Some Thoughts Behind Our Schooling Choices

At 20 months of age, the biggest difference between the Miss’ day-to-day and her brother’s is that I’m home. With Rockstar, I didn’t quit a job and career that used to be my life until he was around 2.5 years old. Up til then, Rockstar’s care was very different. Also, back then he attended pre-school with a helper who was very possessive over her charge, very proud of how he was apparently doing in pre-school. There were a few obvious mistakes I made with Rockstar, back then:

1) Coming back after a long day at work, when the (then) helper frequently reported Rockstar knew how to “do everything in the baby class no problem,” it was exactly what I wanted to hear. It didn’t occur to me to question why he could apparently do everything easily. It later turned out stuff was not challenging for him because he had been retained without our knowledge. (Until today, this remains part of his character – if stuff isn’t challenging enough, he doesn’t work as hard. It’s a balance, between then giving him something too discouragingly hard… It didn’t help that when he got upset (and he is a fusspot), he would shut down and just not do stuff, and then belatedly the then-preschool teacher told us she thought it was because he couldn’t.)

2) We were also told too late that in baby class when Rockstar didn’t want to do something, the helper simply did it for him. Like, all the time. She thought she was doing a good job, but we were basically sending the helper to pre-school.

This is why above all and especially when the child is very young, I look for attentiveness and a high EQ in a teacher. Rockstar being tiny, quiet and, according to various Mainlander aunties we’ve met “looking very Chinese,” I guess his then-preschool teacher had assumed he didn’t speak much English, he was younger than he was or something to that effect.

When Rockstar’s pediatrician recommended he stay home after a bad chest infection during one of the heightened flu alert periods, we advertised online and scheduled a handful of baby sitters/ tutors to fill his day. Among them were two personal tutors with some pretty impressive paper qualifications (the rest were mostly high school kids – we gleaned some interesting comments about their International Schools). One was fine but she lived too far away and couldn’t come too often; the other turned out to be worse than the kids, sticking to her plan for the day no matter that nothing was sinking in, getting frustrated and leaving early, stuff like that. When your student is in college you can probably do that, but I don’t think you can do that if your student is under 2.

That would bring me to point 3: Don’t miss the forest for the paper (qualifications).  

At this point I should probably mention some thoughts about medium of instruction, because “everyone” knows Rockstar attends an ESF Primary school having previously been in an ESF Kindergarten. I’ve already blogged in detail about why we like ESF for Rockstar. Many Malaysians who count English as a first language btw tend to be concerned with their kids’ command of the Chinese language. A fairly common practice is to send their kids to a school whose medium of instruction is the child’s second language at home – because of this, many parent friends of mine would not consider ESF simply because they want the medium of instruction to be Chinese. (They then further debate whether to go Traditional or Simplified). Very Canton locals I know will tell me the reverse, that this is why they like ESF.

There are two reasons we didn’t do Second Language Medium of Instruction for Rockstar:

His birthdate and his personality. Already one of the youngest in his year and aware he is fairly small even had he been one of the oldest – he asked me while I was pregnant with the Miss whether she would someday grow to be bigger than him – I thought schoolwork would be challenging enough without him also having to swing it in a second language. Given he is a very serious child, we thought the risk of him becoming frustrated and having confidence problems was too high. More recently, there’s also been the development of what appears to be a serious science bug. Back then it was not as clear, but the rather “flexible” way in which his lessons are structured – he would fairly regularly come home telling me this friend or that friend brought something loosely related to a learning unit and talked about it to the class, he’s of course done that before himself – helps nurture some enthusiasm for the interesting and/or unusual, and takes advantage of any nugget of information or talent any child might have, for the benefit of all. (In case you’re thinking someone just comes in and…… I don’t know, plays the violin all day, that’s not it – more like one kid does a magic trick, or someone has an interesting souvenir from a recent vacation. A friend of mine who is at work longer than she’d like each day then found an old video tape for her son to bring in to class for his then-and-now learning unit at a different ESF primary school. Thanks to her it occurred to me to let Rockstar bring in a thumb drive and highlight the difference between information stored in computers and on the net, vs books.)

