The origin of the thoughts and reflections behind this post pretty much came from a recent catch up session with Buddy. We managed to catch Iron Man2 and sat around for some teh terik exchanging recent developments. What never fails to come up during our talks is his little darling princess Erinne (aka my lovely god daughter).
Children are often a source of both joys and worries for parents and that is true no matter how old the child is. You can be 60+ and your Pa or Ma at 90+ and they will still worry for you. That's how great and unconditional the care that our parents have for us. What changes over the years is how we transform into the person we are, and through our actions and with our age, our parents give up more of their controls and influences over us. That's to say, the more responsible we act, the more assured our parents are, the more they will be willing to let go.
Yiting never fails to bring a sense of pride to Buddy's face, she's a quick-witted lass (and not a single person who knows her will deny her that) and Bud's real proud of it. But what's worrying him is also how that little lady is not using it to her advantage. Instead of tapping into that advantage to explore more things, to gain new knowledge, to maximise her potential, she chooses not to, she balks at the very thought of the effort needed from her.
That is definitely one thing that most parents fret over ~ no parent wants to shortchange their kiddo if sky's the limit for them but the children themselves also have to reach out for the sky. If early childhood can be compared to a drama production, the parents are the ones setting the stage, creating the backdrop and providing the scripts. But whether the performance will be a resounding success still depends largely on the actors and actresses, the children themselves have to choose to act and how well they want to act.
Part of our conversation also touched on how Buddy thinks her friends might be having a significant influence on her and that she may be relishing quite a fair bit on peer support/pressure and as the chinese saying goes, 近朱者赤 近墨者黑. The saying is not without its age old wisdom ~ when the environment is conducive, fruits will naturally bear. Just imagine sowing an apple seed in the middle of the desert. Do you think it will grow and bear fruits?
So naturally, to nurture a child to his or her potential, we have to place them in an environment best suited for them so they are allowed the best chances of blossoming. It is definitely better if she can be doing her studies with a group of like minded students so they can encourage each other and spur one another on. Of course we cannot be definite that the child will not do well when shrouded in conditions or environment that is not as conducive (such as having playful friends or nonchalant teachers), time has proven to us that there has been and will continue to have exceptions. But the truth is, we are all social creatures and at such a tender age, without training the mind till it reaches a certain level of mental strength, i must say it will be an uphill task for the child to perform well.
In an example that Bud mentioned, i can see how quick on the feet Yiting can be but in the wrong direction. For comprehension, she simply reads through the passage and when it comes to answering the questions, all she simply does is to look out for keywords in the question and match them to the passage. Once she determines the sentence in the passage that has the same keywords, she just copy that sentence for her answer.
The method itself is not incorrect, just not correctly applied. Had she read through the passage and understood the story or the message of the passage, this method will work well in her favour since she already knows how to look out for key words in the question. She will be able to work out the correct answers (most, if not all) and not just simply copy them word for word. We all know that answers sometimes need to be inferred from several sentences in the passage, that requires some form of thinking, linking and understanding. She became efficient at answering questions but not effective.
She sees word for word, sentence for sentence and does not realise the relationship between the sentences. Relationships are sometimes more crucial to the determination of a situation, a status that the words themselves cannot expressed adequately. What exasperated Bud is that Erinne does not see the relations between the sentences. There isn't much i can do except to offer a listening ear and a little advice to Bud. The responsibilities of educating a child comes mainly from the people that she spend the most time with and that means her parents largely.
I mentioned to him that he can try to use the analogy of Erinne (herself) to explain to her that a sentence can mean more that what is written in itself if it is seen and related with other sentences. What i mean to say is that Erinne is not only just Erinne. She is like a sentence in a passage, the rest of her family members are each a sentence; her family is a passage.
When seen in the context of a family, she is no longer just Erinne, she is also a daughter to her parents, sister to her brother, niece to her uncles and aunties and grandchild to her grandparents. And when we extend beyond the family to her school (another passage), she is a student to her teachers, friend to her classmates and teammate to the rest of her team for her CCA.
In short, she looks at her passage and reads it without truly seeing the passage for all it stands and means for. Speaking of which, that reminds me of a movie, Avatar when the Na'vi says I See You for their greeting. They do not just look at the other person on the surface and acknowledge the visual sight of another being. They read into the other's core being and acknowledge its relationships, its energy flow with the rest of the universe. Haha, guess its something which most of us adults are guilty of, not just the kids. We look but we do not See.
PS: Hope Erinne had a good Birthday over the weekend and no prizes for guessing what i intend to give her for her present =)
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