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i embarrass myself sometimes, Kidspeak, Truett goes to school, unqualified parenting tips

Yo Momma got street cred

August 18, 2010

Apparently, I’ve earned quite a rep with Tru’s teachers in school, as I just found out today. I like to think it ups my street cred, like how you’re supposed to become badass after spending a week in prison but I suspect they’re using me as a cautionary tale for other parents during some of their parent-teacher sessions.

Rain, rain go away

Tru was learning about the weather in school this week and today was all about rain.

Teacher: Kids, what do we do when it rains?

Kid 1: Take umbrella!

Teacher: Good. Anything else?

Kid 2: Raincoat!

Teacher: That’s right, we wear our raincoats.

Tru: RUNNNNN!!!

Teacher: Run?

Tru: Run so fast! Raining, mommy carry and run!

In my defense, that’s only my strategy when it’s drizzling. With one kid in each hand, I got nothing left to carry a brolly even if I wanted to, and besides, umbrellas are for sissies and 50-year-old ladies. I tried grabbing it with my teeth once and Kirsten almost lost an eye in the fallout. When it’s pouring, I make strangers ferry us with their umbrellas by playing the frazzled-mom-with-2-babies card. It works all the time. I would also like to point out that I have flip-flops with surprisingly good traction, which is the key to not falling and breaking open your skull. You’re welcome.

Breakfast of champions

A couple of weeks ago, it was breakfast week, or food week or healthy eating week and the kids were learning about healthy options for a balanced diet. Obviously, I have no concept of proper nutrition, seeing that I survived on instant noodles, burgers and fries for almost the entire first year of my university life.

Teacher: What do you eat for breakfast?

Other kids: Cereal, bread, noodles, milk, pancakes, waffles, apple, sausage…

Teacher: Excellent, children! Those are all very good breakfast options

Tru: Eat gummies. So many gummies (complete with hand gesture)

Teacher: *uncomfortable silence* Ok, we must always eat gummies in moderation, that means not too much at once.

Tru does have a normal breakfast, right after his morning vitamin gummy (which I chop up into tiny pieces so it seems like a lot) because it’s the first thing he starts to harass me for the moment the opens his eyes. And the chopping into tiny pieces works because I have 1 piece for every time he goes “gimme more gummies” and by the time I’m all out, he feels like he’s eaten loads of gummies.

Birds and the bees

Then there was clothes week, where the kids learn about the different types of clothes you wear for different occasions. They learnt about how you should wear a uniform to school and a pretty dress to a party.

Teacher: Children, what do you wear to sleep?

Kids (in unison): PYJAMAS!

Tru: Pa…pa…pagina!

Remember how I was teaching Tru the proper words for the different parts of the human anatomy? Penis, he pronounces very well. Vagina, not so much. He calls it pagina, which gets him confused with pyjamas. And this, total badass.

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motherhood, unqualified parenting tips

Je m’appelle gummy bear

August 4, 2010

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious smartass, I’ll say that parenthood has been an exercise in understanding the human condition. Because you know babies are as unadulterated as they come – just a little bundle of human instincts. They don’t give a rat’s ass what you think and they want what they want right now.

They’re motivated by one thing alone, and that is incentives.

At first, I wanted to teach the kids about *wanting* to be good just because it’s the right thing to do. To look past instant gratification and not be motivated by these trifle pleasures. I wanted to teach them stuff like selflessness and charity. I thought I could persuade them with the brilliant logic of my argument so that they would do my bidding without question. Ha, who am I kidding? I never quite bought all that myself anyway. At least not until I turned 26 and became a mom, and even then, I’m hardly the poster girl for altruism.

