We always feel a bit uncomfortable when our friends ask Steev “so what books are you reading now?” and Steev would just shrug the question off with an inaudible mumble under his breath, an answer I always hope our friends won’t hear .

Truth is we’ve been trying to get him to read without much success, or so we thought. Steev and Raine were both early readers. Before age 3, they were able to read simple Peter & Jane books and were progressing nicely up the number series and onto Enid Blyton books.

Skye started late because I was so busy with the two older ones and she always being the ‘baby’, I didn’t realize she was already 3 and still couldn’t read a word!

Today, Raine and Skye are my two bookworms always reading, always hungry for more books. Steev, on the other hand, has probably read all of two books in his entire school life.

I only realized recently that we’ve probably wrongly accused him of not reading when all this while, he’s been soaking up technical and technology articles on the internet. Okay lah, bad mommy thought he was only playing games!

Today I read in The Star that many of our schoolkids read only two books a year! It’s a shame, too many distractions competing for their attention these days. The trick is to start them young and consistently build on their interest from there (how to get kids to start reading?).

I did it the hard way but it really doesn’t have to be that hard. Funetics actually has a phonics-based Early Reading Program that’s not only a great place to start but also lots of fun for both parent and child.

It also makes a valued Christmas gift, or anytime gift, for friends with kids. It contains 81 lessons from early letter recognition to preschool concepts to reading and writing.

Like I always say, each child is different and this kit contains lots of interesting games and activities to suit your child’s learning style and allows you to pace the lessons according to your schedule and his/hers.

The printed version comes with a free audio CD of the program. You can try out 3 lessons for free. Shipping is available worldwide and it’s free for those living in the US.

Many working parents don’t have time to figure out how to get their kids interested in books and a guided program like Funetics is just the thing to get started.

If you liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed for more hip parenting posts. Oh and do leave me a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

This school term has barely ended, and already tuition teachers are asking me to confirm my kids’ spots in next year’s classes. Yes, they do start early and they’re making a kiasu (scaredy cat) out of me! Seriously !

Unlike many parents, I say blek to tutors with proven A track records because some use the wicked stepmother approach which I’m so against.

A’s are nice and a great bragging point for parents but not when they’re forced out of the poor kid!

Personally I prefer tutors who create an active interest in the subject and take the trouble to explain things through simply and clearly. I’d be crazy to pay someone to kill my child’s interest in learning, won’t I?

My kids have done okay so far with minimal tuition. One or two classes, that’s all. Like I always say, no point cramming their growing years with tuition and more stress after school. If they can manage or if I can help them, there’s no need for tuition. I find kids try harder on their own and when they’re not just wait to be spoonfed.

Our rationale for tuition is based on how the subjects are taught at school, and how confident the kids are about doing well. I use their grades and their feedback to assess their tuition needs.

Come to think of it, I hardly had any tuition in my time and I turned out okay. See? But I know some of you will jump on me and say, yeah but things were different then, it’s so much more competitive now.

True, but at least we got childhood memories to share with our kids and their kids from our rocking chairs. I wonder what our over-scheduled kids these days will remember of their childhoods? Childhood? What childhood?

My girls want to learn to play the guitar. I’m both amused and excited.

Amused because they’ve been making me watch Simple Plan videos every night till I’m blue in the face… (not hard to guess where their inspiration is coming from).

Excited because I’m thinking it’d be fun to learn it with them.

I’m a piano dropout myself, not proud of it but I got all the way up to Grade 5 practical and Grade 7 theory.

I’ve done practically nothing with the piano since then. That’s why I’ve never pushed the kids into music or ballet classes.

It’s pointless making them learn something they’re not interested in or have no use for, simply for the sake of keeping up with the herd.

But since the girls have expressed an interest in the guitar now, we’re kinda thrilled. It’d be great.

Question is how difficult is it to start from scratch? I know of many people who’ve learnt it on their own without formal lessons. Should we try to learn it on our own, or should we take up guitar lessons?

Wendy wrote this comment on my previous post, “Your kids are the quiet type? ALL of them? How did you manage that?”

Um, I’m not sure really but yes, I can honestly say my three kids never ran around the store or threw tantrums if they didn’t get what they wanted.

They never asked to buy anything. In fact, it was always DH and me who’d ask if they liked a certain toy or book and offer to buy it for them.

They never fought over things. Maybe it’s because we never told them this is your book or this is your toy, so it’s understood that whatever we buy is meant to be shared.

I’m not a particularly strict disciplinarian, at least not in the sense of brandishing the cane. Practically every Asian household with kids has a cane though.

