Whenever my friends complain to me about how their children are misbehaving very often or how they are not doing well in school or behaving strangely.... I will always share with them the secret of the "20 minutes".
Some years ago, when attending a workshop by my good friend and teacher, Lency Spezzano, she taught us the secret of the "20 minutes".
According to Lency, as a parent, it is sometimes not always possible for us to be centred and so if we are off centre, we may not be able to respond to our children well and may do things like scream at them, scold them, ignore them when they need attention.. etc etc etc... and this creates a distance between our hearts..
Everyday, we accumulate some of this distance... when they are young, despite the distance, you can still ask them to follow what you say and listen to you..
But as they grow up and if this distance is constantly accumulated and not removed, it will grow and grow and once they are at the age where they are independent, they will become "rebellious" and may also show their upset at the distance via tantrums in all forms like misbehaving or doing badly in school etc...
Usually, before bedtime, me and Ace will read together and chat for 10-45 min depending on how much time we have. And we will do that every weekday night. Weekends we just chill together in the day.
Anyway, since my grandma had gotten very sick, I had not been able to spend as much time as I used to with Ace and we stopped doing the 20 minutes. After my grandmother passed away, we also did not do the 20 minutes because I had scabies (it is some sort of mite tat crawls under your skin) and I was afraid that I will pass it on to him...
And so, it became a habit NOT to do the 20 minutes. Cos no way i want to sleep on his bed and infect him, right?
As a result of the scabies, our number of hugs per day also dropped from like 8 to 0.
On the surface though, Ace seems to be quite the same. I do notice though that he has gotten a little rude in his speech.. he will use phrases like "What the hell.." when he talks to me and get frustrated over small little things and show me a black face... and if it took like 5 times of the same command to get things done, he has started to totally ignore some of my commands sometimes even after me repeating it 10 times... but he was still doing things like helping me with the dishes... kissing me and telling me that he loves me and so I still wondered if the lack of this 20 minutes really made a difference.
The answer came when we went for the Parent Teacher Meeting the other day.
When I met up with Ace's teacher, her first comment was "Ace is an exceptional boy... he is polite, he is intelligent and everything about him is great... BUT...."
Hahahaha.... BUT... there are two things not so great about him that he needs to change. And to be honest, the teacher did not tell me what I did not already know...
- Ace writes too slow
She says that Ace cannot finish his work in class most of the time because he writes too slow and he did not finish most of his exam papers because of lack of speed. If he were to finish his papers, he should be able to get BAND ONE for all his subjects except chinese. - Ace cannot concentrate well
Apparently, Ace will glaze over sometimes in class and one of the reasons he cannot finish his work on time is that he is easily distracted and cannot focus in class. There are times where he was asked to complete a piece of work and after working halfway, he actually took out a piece of paper and made a paper sword or gun!
I know that this is partly because he has a classmate who likes to talk to him (but i told him that he can ignore the classmate and still choose to focus) and partly also because he finds the lessons boring. He is like tat.. easily bored and when bored, he will do this sort of funny thing. He doesnt think it is a big deal to do his own thing in class as long as he doesnt disturb others.
His teacher also said that he has his "moods"... on good mood days, he will write brilliant compositions! But on bad mood days, he will almost fail or cannot finish. He did not finish compo for his exams.
His Chinese teacher also told us he noticed Ace is a little different in recent months. He used to take notes and ask questions but now he sort of lost focus.
I thought long and hard about what they said and my conclusion is that while Ace has always had these two issues, they got worse because he did not get his 20 minutes with me and Max.
He scored an average B grade for everything except Chinese.
He scored very well for his CA but tat is only 10% of his final mid year grades. He scored 90% for english, 100% for math and 85% for science and a 60% for Chinese.
But for his SA,he scored 82.5% for english (he did not finish his compo so he barely passed compo), 70 for math, 73 for science and 43 for chinese (he missed out on one page of the paper, failed compo badly and was totally lost in the comprehension portion).
Interestingly, with an exception of chinese, he is actually considered "above average" in school.
But now is just whether Ace is happy to be "above average" or does he want to excel in academics. I think to him, he merely wants to excel in making paper guns and paper weapons for now.. everything else, do OK can liao.. hahahaha...
I think also have to thank his Dubai teachers for giving him a good foundation, and an inquiring mind:)
Another thing that surprised me...
We all know Ace is super emo child and easily upset. He often tells me that he cries in school over this or that. But it is very surprising to me that both his Chinese and form teacher says that Ace is a very mature child.
I actually asked his form teacher why she chose Ace to be roomate with H for the malacca trip. She told me she gave it much consideration and chose Ace and the other boy cos they were both mature and would not get upset over the small small funny funny things tat H might do.
In fact, in his report card, despite Ace always telling me tat he quarrels with this person or that person or every now and then complain that he has no friends, his teacher's comments were:
Ace has a pleasant deposition and is able to build cordial relationships with his classmate. He works together with team members harmoniously and displays sincerity and respect when dealing with others . He copes constructively with emotions. Being a bright student, he will definitely do very well if he stays more focused in class an dd concentrates when doing his written work.
So now that scabies are over and behind me, I think we should resume the 20 minutes to help him improve furthur:)
PS: Ace told me later that he was a little bored and upset cos he did not get enough hug hug during that period... and that no hugs mean no "power"... plus he says me and his dad were bz bz bz bz... no one had time for him... Now that I spend more time with him, he seems to be a little better...
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