I attended a talk by a child psychologist about more than a year ago. His targeted audience was kindegarten teachers and principals, and his main talk was about starting kids early on their education. Education here does not mean reading and writing. It means communicating with them.
Note: I think this is a big deal because I can still find people my age who are unable to communicate properly with other humans. So...
Anyways, he said several things that really got stuck in my head until now. I'm sharing them here, so I won't forget it after I get my epidural shot:
1 Children between the age of 3 to 6 has the highest learning curve.
That means they absorb everything like a "spongie-bob square pants" sponge. So expose them to every language and dialect you know. They will sort everything out eventually. The point is to start them young. Like when they are 6 months old. Ya, seriously.
2 Teach your children when they are still teachable.
This is a bit tricker to explain but here goes: Beat the crap out of them and teach them the correct moral values when they are still listening to you. Not when they are sixteen, ready to leave the house and be superstars and answering you in the deathliest tone they can muster while eating the food you cook and living under the roof you give them. It is easier to 'mould' them at 7 than when they are 17.
Don't spare the rod when they are 70 cm tall and then threaten to disown them when they are 180 cm tall. Get it?
3 Children are capable of digesting whatever it is that you throw at them. But remember that whatever their outcome is, it is your own doing.
Ok, maybe I made this part up but in short, it is your responsibility of how your child turns out in the end. No, they are not born with all the knowledge locked inside their heads, just waiting to get out. You feed them, they eat, they learn, they grow. If you don't feed them, don't expect them to be able to tell the difference between a toilet roll and a doughnut.
And if you don't teach them, they will not be able to learn. So teach them the things you want them to learn. But always... teach!!
4 Despite what they try to tell you, there IS an in-between zone.
The older generation has two very annoying sayings:
(a) He's too young lar. (Canto: kueh zhong sai lar / Mandarin: ta hai xiao / Hokkien: yi ko seh han ko-h...
(b) He's old enough. (Canto: tai ko zai lor. / Mandarin: ta zhang da liao / Hokkien: yi eh hiao eh lar...
The first situation lasts from newborn until 12 years old (for the youngest in the family, it is 'forever-ver-ver-ver').
The second situation lasts from 13 until they die.
So the older generation do not really teach their kids what to do in certain situations, leaving the kids to fend for themselves. So for every situation the parents face with their kids: their answers are either, "he's too young to understand lar" or "he's old enough to figure it out on his own", rendering their parental skills useless, and they themselves irrelevant.
I'm not saying this is not good, most of us turn out pretty alright, right? Ya, until you read the report about kids having sex before they enter secondary school. O_o Don'd deny it. I know you know about the youngest father in the world, at 13 years old. Or was it 12?
Anyways, enough digressing. If you do not want to teach your kids the right things or the right values, better don't have them, ok? On that subject, if you can't keep the kids alive, all the more reason to STOP HAVING THEM!
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From TheStarOnline, March 27:
Baby dies, drunk parents forgot to feed him
By STEPHEN THEN
MIRI: A baby boy, less than a month old, starved to death after his parents allegedly forgot to feed him because they were too drunk.The baby died in the intensive-care unit of Miri Hospital yesterday morning and a police report has been lodged.
Police now want to question the parents, in their early 30s from a longhouse in southern Sarawak, who came to Miri to work and were renting a house at a low-cost housing scheme near the Sarawak-Brunei Highway, some 12km north of the city centre.
Relatives found the baby unconscious in the house and rushed him to the hospital at about 3am on Wednesday.
Miri deputy OCPD Supt Ismail Paduka Idris confirmed that the baby died in the morning.
“We are investigating claims that the parents had indulged in a prolonged drinking spree and had neglected the baby.
“Initial investigations show that the baby might have been so severely neglected that he suffered fatal consequences.
“We want to find out whether this was due to carelessness,” Supt Ismail said.
The couple also have a three-year-old daughter.
----All I can say is, they have to get that 3 year old daughter away from those 'parents'. Oh, and at this point, the parents have refused a post mortem on the baby and police will not be charging them for criminal intent (since it was not their intent to let the baby die during their drinking spree wah).
Hello? Criminal negligence?
Signing off: Left wondering why do people have kids they do not care about?
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