I had one too, kindly provided by a well-meaning aunt who says if I’m ever to raise good kids, I must have a cane. Well, don’t tell her but I’ve never used it and I can’t even find it now .

I’m not sure how it all worked out so well and I wish I had tips to share. Thing is I didn’t consciously set out to ‘tame’ them but along the way, I probably did something right .

We’re still waiting for Skye to say, yes, I want my own handphone. But she hasn’t said it yet . She says she doesn’t need one and it’s a hassle to have to take care of it so it doesn’t get lost.

My 3 teens had a shared handphone up until this year when Steev started college and only because he needs to communicate with us about daily transport arrangements.

Before that, we had one handphone for the 3 of them. Whoever was going out somewhere (school activities, friend’s house) would take the phone.

When Steev got his own phone, the girls started sharing the other phone. They still are now. But recently I got my new handphone (see, pretty cool, eh?)…

… so we’ve got a hand-me-down phone for the girls now. My old handphone is also a pocket PC phone so we thought Raine, being older, should get that while Skye takes over the shared handphone.

Skye is 12 and next year, she’ll have more activities and running around to do when she goes to secondary school. I would feel much better if she’s just a call away.

Many of her friends at school have had their own handphones since they were, what, 8 years old?? A handphone at that age is excessive, if you ask me. What do you think? When’s the right time for a kid to get their own handphone?

Every so often, a mommy blogger would raise questions about whether to send her kids to a Chinese school or a national school. On many occasions, it’s been pretty obvious they’ve already set their minds on Chinese schools but they just need to hear it from other parents to reaffirm their own decisions.

Just before Steev, my eldest, started primary school, I too was under a tiny amount of muted pressure from well-meaning family and friends to send him to a Chinese school.

I say tiny and muted because DH and I are notoriously known, on both sides of our families, to be rebels - with a cause, or so we’d like to think . We’ve left deep and lasting impressions in our family scrapbooks for not walking the walk and not conforming to the norms.

But just to satisfy ourselves that we’d considered all available options before coming to a decision (I didn’t want this to come back and haunt me later), I went to a Chinese school nearby to visit with the principal and check things out for myself.

Her first question was ‘does he have two years of Chinese kindergarten background to start him off? If not, he’ll have big problems catching up with our curriculum’.

Well, my answer was no. So I reckon her comment pretty much answered what would logically have been my next question. My biggest concern, though, was not with Steev catching up. It was with other, bigger issues.

First off, because DH and I are both English-educated, it’d be mission impossible for us to guide them. That would mean having to subject Steev to a merry-go-round of tuition (where oftentimes the tutor is not teaching but doing the children’s homework for them. I’ve seen this with my own eyes). So where’s there time for the poor child to have a childhood if they’re being shuttled endlessly from one tuition class to the next?

Then there’s that insane mountain of homework. Friends were telling us their children were frequently up past 1 or 2 a.m. plogging away at ‘homework they just can’t finish’. And which would inadvertently end up with their mothers finishing it up for them so that they could all get some sleep.

So what’s the point in that? Homework is meant to reinforce learning, to gauge a child’s level of understanding and to enable them to put into practice what they’ve learnt. If Mom’s doing the homework, what possible benefit could there be for the child? None, so far as I can see.

Then there was the issue of discipline. We don’t believe in beating our kids, so there’s no reason at all for us to even think about sending our kids to school for someone else to beat them for us . At any rate, I just can’t see forgetting to bring to do their homework once or twice as any major indiscipline, or scoring below 85% in an exam as something that warrants beating.

Skye, my youngest daughter, is a kindergarten dropout for this very reason. Skye was slapped by a Chinese school teacher when she and some of the other kids weren’t synchronized in their dance routine for the school concert. I pulled Skye out of school that very day after telling the principal off !!

Beating or caning is never the answer. It only teaches children that hitting’s okay. Violence begets violence. So what are we really teaching our kids here?

A highly-controlled highly-regimented environment with little free time for anything other than homework and tuition would stifle a child’s sense of creativity and expression.

Worse, it might even kill their interest in learning and that would be tragic. It would be like stuffing them into a cookie cutter, only to have them come out the other end all in one shape, stiff and unbending.

Not every child is cut out for these highly-stressful environments, and many don’t do well and lose their self-esteem and self-confidence. Six years is a long time to a kid. So where’s the fun in learning? Where’s the fun of discovery? They lose interest in learning.

Well, when all is said and done, I’m pretty sure DH and I have made the right decision with our kids. If we’re wrong, well, they can always pick up Chinese anytime and still have a childhood to tell their kids about.