Also, when I first quit my job, Rockstar wasn’t speaking very much. Every morning for 5 months and before he started at ESF Kindy, I took a walk with him and just talked and talked and talked and talked. Sometimes he stood in front of a weed on a kerb for like, 15 minutes. So then I talked about that. (I blogged previously that he got through the ESF Kindy interview because he had been made comfortable enough during the process to speak up sufficiently to get through, but it wasn’t like he was a Chatty Cathy.)

Now, The Miss. Her birthdate being early June (unlike Rockstar’s being very close to Christmas) would put her comfortably around the middle of her year. In fact I had a brief freak-out early on when I preliminarily visited the ESF Kindy page and thought I had missed application “deadline” by a month, only to discover I was in fact 11 months early. The difference in birthdates threw me off.

While there are some similarities in their personalities (both can be very willful; it would seem the combination of Kings’ and my genes really do not produce mild-mannered (or very tall) children :D), her being a girl and having the mid-year birthdate m-ight have just allowed us a shot at Chinese medium schooling (putting aside for the moment the positive experiences we have had with ESF interviewing and schooling). But by now we’ve also had time to realize that the Chinese language streaming in Rockstar’s school is actually pretty thorough, because of the native-Chinese-speakers-sending-their-kids-to-English-medium-school thing. English-medium people probably don’t hear much about that because well, they hang around other English-medium people doing the reverse. Generally, native Chinese speakers with Chinese-speaking parents in Rockstar’s school are streamed separately from those with one native Chinese-speaking parent are streamed separately from those with none. I’ve met a few English-speaking parents at the bus stop whose older kids are now in the Native Chinese Speaker streams.

Finally, there’s the mysterious “X” factor I mentioned earlier – it has to do with me not wanting to turn into a defensive, over-competitive parent. I think however that we all have it in us to second-guess ourselves because our kids are so, so important to us. This is why I’m sensitive to snobby, power-tripping, we-only-take-kids-who-can-write-pages-of-essays-while-doing-triple-somersaults-type attitudes. Even if, especially if, they purport to charge more/produce better results, etc. I’ve blogged before that one of the most rabidly over-applied-to International Schools here had a principal who went up and said, “We wish we could take them all. Many children who qualify will simply not get a place because we simply don’t have the room.” People who really have “it” don’t need to prove “it” kind of thing. It’s interesting that I’ve met few people I’ve respected as truly capable, who are also really full of themselves.

Which brings me to how I’m basically an insecure parent <shrugs>. We all are to some extent, because we love our kids so much, we all wonder if we’re doing it “right” especially when someone else gets all in your face about how their choices are all the very best ones (which basically proves they’re insecure too). So, surround yourself with enough parents doing the nutty, or school administrators encouraging the nutty, and you’re eventually going to cave and be sucked into A Vortex of Nuttiness.

Therefore, the “X” factor has to do with whether the chemistry brings out the best in you as a parent, when you support your child’s learning. Because you will need to put in a lot of support, regardless whether you work or not. The biggest difference in Rockstar’s learning was not that I suddenly quit my job and turned into an education expert <snort>. It was because I quit my job and started reading school emails, following their recommendations and having conversations with other like-minded parents about supporting my child’s learning. And I couldn’t support my child’s learning nearly as well if I was getting sucked into a Vortex of Nuttiness.

Epilogue: The Rockstars, in No Vortex Of Nuttiness Here…

They da Rockstars

(Yeah she da little Rockstar that COULD)

ps: No she did not slip once. Yes there was another local girl toddler doing the same – interestingly, with the benefit of older brother(s) too. They were the only two little ones. And before anyone screams at me please note the wide safety platform directly under the plank.