from around here

10 seconds at a time

November 30, 2016

We’re almost into December, you guys. Most years, I get to December and it feels like it’s too soon but not this year. This year is like that mannequin challenge scene in X-men where everything else is frozen in time and I’m blitzing like Quicksilver. Having to Quicksilver it for a whole year is exhausting.

For the most part, 2016 has been hard.

Okay, not like 2009 kind of hard because that still holds the record for being rock bottom in a very deep, dark hole. 2016 is more of a cavernous valley that’s scary and menacing, but also just pretty enough to make it bearable. So not the worst place in the world to be in but not somewhere you want to stay in for a long time.

I think transitioning to 5 kids blindsided me a little; I wasn’t prepared for it to be this difficult. I mean, 4 kids was intense but I still mostly had a grip on things. With 5, I’m operating at full capacity all of the time trying to keep things from spinning out of control, and I’m not even really doing that good of a job. Things are falling out around me and I can’t seem to catch them all in time.

Like Finn has all these unsigned permission slips that I keep meaning to get to but don’t, and the other day, he went to school with 2 extra shirts and no pants so he couldn’t change into fresh pants after his shower. Poor baby doesn’t ask for much, just a pair of fresh pants to change into after his shower and I couldn’t even make it happen for him.

Then there was that time where I left my 2 big kids waiting in school for an hour because I didn’t read the memo that said they were finishing early that day. I was on autopilot until I got a call from Kirsten who was like, “Mom are you coming to pick us? We’ve been sitting here for an hour and everyone has gone home.” When I got there, there was dramatic sad music playing in my head as I walked towards my abandoned children sitting on the floor of an empty foyer waiting for a mom who didn’t show up.

I haven’t slept in 6 months, drank way too much coffee and I constantly feel bad that I haven’t spent enough time hanging out with each kid and now they’re all going to grow up having to deal with the crushing weight of parental neglect. It’s sobering to know that I’ve hit my ceiling and this is about as much as I’ve got to give.

The worst part of it is that this is everything I’ve wanted. 10 years ago, if I had known that I’d be right here with all that I have, I would have told you that I’d be the happiest girl in the world. And I am. In my moments of clarity, I know that this is the dream.

Being here with these 5 tiny humans that bring me so much joy, in our little home that’s safe and warm and filled with love and mayhem and baby laughter, this is all that I want. I should be happier.

Except that the thing about getting what you want is that you have to take everything else that comes along with it. The accompanying tantrums that come with my 2-year-old’s surprise kisses. The squabbles that happen right after those lovey sibling moments. Want to love on this sweet, sweet baby? Well, get ready to have fun with the 2-hour-crying-baby-zombie-night-walks that eat away at your soul.

It’s a package deal, equal parts awesome and difficult.

I love that scene in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where she said “A person can stand just about anything for 10 seconds…then you just start on a new 10 seconds. All you got to do is take it 10 seconds at a time.” It’s spot on. In 10-second chunks, things become a lot more bearable. I can get my anxiety under control when I only have to deal with it for 10 seconds at a time. So when it gets too much to take, I breathe and make it to 10 before starting over again.

I’m the only one responsible for my own happiness and life goes on one way or another. Some days are harder than others. Some years are harder than others. But life keeps going on and maybe when I wake up tomorrow, it’s going to be a really good day. If not, we’ll figure out a way to get through that one too.

34 years of life has taught me that if I keep showing up and getting through the hard days, I’ll eventually get to the good ones.

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More than one kind of smart

November 25, 2016

When I first had kids, I was convinced that I’d be relaxed about academics. I would foster the love for learning by MAKING IT FUN! We would enjoy learning! It would be easy!!

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Then they started Primary School and everything changed because suddenly, there were all these tests and assessments and they came home with grades that induced a mild panic attack.

3/10 for spelling, check. 1/8 for 听写, check. 5/30 for Chinese mid year paper, welcome-to-reality check. Apparently this was the 2nd worst grade in the entire school, and while I was going through the paper with Truett, I tried to be all encouraging, like “Let’s start with the ones you got right…um, not bad, you got these 5 correct” and he sheepishly admitted, “Actually I just anyhowly guess the answers, so lucky right, got 5 correct marks for free.”

After some extensive deep breathing, I discovered a tiger mom side of me I never knew existed. The Make-Learning-Fun philosophy was immediately replaced by Go-Write-5-Pages-Of-Chinese-Words.

I realised that it’s hard to be relaxed when my kids come home with terrible grades because I belong to a generation that’s conditioned to equate good grades with success in life. Back in my time, there was no Joseph Schooling to blaze a path for aspiring sportsmen, or a Priscilla Shunmugam (founder and designer of womenswear label Ong Shunmugam), or a Royston Tan (acclaimed Singapore filmmaker), or even a Tan Min-Liang (founder of gaming company, Razer Inc). It was all about “study hard and do well in school = a successful life”.

I’m trying to strike a balance with this because these days, we know better. IQ and book smarts are not the only indicators of a child’s ability and being awful at certain subjects is not the end of the world. It just means that they’re good at other areas, so as parents, our job is to help them identify their strengths and develop the areas that they’re talented at.

