pottered around the kitchen to make fresh juice and cook porridge. Of course, they left a wet mess on the kitchen floor but I was too tired. I didn't see it, not with both my eyes closed.

I only saw the cute things they did. Like when the boy asked me "Mummy, can I button the clothes so it will look nice?" when he hung it up. "Sure", I said and the next day when he was in school and I was keeping the clothes, I had a big smile on my face despite the fever when I kept the clothes and saw one little school uniform hung on the clothes line all nicely buttoned up from top to bottom. That's so sweet.

That is how I discovered how to raise independent kids. The trick is to give them small tasks they can handle and then leave them to it without hovering around giving instructions. Trust them to do it and they will. 

Obsessed With Homework

My daughter and her classmates are obsessed with homework. They have no choice.

• While waiting for transport they would be doing homework in the school canteen
• Sometimes she tries to do her homework in the car!
• Most of the time, she tries to do her homework before and during lunch as soon as she gets home!

She tells me that her friends do homework in the classroom in school usually during 'unimportant' lessons which they all know, for example during the Science in English class. The teacher would switch off all the lights to use the multimedia for teaching. Instead of listening to her, everyone would be busy doing their homework in the dark so that they would not be so rushed when they are at home. They have all learned that it is important to try to finish off some of the 'homework' in school so that they can complete the rest of the homework for the day. Previously she used to pay attention and listen but now she has joined them.

For other 'unimportant' lessons ie those that are not 'counted' in determining positions, like Civics etc, her classmates have resorted to copying answers from the books and have a nonchalant attitude. They know they have to complete all their homework but these are competing with the time for more 'important' subjects so they no longer care. They have to do what they need to do to survive the homework craze. 

As for my own girl, sometimes, I resort to asking her to copy answers for the sake of completing the work. If she does not, she will be reprimanded in school. 

Due to this homework madness, we are raising kids with the wrong attitudes. We are teaching them that it is okay to copy. We are teaching them that it is okay not to pay attention in school. We are teaching them that they only need to do what is necessary to pass tests and get good results and no more than that. We are trapped in the homework downward spiral of madness!

How Well Does Your Child Know You?

We often read articles about How Well Do You Know Your Child? But what about the other way around. How well does your child know you? Recently my daughter told me that she had to ask me a few questions.

My Girl:  Mom, my teacher says that I have to know you. I have to know your age, what you like etc. I don't even know your name mom. What is your nickname?"


I gave her a nickname that the man of the house calls me and she said it sounded silly. We can't put that in the form. Eventually we decided to just put my name in Mandarin.

Well, I was not sure how to write one of the characters in my name (that's how poor my Chinese is), so I told her to wait while I dig for my old wedding card and gave that to her to copy from.

After going through my likes and dislikes, she came to the part on Character. Aha! That sounds like fun. So I told her to fill in whatever she thinks my character was and she said...

My Girl: Angry.

lol.  "How about kind and gentle" I suggested (Ahem!)

My Girl: Mum, you're not kind and gentle. 


lol. "Well then, how about fierce." I said.


My Girl: Can I just put anything...


I said yes and eventually found out that she had written a Chinese term. I looked up the Chinese to English dictionary and it said "affable". I looked up the English Dictionary and it said "pleasant, friendly and easy to talk to." She made it clear to me, that it was not what she thought I was but she had to write something. (The only term she could find to describe my character was "Angry". Haha.

My Girl: What is your motto mom. What IS motto?


I told her motto means what someone believes in. I told her that I believe that if you try really hard at something you will succeed. (Mom always tries to sneak in a lesson or two whenever she talks to her children). She eventually found a Chinese idiom and wrote that down. She told me that the Chinese idiom translates to "Failure is the Mother of Success." Well, that is close enough. I then had to spend another 5 minutes explaining to her how failure can suddenly become the "mother" of success.

We decided that my hobby was reading and I had interest in music.

As for daddy, daddy told her that his motto is "Make hay while the sun shines" Yup! That is him alright. He always believes in planning ahead for everything.

Though it was all very amusing, I had a wake up moment when I realised that the only word my child could use to describe me was "Angry". Hmm..... I guess I should do something about that!

Why not try this with your children at home. You can turn this into an English lesson on "Adjectives". Ask them to describe you and share what they said in the comments. Are there any more "Angry" moms out there or perhaps you are "loving" and "kind" and "gentle"? See what your child thinks about you.

His and Hers - Favourite Words

Previously I had written a post called "Describe Your Child In One Word". Funnily, I get a lot of visits to this blog from people searching for that term. Strange indeed.

Anyway, today's post is about His and Hers. His and Her.... favorite words that is.

