2018
Ting Ting
Ting Ting was 5 years old. She developed so fast and I lost track of her developmental milestone as I missed blogging about it. So a bit regret now...Anyway, I will pick up where I left. I remembered that I was struggling to manage her emotional outburst during this period. The difficulty to manage her emotional outburst also set me thinking if I been a good mother. A lot of self-doubt and stressors.
Work
A mixture of good and bad year for me. Experienced a traumatic incident @ work. Was emotionally affected. However sometimes, it is only through experiencing and overcoming challenges that we grow. Through the incident, I built more insight about myself, learnt to accept things as it happened and letting go of some unhelpful thoughts and felt better. Guess the reason I could get over it so fast despite what happened was also because of the support of my supervisor and bosses at work. Most importantly, my family is my greatest support. Really thankful of the helping hands extended to me during that period.
It was not an easy year but we managed to scrap through.
2019
Ting Ting
Ting Ting was 6 years old. We finally decided to withdraw her from the Yamaha piano lessons. It was not an easy decision as we already invested quite a substantial amount for the past 2 years and it was a great pity to give up.
However, as the piano lessons progress, she started to display resistance. As it was conducted in a group setting, she had difficulty to catch up with the teachings. We witnessed her from dragging to attend to finally refusing to attend despite us using soft tactics. She won't even respond to positive reinforcement like rewards to bring herself to attend the lessons.
What really compel us to make the decision was one of her meltdown outside the centre. That really set us thinking what do we as parents hope to achieve by imposing our will upon our child when she was so resistance to attend and in distress mode? What is our intention of getting her to attend piano lessons? Is playing piano her interest and strength? What are our hopes for our child as parents in the first place?
Our original intention of enrolling her to piano class was because she showed interest in music and singing, and furthermore, we read about learning music at young age helps the child development cognitively and emotionally. But well, our good intention did not turn out to be intended.
Our hopes is simply for her to be happy and find happiness in doing things which interest her, allowing her to apply and develop her strengths and passion. So how can she be happy when we imposed upon her to do what she disliked to do? After weighing our priorities, we decided that her happiness is the most important to us. Thus we withdrew her from the piano lesson.
After stopping the piano lesson, I noticed that her temperament improved and able to better control her emotions, thus lesser outburst. So we decided to take it easy and pace with her interests. She wanted to attend art lesson as she has a passion for drawing. She can draw quite well for her age and she's been drawing everyday consistently. The things she drew can be things like flowers, houses, family, Disney characters and comics. She also enjoys attending Akido lesson as there is one Akido centre near my house and every time she passed by, she will keep looking at it and so interested. Therefore we had enrolled her to the arts and Akido lessons. There is a spark difference of her attitude when attending the lessons now. Totally 0 resistance and most importantly, she enjoyed the lessons.
She is able to read books by herself already. Her favourite collection was Dork Diaries. I remembered when she started sharing with me about her crush in her preschool, I was so shock. What does a 6 year old child knows about crush? But well, I learnt not to be reactive towards her sharing. The fact she willing to share means she felt safe. Thus I encouraged her to share more about her crush and what she likes about her crush to understand her better. She told me that she liked her crush because that boy was kind, humorous, likes to joke but not trying to be funny. Oh well, I guess I need to constantly learn and relearn parenting knowledge and skills to cope with her developmental and emotional needs.
She had grown to be a sociable gal, able to make friends with ease and open to share about her likes and dislikes. I observed that she seems to be more matured than her friends. Often, she talked like an adult and able to hold conversation with others
She finally graduated from her preschool. She performed well during her year end concert. We were so proud of her.
Work
It was a relatively ok year for me. I was able to better manage the stress @ work and felt less stressed as I gained more competency. I finally decided to take the plunge to take my Masters by doing one module first in the last quarter of 2019 to improve my professional knowledge and skills. Took 1 module to test waters first if I could cope with the work and family commitments. I managed to pass the module with quite good results. Felt pleased about it and I shall continue to work hard for the rest of my 5 modules which I be starting in 2020.
2020
Ting Ting
She started her P1, which is a major transition for her from preschool to primary school. The year started with a mishap. She was sick after Christmas towards the end of Dec19. She had sudden high fever which lasted for 2-3 weeks, and the doctor diagnosed her as having bronchitis It stretched till she started school. Thus she had to skip her school opening and missed her first 2 weeks of class. We were so worried about her as this strain of fever was so persistent and we had to go KKH A&E twice and saw the GP twice. First time she was sick for so long too.
However upon her recovery, she quickly adjusted to the school environment despite the late start up. She likes going to school and shared that her form teacher is the nicest teacher she ever had. She now have great interest in Math which is to my surprise as she had not appeared to be interested in Maths previously. Her report card showed that she achieved "accomplished" in every category in her Math subject too surprisingly. It shows that having a good teacher is important to cultivate interest in the child's learning.
She is also able to integrate well socially in the school. Except that she was disturbed by one girl in her class who displayed some dismaying behaviour (e.g. showing others her poop, touched other classmates with her saliva and other unhygienic behaviours). She was also disturbed by her student care centre teacher who shouted at and scolded them whenever they misbehaved and she was implicated too.
We tried not to intervene in her school affairs and matters as we believe in letting the child to learn how to cope and manage differences and conflicts. She has to learn her way as we parents cannot always be with them to help them solve the problems. Instead, we make it a habit to listening to her stories in school everyday to let her share and ventilate, providing the emotional support instead.
Work
Felt more able to cope with the stress and workload nowadays as I'm focusing more in my self-care. Enjoying my studies and learnt a lot for my professional and personal development. I see this year as an opportunity for me to unlearn, learn and relearn. A lot of ideas come into my mind and I shall share if time permits.
Oh well, that's our updates in the past 2 years.
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