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So you want to nurture your child’s talents? Where do you even start with this?

Step 1 is figuring out exactly what these talents are.

Apart from observing their interests and inclinations, there are several aptitude assessment tools available, such as MIDAS™ (Multiple Intelligences Developmental Scales). Based on Harvard professor, Dr. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, MIDAS™ is an assessment to help identify a child’s smarts from as early as 3 years old. Comprising 27 simple questions, this questionnaire will give you an indication of the areas they’re good at. You may answer it based on your observations of your child or if your child is old enough (e.g. 7 years old and above), he/she may answer it on their own.

The 8 different types of smarts include Word Smart, Body Smart, Logic Smart, Music Smart, Nature Smart, People Smart, Picture Smart, and Self Smart.

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I got Truett, Kirsten and Finn to try the MIDAS™ test and it’s fascinating to see how different they are.

Truett

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I’m not at all surprised that Tru ranks high on Logic Smart. He loves figuring out how things work, taking stuff apart and fixing them up again, playing games like Minecraft, working on experiments, that sort of thing. He’s that kid who will try to figure out how a magic trick works during a magic show.

Right now, his dream job is to be a freestyle Lego builder or a professional gamer. He’s all “But I don’t need to know Chinese to do these things” and I’m like “Well, there might be a new Chinese computer game in the future and then you’ll thank me.”

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Kirsten

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Kirsten is pretty much an all rounder who’s decently good in most areas. She enjoys reading, art, music, dance, gaming, and even sports. I suppose this means that she probably won’t have any difficulty finding something that she loves and is good at eventually.

I was a little surprised about the Nature Smart bit, but now that I think about it, she does love flowers and she’s always trying to like grow stuff like tao geh (beansprouts) at home. This is good to know – we’ll spend some time learning about nature and watching Nat Geo during the holidays.

 

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Finn

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Finn is a classic Picture Smart kid. Since he was little, he’s loved puzzles and pictures. He’s got a great eye for photography, colours and visual aesthetics, often telling me what looks nice and what doesn’t (and he’s spot on too!). I can just imagine him as a dreamy hipster type photographer/filmmaker/artist with skinny jeans and backcombed floppy hair.

That or he’ll join Kirsten in her plant growing business.

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While it looks like none of my kids are going to be a rock star or an olympic medalist, this is an excellent start in helping them to figure out what they might enjoy doing when they grow up. Maybe one of them will invent something really cool, or write a New York Times bestseller, or y’know, grow plants.

Finding out their inclinations early gives them a valuable head start in pursuing these areas while they’re still young because it takes hours and hours of practice in order to get really good at something.

Which is not to say that academics aren’t important because they still need to learn important lessons like cultivating a good work ethic, applying themselves by working hard, and developing tenacity. So there will still be quite a lot of Chinese writing and assessment books in their immediate future, but at the same time, we’ll also be working hard on their other smarts.

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And if it turns out that despite their best efforts, they’re terrible at certain subjects, that’s ok because there are other stuff that they’re really good at. They’re going to be ok. :)

Interested to discover the type of intelligence that your child has? Of course you are. Head on over to UOB KidSmart to try the MIDAS™ profile. 

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from around here

The student has become the master

November 16, 2016

Baby Theo’s least favourite number is 3 because holding up 3 fingers requires the kind of motor control and isolated muscle power he doesn’t have. And because I’m a terrible parent, I’d always offer him up to 3 pieces of his favourite food, like “show mommy how many gummies you would like – 1, 2, or 3?”

“FIVE!! Um, no, TEN!! I WANT TEN GUMMIES!” he’d yell enthusiastically.

“Good try, but the maximum number is 3 and I need to see those fingers.”

He will struggle to contort his fingers into variations of a misshapen claw until finally, he’ll give up and show me 2 fingers while declaring “I don’t like 3.”

Guess who just mastered the 3 finger move? Yeah, this guy. He still needs his other hand to hold down the pinky but this works too.

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It looks like we have another foodie in the house.

I wasn’t planning to start baby Hayley on solids for another month but she’s been actively trying to eat all of our food, which makes me feel so bad because every time I’m stuffing food into my mouth, she’ll be trailing it and trying to move her mouth closer to the deliciousness that’s just out of her reach like the little chomping fish from the hungry fish game.

I couldn’t give her fried chicken so she got the next best thing: peas and quinoa.

At first she was all like “Wow all this food for me???” and then when it reached her mouth, poor baby was like “WHAT IS THIS ABOMINATION??? BLEARRGHHH.” See, that’s the mark of a foodie right there.

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The next day, she tried some pureed pumpkin with baby rice. Much better. Then sweet potato, avocado, banana, spinach, applesauce. Yes, yes, yes, no, yes.

Also, Kirsten is an amazing baby feeder. I don’t even have to do anything around here anymore.

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So this was baby Theo 18 months ago learning to say his first word.

And now the student has become the master.

I will just say that if my tubes weren’t so successfully tied, we’ll be talking baby #6 right about now.

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