At the moment my girl's favorite word is "Wait ah.." while my boy's favorite word is "Oops!" 


I guess that about sums up how they are at this moment in time.

My girl....

Come on. Everyone is waiting for you. Wait ah.....
Come on downstairs, its time to eat. Wait ah....
Come up now, its time to do your homework. Wait ah.....
What are you doing so long in the toilet. Wait ah....


My boy...

What happened to your pen? Oops!
Where is your tumbler? Oops!
How come you missed out this question? Oops!
Why did you lose your timetable again? Oops!


One is enough to drive any mum insane. I have two.

Homework - Corrections for mistakes

It's 9.00pm which is past the children's bedtime. We are in the final lap of our homework run. (As you know if you have been reading my earlier post The Mad Homework Dash) sometimes homework extends after dinner despite working on it all day with hardly a stop in between.

The girl (who had returned from school at 4pm, had to eat her tea in the car and have a quick bath before starting  her homework dash) says...

"Mummy, what shall I do? I have these 4 mistakes in Maths. The answers were correct but I didn't write the working down. The other day teacher asked me to see her and when I did she said "Why didn't you...." then she stopped and sighed "Haih. Later!" and waved me away. She said "you better do your correction!" I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to do the corrections 10 times for each sum or 20 times. I'm not sure how teacher wants the workings or formula done. If I do it wrongly, then she'll ask me to erase them and do them all over again. If I go and ask her how she wants it done, she'll scold me for not knowing. If I don't do it, she'll scold me for not doing it. If I do it wrongly, she'll scold me. I'm scared! How?! I can't ask my friends. I'm so tired of asking my friends. None of them seem to know what to do all the time."

"Ok, I think, I'll write each sum down 10 times in this manner (which I'm not sure whether is correct) and then I won't give it to her unless she asks me because I'm scared that its wrong and she'll get mad and if she asks me at least I have done something ....."


Then she proceeded to write down the sums, 10 times for each sum. 4 sums = 40 sums while the clocked ticked on past her bedtime.....

The Mad Bedtime Dash

Quite often we make a mad homework dash because we want the kids to have enough hours of sleep each day. When they don't have enough sleep, they get fretful and irritable and tend to fall sick easily. So in our quest to make sure the kids have enough sleep, we rush them to complete their homework, preferably before dinner time which is at 7pm.

After dinner, it's getting ready for bedtime, and that means washing up, brushing teeth, changing into pyjamas, then light reading for about 15 minutes before lights off at 8.30pm. That is our ideal situation or the situation in which we hope to have. In order to achieve that, we make our mad homework dash.

Sometimes the mad homework dash continues after dinner and homework gets completed at 9pm, that's when the bedtime dash gets crazier and lights get turned off immediately after teeth brushing and changing into night clothes. No winding down.

The kids are usually asleep by 9pm, the very latest is 10pm but usually 9pm or even before that at times. They get up at 5.45am or 6pm the latest. 9pm to 6pm is 9 hours of sleep each night. They no longer have afternoon naps.

How many hours of sleep do children need? Well according to this article on Child Sleep - Recommended hours for every age , my children who are in the age bracket between 7 to 12 years old, should be getting about 10 to 11 hours of sleep each day. They are only having 9 hours each day and we are unable to make it possible for them to have more hours than that each day. I know if we can find the time for them, they will easily be able to sleep another 1 hour or two but we can't, we just can't with their workload.....

We try to catch up during the weekend by allowing them to get up later. They usually get up at 8 or 9pm during the weekends but they would have to go to bed at the same time in order to get more sleep. However there is this tendency to allow them to stay up later as well so in the end, the still only get about 9 hours of sleep during the weekends.

Changing the bedtimes from 10-11pm till 8-9am during the weekends is a bad practice but we still do it. I wonder how do other parents manage in the area of sleep. Care to share?

The Mad Homework Dash

It would seem that all my kids do during the weekdays is eat, sleep and do homework. No, it's probably more like do homework, eat while doing homework and get whatever sleep they can get after the homework is done.

As soon as they get home from school, they make a mad dash to eat lunch. Sadly, conversation is not encouraged during lunch as it takes away the precious time required to complete the day's homework. Then they make a mad dash to have a bath. Sadly, singing in the bathroom and having fun playing with soap bubbles is not encouraged either as it takes away the precious time required to complete the day's homework. Blah blah blah.