Take for example the time I had to teach Tru about sharing. I asked him to share and he said no. So I tried explaining the benefits of sharing – so that we could all be happy. From his look of disdain, I could tell that he obviously didn’t agree. He was all like “this is ridiculous mom, I’m not at all happy to share so don’t try to tell me that sharing makes us all happy”. Then I told him that sharing is being nice to others and it’s important to be nice because we get a sense of satisfaction when we give stuff to others. And he was like “yeah, good try mom, now watch me shriek like a banshee when you so much as look at my snack.” Eventually, I had to settle with offering him more snacks if he shared (incentive) and threatening to take away his snack if he didn’t share (also an incentive if you think about it).

It was the same with eating his food. When it was stuff he hated, (vegetables are the exception because I think he would rather lose a kidney than eat spinach) I had to resort to the two-pronged strategy of dangling gummies and threatening the naughty corner. He would take a minute to consider his options and finally open his mouth while making faces of the vomit variety.

I used to think that parents who had to resort to bribery and threats were doing it all wrong. Didn’t they know they were raising brats who would only do something for someone else if there was something in it for them? Besides, isn’t it like training a seal? “Good boy, here’s a fish for you. Now jump through this ring of fire.”

But you see, at least that’s a start – that they’re even doing it at all. I’m hoping that if I offer a gummy to inculcate good behavior, at some point, they’ll do it even when we’re all out of gummies. Hopefully they’re so used to doing the right thing even when they didn’t understand or agree, so it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal to share their last cookie or give up a seat or tell the truth.

Although there’s a pretty good chance that they will turn out to be obese or toothless before that happens so I’m on the hunt for sugar-free gummies which I will cut into very tiny pieces so each gummy is effectively 1/10 of a whole gummy and even if they eat 10 gummies a day, it’ll be like eating just 1 gummy. I can’t wait for the day he’ll bargain for more gummies and I’ll have to do up a chart like 3 gummies for sharing and 5 gummies for eating 1 spinach.

Bollocks, that whole paragraph looks like some ridiculous Primary 1 math question. If John has 3 gummies and he gets 5 more but gives 4 to his sister and drops 2 along the way, then gets 7 apples and 2 bananas, how many teeth does he have left?

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lists you should paste on your fridge, unqualified parenting tips

Top 5 Asian Parenting Faux Pas

July 5, 2010

First of all, who am I to dictate parenting norms? The answer would be nobody, but I’m still going to dish out unsolicited parenting advice anyway because that always makes me feel much better about my Mondays and also, I am that kind of douchebag. Read on, I think you’ll feel better too. Unless you do these things then you’d probably want to stab me in the eye.

Sit back and here goes.

1. Smacking inanimate objects whenever your kid gets a boo boo.

We’ve all seen that before. Kid bumps his head on the table, parents rush to the scene of the crime and start smacking the living daylights out of the table. “Bad table, naughty table hurt my poor little baby“.

Um… what? That’s bizarre on so many levels because the table is an inanimate object and the only person feeling the pain is the smacker. Also, you’re teaching the kid that it’s ok to smack things/people that hurt you. Most of all, it just makes you look like a moron because the last time I saw a guy scolding inanimate objects, he was wearing a straightjacket.

2. Distracting your kid with a loosely-worded promise of something good.

I must admit, it’s a very effective way to prevent a meltdown, especially with a kid under the age of 4 (works best before cynicism kicks in). The moment they start to freak out, promise them a toy/candy/trip to the pool in the somewhat distant future. “Later, soon, next time” are all vague enough for parents to weasel out of when they demand for their reward. “Mommy said later and later means sometime from now till you turn 18“.

The key is to be specific enough with the object of desire while keeping the time frame vague. Only thing is, you can justify all you want but kids, they don’t know the difference and they’ll just think that you’re lying to them.