Put simply, you can never get your childhood back but you can always pick up a language, or two or three even. But then, that’s just us .

We walked past a Tumbletots advertisement the other day and it reminded me of the time when Steev was a wee toddler. Like all eager new parents, we were so excited about his new-found mobility that we thought, hey, why not sign him up with Tumbletots, it would be so cute and he can discover and develop even more mobility skills!!

We couldn’t wait to get started. They gathered the kids to sit in a circle. When the song and dance began, everyone clapped and sang as the kids stood in front of their parent in the circle and wiggled to the music.

Steev stood there for a minute. Unwiggling! Then he started toddling out of the circle. I pulled him back gently. All the other kids were still in their spots, wiggling their cute little bottoms. All except Steev who couldn’t wait to get away!

It was kinda distracting for the other kids and the teacher was starting to give me wierd looks. Something to the effect of ‘hello, can you control your kid please?’. But frankly, no matter how many times I pulled him back, he still tried to break out of that circle!

Finally after I was done singing, we moved to the play structures. Whew! I happily handed Steev over to DH. If DH thought he could do better, well, !

At the play structures, the parents lifted the kids one by one to the structures and ran alongside to cheer them on. Steev was clearly uninterested but because he didn’t want to fall off the structure, he did just one round and couldn’t wait to get off.

He didn’t cry or yell or anything. The poor thing! He just quietly insisted he was happier to be out of this whole bit of nonsense.

Actually a child’s likes and dislikes begins to show quite early in life. I asked him about it after we saw the signboard the other day. He vaguely remembers climbing those structures, and laughs.

Says my almost-17 going on 25 year old, “Aiyoh, Mom, why you all waste your money? Those things are so bo-rring and so childish!”.

Got a Tumbletot or whatever-active-play story to share?

I often see my neighbor’s kids playing outside their house. Yes, on the road outside. Sometimes it’s badminton, sometimes it’s football, sometimes they’re just cycling around.

My kids, on the other hand, were only allowed as far as the garden when they were that age (around 6-10). Even then, they were hardly ever outside except occasionally to cycle or jump rope or kick a ball around.

When they were toddlers, we’d go to the park sometimes if the evenings weren’t too blazing hot. But I never let my kids out on the road to play. With all the warnings and reminders, my kids know they must never venture past that invisible rope just beyond our gate.

It’s a necessary precaution, I feel. You just never know when a vehicle is going to turn the corner and come speeding down the road. And then, who can you blame? The irresponsible driver or yourself?

Do you let your kids play on the road?

With global food prices escalating rapidly, it’s the kids that I feel sorry for. Ultimately I think they are the ones who will suffer most especially those in the third world countries.

In the news today is a family giving up their 11-year-old son to the orphanage in the hopes he will have a better life than if he were to remain in the village. Both his parents are still alive but they have a string of other younger children that they can’t afford to feed.

So they figured he’d be better off at the orphanage where he can have proper care and a proper education. It’s heart-breaking to watch the youngster, fighting back tears, preparing to leave the people he loves and a life he’s familiar with.

It must not have been an easy decision for his parents either. But increasingly it seems parents are seeing this as one solution to the high cost of raising kids.

I tend to look at this as part of a bigger problem. Parents who can’t afford to provide for their kids should seriously consider contraceptives. They should be educated about the responsibilities of parenting and be given the information to make choices before they even have those kids.

One of Raine’s friends from school spent Mother’s Day. alone. at home. while her parents were out on a date to celebrate Mother’s Day. That’s like a bit of a surprise to Raine since we’ve always celebrated Mother’s Day and other occasions together as a family, no matter how busy we are.

When Raine told me this, she said she feels sorry for her friend whose parents seem to use money as a replacement for parental love. But what’s the point of her parents giving her money, money, money to buy anything she wants but they’re never there to do things with her?

Yes, it’s a sad fact these days, isn’t it? Even my 15-year-old thinks so. Came lunch time on Mother’s Day, her friend found herself home alone (her elder brother had gone out) with nothing to eat. So she called her parents. They bluntly told her to just go find something to eat and not to disturb their day out!

Her father is planning to take up a job overseas. She asks what’s wrong with the job he has right now and why can’t he stay? His reply, he’ll be making even more money if he goes. But she doesn’t want him to.

She’s trying to reach out to her parents. What she needs is love, Raine tells me, not money, but her parents just don’t get it! What good is money if they don’t care about her or how she’s doing in school or that she just wants to be a family?