Then the homework starts. If you are in the 'smart' class which isn't very smart at all since it means more homework, the kids will be burdened with extra pages of homework from additional workbooks. The std 4 girl has to copy essays to improve on and master her Chinese Character writing. Once, I gave her 25 minutes to copy an essay as I saw she still had a lot of other work to complete. She took 2 hours! I was so exasperated, I said this won't do. You are taking too long, you will need to work faster!

So, I took the essay and copied it myself. I took an hour! The girl took 2 because she wanted to understand what she was copying and not copy blindly. That's a good practice but I say, sorry, you don't have time for that. Just copy!

Then she has to copy out maths questions from her workbook. She is not allowed to write on the workbook since it is the free workbook from school which will be passed on to another child next year. So she meticulously copies each question and tries to do the hard sums in hard pressed moments with mum shouting to her to hurry up! Each sum must be copied and written in the perfect manner too. If told to leave a line between sums and have a line drawn in between and this is not done, she fears she has to erase and redo everything. So she rubs and writes, rubs and writes to make everything perfect. Doubling the time required.

Next, she has to copy out some Chinese questions and tackles those. Mum, I don't know how to do this one, can you help? she asks. I look at the question. It says, look at the given lines of phrases, A, B, C, and D. For each one, there are 3 phrases given. Find out which line does not contain a wrong 2 worded phrase. That's easy. B is the answer. No, its not so simple mum, the other lines have mistakes in them. We have to find out what are the mistakes and write down the correct phrase for those. Oh....... That's very detailed and time consuming....

Its tea time now, sorry kids, you'll have to eat as you do your work. There isn't time! And so the mad dash continues.... Another 4 pages of English homework.... Write 2 pages of Chinese Characters... 2 pages of Bahasa Malaysia... What?! You still have to do 5 pages of Chinese&BM&Science&English work from that Magazine? Hurry up then!

2 more homework... Mum, I have to study for Ejaan and Ting Seah tomorrow and I haven't finished my art. Faster! It's dinner time! and you haven't packed your bags. It's dinner time. Stop! Stop this moment. Go and wash your hands and eat. Leave everything as it is, we'll have to continue after dinner. Eat as fast as you can. No talking.

After dinner. Hurry up its so late now, its almost bedtime. You need sleep. Come on. Pack your bag quickly. Forget about that homework. It's not important! Just answer that. But mum! I can't copy..... Just answer it! You'll have to do what you can. You need sleep! The dash heats up now. Work that has not been completed gets done in a hurry, all learning efforts are thrown out the window and mum and children dashes to complete the homework. Homework is now done for the sake of completing them or else.....the kids face the wrath of the teachers the next day and get twice the homework! If you carry anything forward, it will just accumulate and snowball.

We make a final dash, then dash to the bathroom to brush teeth, wash up and change and its lights off! No time for a book or chat. It's straight from the study table to bed. No time for a warm drink, no time to relax and wind down. It's so sad. It's mad. I'm mad!

Cliques and Ostracism in School

My girl is 10 years old. Yesterday she told me that she was shown a “set of rules” by a classmate. You must follow these rules or I won’t be your friend. The rules include…

1. must have facebook account
2. must be Chinese

My Goodness! What sort of rules are those! They are outright horrible. I told my girl that these were very bad rules and she does not have to follow them.

At the moment, the situation is not serious as she is not really being ostracised but the thought did cross my mind that it may be a potential problem because my girl is rather timid and straight.

What would you say to my girl if you were me?

Dealing with a preteen or tween

 

My preteen or tween as they call it, the ages before turning into a full fledged teenager or teen has been driving me crazy.

Kids these days do grow up really fast. My preteen at home is showing signs of growing into a teen fast! Dealing with a preteen or tween is becoming rather challenging.

At the moment she is on a confessing spree. After confessing to me about how she had stolen my small change recently. She has gone on to confess about more ‘crimes’ she has done. Worse still, she picks the most inappropriate times for her confession.

I may be absorbed in doing something else when all of a sudden she will go “mummy, I………… last year.” Yes, the crimes she confess to did not happen an hour ago or not even yesterday or last week. Most of them happened a year or two ago!

So far she has confessed to rubbing off her brother’s homework, copying a friend’s spelling, checking the answers in her workbook when doing work, looking at answers in the reference book during spelling, stepping on a classmates artwork……

I find it really challenging to deal with this. It makes me fume up. When she does this, I can feel my stress level shoot up, not to mention my temper and frustration. Help!

Back to School

The kids go back to school yesterday. Lots of back to school dramas. The girl suddenly remembered her school crime last year when she saw her wallet. She remembered that she had stolen mummy’s small change from mummy’s coin box and bought some forbidden drinks with it at school (not less than 5 times! according to her) and confessed in fear and tears.