3. Being overly strict in public just to show how great a parent you are.

I’ve come to realize that kids have one mission in life, which is to embarrass you at the worst possible moments like during an important family day event with the boss or at a wedding when the bride is about to say “I do” or at a high school gathering where you’re trying to impress all those old schoolmates. You dress them up all spiffy, issue them strict warnings to behave and just when you are about to launch into a monologue about how cute the kids are, BAM, they smear chocolate all over themselves or throw a full-scale hissy fit. *Cue head shakes, disapproving looks and sniggers”

That’s when the parents grab the kid, brings them to a not-so-discreet corner, scolds them loud enough for everyone to hear and/or spanks them for good measure. Then say something along the lines of “why are you so naughty TODAY? You better behave yourself like you usually do.”

Also, that’s exactly why I don’t go for these sorts of events.

4. Make up weird euphemisms for body parts or words deemed socially unacceptable to say loudly in public.

Being Asian and all, we don’t say certain words out loud in public. Words like penis, vagina, breasts and sex are all generally frowned upon at social gatherings so just to be careful, we teach the kids words like pee-pee, wee-wee, ku-ku, shee-shee and basically any other double-word that rhymes with “ee”. Just in case they start shouting it out loud repeatedly (like my son is likely to do), you can just pretend they’re making some strange sound effect.

And when you think about it, if you don’t teach them the correct pronunciations for stuff, they’re going to embarrass themselves by calling it a “breest” (think beast with an R) or “penn-ees” instead of “pee-nus”.

5. Threatening them with scary uncles

When parents are unable to control their kids, they resort to bringing in third parties, especially scary looking ones who tend to look a little different. Some parents go as far as to pick out stern-looking “mang-ka-li” uncles to strike fear into the kids, thereby perpetuating racist stereotypes. Alternatively, men in uniform can be used, like “If you are so naughty, I’ll ask the policeman to catch you“. Even when there are no scary-looking uncles in the vicinity during the next meltdown, some have designated friends on speed dial to *scold* them.

From the start, our guiding principle is to treat the kids like we would want to be treated, which is not to lie to them or threaten them or embarrass them. I know that some parents advocate a rule of fear because kids need to be disciplined in order to behave but here’s my theory (no, not again!!).

By and large, they do want to be good and logical explanations should do the trick. At times, they get irritable, moody, upset, uncooperative and hissy fits kick in so that’s when we need to set boundaries to let them know they can’t do as they please just because they don’t feel good. Sometimes there’s a bit of screaming involved and it’s not pretty. But then again, nobody said parenting was pretty.

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lists you should paste on your fridge, seriously somewhat serious, unqualified parenting tips

The freakonomics of parenting

July 2, 2010

Every time I read a new parenting theory, I try to take it with a pinch of salt, mostly because the next time I come back to the same bookshelf, there’s a new authority with a new revolutionary breakthrough discovery in parenting.

The obsessive parents are up-to-date with the all latest parenting fads, citing studies on how important it is to choose the best schools, teach your kids multiple languages and go to museums to develop their inquisitive minds. I figured all those things were great if you had the time and moolah but by no means necessary. Not when I’m struggling to make it through 24 hours to keep both kids fed, diapered and alive.

Besides, the only thing I remember about my childhood was playing pirates with my brother and stabbing him with a wooden sword (which was awesome, by the way – the sword, not the stabbing). I went to a neighborhood school where overaged Primary School kids were more interested in getting cigarettes than an education.

So when I read the chapter on parenting in Freakonomics (I know, it’s been out for ages, but my reading material has been limited to cooking instructions and nutritional information) the other day, it just blew my mind. In a good way. They used very big numbers and complicated statistics of large samples to posit two overarching theories.

1.  Nature and nurture each made up about 50% of a child’s development.

2. As far as parenting goes, it didn’t matter so much what the parents did as opposed to who the parents were.

They did extensive research on things like how having books in a child’s home was correlated with better grades while reading to a child everyday was not. Or how speaking English in the home made a difference while taking a child to the museum regularly did not. It was all completely mind-boggling because it contradicted conventional wisdom on parenting. We are used to being told that parents could make or break a child’s future. Send them to the best schools, teach them 5 different languages, read to them religiously, buy them educational toys and they would become successful in life.

