That's because we will be sending Ace to an international school following the UK cirrucullum and because of that, i will have to home school him in the area of mathematics and chinese because they do not teach chinese and their math is way behind the singaporean cirricullum...
That itself is a HUGE stress for me as I am not a very patient teacher and neither am I a very good tuition teacher when it comes to very young kids. Heck, I am not even very good in math or chinese...
I always find myself vomitting blood when I attempt to teach him something new and find it much easier that his teachers teach him what needs to be taught and that I merely revise the idea with him and reenforce the idea in his head..... so, I worry worry worry worry...
And the other day, an interesting solution presented itself in an interesting way...
I went to a workshop by Dr Jane Peterson on Human Systems and it was a very interesting workshop that gave me many amazing insights on how the human body can tell us many interesting things about our relationships with other people in our family and also with work, with money, with our colleagues, etc...
One segment of the workshop was on how the rules of the business organization system and the family system are actually quite different in conflict and therefore, there is a reason why family businesses find it hard to survive for longer than three generations...
Dr Jane told us a beautiful story of this very rich man who had a few children working in his company. When his youngest son graduated from school, he too, decided to work in his dad's company even though he had no interest in it at all.. he was merely doing it as his brothers and sisters have done it too... and..the thing is.. he sucked at his job.. within 6 mths, the department was on the verge of closing down...
Now, this rich man had a dilemna.. on one hand, he couldnt sack his own son.. on the other, as CEO of the conpany, he had to do something or watch his company go down... so one day, he got his son to go into his office and when his son walked in.. he saw his dad seated behind this big oak desk with two hats in front of him.
On one of the hats, the rich man had written the word BOSS and on the other hat, he wrote on it the word 'DAD'.
He slowly put on the hat with the word 'BOSS' written on it and said, "Mr XXX, I thank you for the contributions to our company in the past 6 months. But your performance is way below par and your department is slowly killing our company. Because of this, I have no choice but to terminate our employment contract with you... "
After which, he took out the BOSS hat and put on the hat that said, "DAD" and turned to his son and said, "Son, I heard you just lost your job... how can I help?"
What a beautiful story?! And so, I got inspired to do this with Ace too.. I told Ace that when we are in Dubai, I will put on a hat tat says TEACHER and when I do that, he will have to see me as his teacher and do what I ask him to.. ask for permission to go toilet and listen to my instructions like I am his school teacher and not whine or negotiate with me like when i am his mum...
That will give me less stress and hopefully help Ace listen to me better...
Ace was really excited by the idea and even suggested that we come up with a name for our little school at home.. (After discussion, Ace said he wanted to call our school HAPPY SCHOOL.. and he is currently designing our school logo)
And so, we started when we reached Dubai and this is his little school desk and school chair...
And this is my teacher hat...
But leh, my son very cheeky lah... I took off the hat when I went ot toilet and when i came back, he giggled and said, "Let me put it on for you..."And when I took off the hat, this is wat I saw.... FAINTZ...
I tell him I dun need to wear a hat to remind him I am his mother right? Cos I AM his mother... No wonder he was giggling away... zhen na ta mei ban fa...
PS: We have since revised the name of our school as Ace wanted it to be known as Police Academy. Because he kept focusing on playing with his toys instead of doing work, I said I wanted a meeting with him.. in the meeting, we sorted out the name of our school, the logo, what is our timetable like, what subjects do we do on what days and so far so good.. as I type now, he is actually doing some proper work and FOCUSING for once! :) Phew...
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Very good idea.
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