Naturally she got disciplined for it. Stealing is a No-No! It also makes us wonder where we went wrong. Were we too strict with her? too lenient? We questioned ourselves. Then we went through the other worry stages that a parent goes through.

Anyway, that's been resolved, I hope. She knows its wrong. She won’t do it again. She was honest enough to confess. She got punished for it but at the end of the day, she knows that we are very unhappy with her but we still love her despite our unhappiness. Hopefully, we got all the right messages though to her.

As for the boy, he said “Mummy, I’ve got a lot of naughty friends in school but I won’t become naughty if I mix with them. I will teach them not to be naughty when they are doing bad things.” When the girl asked him how he will teach them, he said “When they are doing bad things, I will say “HEY…..”

On the first day of school, the girl discovered that she had the same strict teacher from last year and the boy cannot remember his new teacher’s name.

The school came up with all sorts of parking and picking up kids rules and regulations.

The kids received more new books and their new time table. So on the second day, their bags are back to the weight of a tonne of stones again. They got a notice about Chinese New Year holidays and the girl has homework on the first day of school.

Yup! Back to school… Back to drama.

The Voice of Conscience

Last night the girl asked me....

"Mummy, can I don't tell you something?"


At first it was that but it later led to a confession by her and her little brother that they had both been throwing erasers at the ceiling fan.

.... which led to a confession that they cannot sleep for days and would continuously think about the bad thing they had done and feel bad if they don't confess it. Even if they were scolded for it, they would feel better if they owned up. (especially the girl who is very straight and honest, I am not so sure about the boy....)

Naturally I scolded them for throwing erasers at the ceiling fan because if was a dangerous thing to do. What if the eraser bounced back and hit the eye.

However, I praised them for being honest and taught them a new word.

"CONSCIENCE"

I told them that they were good little people for feeling bad about something bad that they had done and that the feeling was called conscience.

They were happy to learn a new word and to know that they were good people who had conscience. Hopefully, they will learn to confess more wrong doings in the future because as my girl puts it....

After telling you, I feel....aahhhh...

Exams are Over

Finally, the kids final exams are over. Yahoo! No more exams till next year. What a relief. 

Keeping them physically well enough to sit for the final exams was a worry. The girl had a fever and was vomiting on Friday. She was to sit for her first few papers on Monday. So she had to go to the doctor's on Saturday. Fortunately she recovered in time and did not pass it to her younger brother. Phew!

Her brother said that there was a boy sitting near him who vomited twice on exam day. Poor boy! Even if they were sick, the kids have to sit for the exams. The teachers will arrange for them to sit for the tests but they have to do so in the teachers' room all by themselves. 

So the greatest pressure for us during exams is making sure the kids are healthy and get enough sleep! What about you? What is your greatest exam pressure. I'm directing this question to the parents, not the kids. Funnily, somehow the kids always look so relaxed. It is the parents who look more stressed that the kids. 

Seeing Stars!

The kids love to get stars as rewards. It is extremely motivational to them. They would do anything to collect those stars. "Can we do mummy's homework?" can be frequently heard. However, I ran out of ideas what to do once they have a number of stars. I used to give them little rewards after they reach a certain number of stars. We did all sorts of silly things. I would buy small stationaries or stickers then hold a lucky draw sessionfor them etc.

It is my own fault. With so much excitement, naturally they want to work for those stars. Daddy put a stop to it because he said it was becoming too much. They were starting to do things just for the sake of those stars. They even started giving me stars! "Mummy you have 10 stars because you are so nice to us today" or "Bad mommy, no more stars for you." So we stopped for a while because the star reward system had started to backfire.

However they did not forget the stars. Every now and then they would ask about them. Recently they did some work and when I marked them, I gave them some stars for good work. They recorded the stars and said they would like to start the star reward system again. So I told them ok since they were so enthusiastic about it but I said I would not be buying them anything new as rewards.

They agreed. They came up with a new idea. They said they would use the stars to "buy" things around the house that they like, usually extra stationaries and knick knacks that I keep in the cupboard. So now everyday, its "How many stars does this pencil cost, mummy?" etc while mummy would say "If you don't behave, I will take away your stars." which usually will get this reaction "Oh, no! I must make sure no stars get cancelled!" Bad mommy. ;)

Learn how to make Origami Stars. They are fun and easy to do plus these lucky stars or 3D stars have special meaning.

1 Star stands for love
2 Stars means love you very much
3 Stars means missing loved one
10 Stars represents need or want love
16 Stars means love to remember always or cannot forget
99 Stars stands for infinite Love
730 Stars means love only you
999 Stars represents Success

Watch Furby 2012 dance to the Gangnam Style in the video on this post.