Except NOT.

Well, first of all, genetics. Smart and successful parents were more likely to have smart and successful kids because things like IQ, that’s innate. The studies showed that a child born to not-so-smart parents and adopted by smart parents was less likely to be smart (even if they were exposed to the best education money could buy). So if you and your husband are smart, congratulations, that’s half the battle won.

The other half lies not in the things you do, like reading to them or sending them to tons of classes, but in the kind of parents you were. Taking the book example mentioned earlier, it seems bizarre that a kid whose mom brought him to the library and read to him every night fared worse in school than a kid whose mom had lots of books in the house but did not read to him at all. They suggested that it was not the act of reading to the child per se that made the difference but the environment the child grew up in. If daddy and mommy loved books and were voracious readers themselves, the kids would love to read even without having books forced-fed down their throats.

Similarly, parents who spoke English at home were likely to be educated and successful, which was correlated with educated and successful kids. On the other hand, bringing your kid to the museum was utterly useless in having better grades. Just like watching loads of TV did not make their brains rot. And so on.

This translates into very good news for me, since I can now save that extra $2,000 on extra-curricular activities and just let them play with empty bottles. But more importantly, it’s a wake up call for us. If we want them to do better, it’s not about telling them the importance of doing better but doing it ourselves. We’ve got to be the kinds of people we want our kids to become and then we won’t need to nag incessantly at them to turn off the telly and pick up a book.

And seriously, if you’ve got time, pick up a copy of Freakonomics, it’s really quite brilliant.

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kids inc, picture perfect, unqualified parenting tips

It’s like I’m like a scientist or something

June 29, 2010

Weekends are best spent at the beach so that’s what we did last Saturday. We woke up early, packed the kids into the car and headed down to Sentosa for a leisurely morning by the beach. I’m not really one for beaches, what with all that icky sand and sandflies and murky water filled with gooey slimy stuff.

But I’m a parent now so I do what I do best these days, which is to suck it up and get on with the program. Just because it makes the kids smile.

I’ve come to realize that the best time to take pictures of the kids is at the start of any activity, way before they have a chance to look like a street urchin. At least for my kids, that is. Which means that I’ve got a 15 minute window of optimum photo time tops.

Remember my theory about boys and girls? I’ll summarize it for you. Boys are disgusting and girls are not. Initially, it was just a theory and I didn’t have any conclusive scientific evidence to support my hypothesis. But I do now.

Peruse Specimen A.

The moment Tru saw the shimmering water from a mile off, he yanked off his shirt and started RUNNING for his life. Before I knew it, he was flinging sand everywhere, and by everywhere I mean in his hair, nostrils, ears, belly button and I don’t even want to know what else. I bet he ate handfuls of sand in the process.

And before that, I was still debating with the husband as to whether we should pack their swimwear. I was all like “It’s so gross, I bet Tru won’t want to go in” and the husband, well he’s a dude, so go figure.

With Truett, he doesn’t take things slow. He doesn’t dip his toes in the water and get his feet a little wet. He goes ALL IN. And at first I was yelling at him to stay out of the water but it was a lost cause. I should have known that I can’t expect Tru to see water and not jump in. It’s physically impossible for him to exercise any form of self control, like there’s some primitive override button the moment he sees bodies of water.

Moving on to Specimen B.

Did I already say she’s a princess? The whole time, she never stepped beyond the boundaries of her little beach mat. Some sand bits inevitably got in between her fingers and she started frowning intently, like “SERVANTS!! Get this grain of sand away from me! And why is it so blistering hot?? BRING ME MY FAN AND MY GRAPES! HELPPPPP THERE’S SAND ON MY DOLL, I’m just going to hold it gingerly like this with 2 fingers!!”

That’s my girl.

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lists you should paste on your fridge, stuff best described as not safe for parents, unqualified parenting tips

The Flood Survival Kit – don’t leave home without it.

