Yes, I am. Not that I have a choice.
Schooling nowadays is different from schooling during my time. My parents didn’t understand English and didn’t go through much education themselves, so all my life, I’ve had to depend on myself to revise for my tests and exams, and do all my homework. Obviously, I turned out fine even though I had no help from them at all.
Nowadays, kids cannot study on their own anymore. If given any day, I was too busy and didn’t supervise my girl’s work, she would hand in a whole load of rubbish that I felt bad even for the teacher marking it. =.= And if I happened to forget that she’s got spelling on that day and didn’t study for it together with her, that’s it. ZERO marks. Along with a paragraph of red comments from the teacher, ‘Mrs Kuan, please spend time to teach your daughter spelling’. How encouraging, thank you very much.
Thankfully, I haven’t erred that much in the past year, and as far as possible, I try to do her homework with her, and coach her in her spelling etc. The only problem is I don’t have a lot of patience, and most of the time, I’m trying my best not to traumatise my girl when she failed to remember the spelling even after writing it for 50 times. No screaming. No shouting. Be patient. Sometimes I succeed. Most times, I don’t.
The magnitude of this reality of me going back to kindergarten didn’t hit me until 2 days ago when I sat my girl down to learn her Chinese and English spelling again, only to realise that there will be no spelling for the next 2 weeks (perhaps due to the school’s preparation for graduation performance). I rubbed my eyes to double check I didn’t read the schedule wrongly, and I even talked to myself and asked myself whether it’s for real (sure sign of insanity obviously). Then I gave a shout, jumped up and down and went, ‘HURRAY!!!! HURRAY!!! NO SPELLING FOR TWO WEEKS!! TWO WHOLE WEEKS, OMG!!!!’
My daughter stood there, looked at me with a straight face and said, ‘No spelling? OK.’ and then walked away, totally unfazed by the BIG FABULOUS NEWS.
I can’t believe I am more excited than my daughter that she’s got no spelling for the next two weeks.
I say, I seemed to be the one going to Kindergarten, not her. SIGH.