Careless Mistakes during test

My girl often makes careless mistakes during tests as most kids her age do I suppose. However, yesterday she brought back her Maths paper and I saw that she had lost over 10 marks due to carelessness. Oops!

It was the first time she had to do an objective paper by marking on a separate paper. She had gotten the answers right on the question paper itself but when transferring the answers onto the objective answer sheet, she somehow put in the wrong answers. She did so for 5 questions. Thats 5 marks.  She also forgot to transfer an answer. Thats another 1 mark. 6 correct answers but marked wrongly.

She miscalculated a very easy sum. 1 mark. She got tricked because she did not read the question carefully enough. 1 mark. (These 2 marks lost are excusable and not as bad as the above. Anyone can make those sorts of mistakes. Still it is not because she does not know it. She knows the answers when I asked her to look at them again and straight away she spotted her mistake.)

Finally, she got 3 marks deducted because she forgot to put in some maths equation or answers even though she had done the workings and got all the answers correct. Again, all answers were correct but marks deducted because incomplete.

When I spoke to her, I saw that she was going to get defensive and start arguing "But mummy, I checked. I used the ruler and checked line by line when transferring the answers." I told her that obviously there was something wrong with the manner in which she had checked because she made 6 wrong markings but she was adamant that she had checked correctly and carefully and she does not know how to make it better.

Instead of scolding her, I suggested to her that in future, instead of checking in that manner using a ruler, she should try to look at the numbers carefully before marking the answer sheet. "Isn't it such a waste that you are smart and studied so hard but then you lost so many marks due to not being careful enough?" She lost her defensiveness and agreed that it was indeed a waste. Hopefully she will not make so many careless mistakes in the future.

Though this is her first time doing answers on an objective answer sheet, her father had reminded her to check carefully before marking the answers. No matter how often we remind her, she still makes careless mistakes every time (which is acceptable for which kid does not make careless mistakes?) but this time, more than 10 marks lost due to carelessness is certainly a waste. She had studied so hard.

Enjoy the times when they are young

I have often said this and I have often said how time flies. They grow up so quickly. I can't stress this enough.

How simple life is when they are young. You can take off and go for a holiday whenever you want. You can sleep in or sleep late or sleep whenever you want.

Once they are in school, things are so different. There are so many new challenges. I feel it now, even more so. This month, my boy has only been to school for 1 day due to his falling sick. The girl missed 6 days of school. There is a lot of catching up work to do. Teachers to call.

Now that they are in school, I have to deal with school bullying, fears of school, fears of teachers, homework, waking up early, getting enough sleepy, juggling precious time, the list goes on. It is a whole different ball game.

So enjoy the times when they are young, when life is so simple and all you have to worry about is whether they are sleeping well, eating well and pooping well.

Another one going to Primary School

Today I went to register or rather confirm my boy's placing for Standard One at his sister's school. As before, I did not know how to write his Chinese name but this time I have a little helper. Yup! His sister wrote his Chinese name on the form for him. :)

How quickly the time has flown. Next year I shall be one stressed and harried mother of two Primary school children in a Chinese Primary School. Wish me luck! :P

Chinese school has not turned out to be the horrible place I had envisioned. Apart from the homework, the teachers are not the fire breathing dragons with talons that I had feared. They are hardworking, diligent and approachable, so far. I hope it will remain that way. It all remains on the teachers you get. This year my girl is fortunate to have a very kind and understanding class teacher. That really helps a lot!

The kids in her school are a happy lot who are quite disciplined. So far so good. :)

A Little Boy with a Conscience

"Mummy, I accidentally drank the toothpaste. Now you won't give me the toothpaste anymore"

I knew it could not have been an "accident" because he particularly loved that brand of toothpaste given by the dentist because of its smell and taste compared to the normal mint toothpaste. So I pulled him aside and told him this...

"Did you purposely or accidentally drink it? I was not there to see so I don't know. Only you know. Only you know whether you did the right thing or wrong thing."

I pointed to his chest and told him...

"Good people know when they did the wrong thing and they will feel very bad inside and sorry. Only bad people like thieves and robbers sometimes do not feel that what they have done is wrong, they do not feel bad or sorry inside."

A moment later, he ran to me with tears in his eyes.

"Mummy, I am good inside. I purposely drank the toothpaste. Now you won't give me the toothpaste anymore."

I gave him a hug and said that it was very bad to purposely drink all the dirty brushing teeth water along with the toothpaste but he is indeed a very good boy to know that what he did was wrong and feel sorry.

Now.... the question is...... should I still give him the toothpaste????