June 28, 2010

It’s been flooding a lot recently. I didn’t think I’d see entire shops being flooded in Singapore, I mean, you read about this kind of thing in other countries and all my life, I’ve never seen an actual flood.

That got me panicking, obviously, because I’ve got to think of contingencies now that I’ve got 2 kids. If it’s just me, I’d definitely survive a flood (thanks to all those swimming lessons) but there’s no way I’ll make it with 2 babies alone. So I’m coming up with a flood survival kit. That’s crazy, you say, it’s never going to happen in Singapore. Ah, but you never thought you’d see Hermes (I wept a little for all those lovely Birkins) completely submerged either, did you?

Anyway, here’s my flood survival kit. Feel free to use it if you like. You’re welcome.

1. Ziplocs, lots and lots of Ziplocs

They’re watertight and good for keeping spare clothes for when you get to safety so the kids don’t die of hypothermia after struggling to survive the flood. They’re also handy for keeping snacks so they don’t die of hunger after avoiding hypothermia and drowning. Two steps ahead, y’all.

2. Heavy-duty backpack

Those pretty (and also pretty useless) Kate Spade baby bags aren’t ergonomic enough when you’re stuck in a flood. You don’t want to be trying to tuck them in under your armpits while keeping a hold of two flailing babies. What you need is a heavy-duty backpack that straps on tight and distributes the weight evenly. Preferably waterproof, but if you can’t find one, that’s what the Ziplocs are for.

3. Thermal swimsuits

People tend to underestimate how cold the water can get, especially when you’re stuck in it for say, 10 hours before someone finds you and pulls you to safety. Kids lose heat pretty quickly, so you got to make sure they wear something that traps whatever little body heat they’ve got. Better yet, get one of those thermal packs and stuff it into their swimsuits.

4. Arm floats

That’s the first thing to inflate during a flood because it’ll keep them afloat if I lose my grip on one of them. Also, you don’t have to blow until you turn blue. You’ll need to conserve some air for the actual flood. And for shouting for help.

5. Water toys

I know, you think that’s just insane and completely unnecessary. It’s a crisis and you’re thinking of toys. See, that’s the difference between parents and non-parents. If you’ve ever been stuck with 2 babies for more than 5 minutes, their incessant nagging/screaming about how bored they are will drive you to drown yourself out of your own volition. Trust me, you want to pack the toys.

6. Large-ass dinghy

This is a tough call but I decided to put this in. On the one hand, just inflating it during an emergency will kill you. But on the other hand, you won’t have to search frantically for plywood (think Titanic) to help you stay afloat. The best is to get one big enough to fit yourself and both kids but if not, at least just find one to put the kids in while you hang on at the side for dear life. My advice: Inflate it first and have it handy so it’s there when you need it.

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coolest kids ever, kids inc, unqualified parenting tips

Of coke and jedi classes

June 21, 2010

Have I told you about the time I brought Kirsten to the pool and halfway through she saw my can of coke sitting on the table and insisted that she NEEDED to drink it? Being a responsible parent and all, I said no obviously, because it’s filled with sugar and bad stuff for kids.

But then I once used coke to remove rust so maybe it means that it will remove bad stuff from your system so we should all have more coke. I’m not sure which. I’m going with the second one.

Anyway, so she put on her jedi robe and used the force to take it when I was not looking, which is kind of like taking it by force if you think about it. And I figured, the last guy to mess with young jedi powers got all his limbs sliced off and had to wear a life support system and breathe like someone who chain-smoked for 40 years.

If you must know, the story ends with me chickening out and giving her the coke. Only thing is, she hasn’t reached the advanced jedi level of learning how to open the can with the force so she spent the next 15 minutes prying it open with all of her 4 teeth and pudgy fingers while I sat beside her and gloated.

You know what this means though. I’m not sending her for jedi classes anymore.

Happy Monday, y’all.

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