So are you ready to parent your Primary 1 child?
So what important life lessons can we teach our child? What should we do as parents to help our children succeed in primary school? Some of these are important leadership qualities. Let me just share some of my insights with you in this article and if you find it useful, do share it.
Feel free to add on any other points which you think are important too.
Important Lessons we need our children to learn.
1. Responsibility
Responsibility tops the list as it is the fundamental block for success. Your child needs to learn that they are personally responsible for their belonging, their learning and they are responsible for their actions and outcome.
a) You are responsible for all your belongings.
It’s a good idea to label all your child’s belongings when he goes primary school as sometimes, children tend to mix things up and loses things unintentionally. However, even if you have labelled all of his belongings, you will find that he is still losing things like a colour pencil or an eraser (most commonly lost). So teach your child that he needs to consciously keep track of his belongings. For example, tell your child “Your friends need your permission to borrow your things. If you lend an eraser to your friend, you need to ensure that your friend returns it to you after they are done using it.” When my child lost her belonging for the first time, I was forgiving and gave her a new item. However, on the second occasion, I told her that she needs to purchase the item from her own pocket money. This is to teach the child that there are consequences for them to face when they are irresponsible.
b) You are responsible for your learning, actions and outcome.
A real life example :
A young child falls down and his parents picked him up immediately while saying “oh, baby, don’t cry. Naughty floor. Beat the floor, beat the floor.”
OR
From personal experience
A child from one my form class does poorly and blames the teacher for his poor teaching. So during the meet-the-parent session, the father insisted on meeting the subject teacher. When he sees the subject teacher, he says “How do you teach? How come my child does so poorly for your subject? I think your method of teaching is very poor, that’s why my son is doing so poorly.” The parent then turns to me and asked if he can request to change teacher.
In both these scenarios, the child receives the message that they are not responsible for what has happened. Instead, the blame was shifted to the floor or the teacher. Therefore, the child will unlikely go very far in the future because they will grow up thinking that they have no control over what happens and therefore, they will think that individual effort is not as important as external factors.
Hence, the important lesson for your child to learn is that “they are responsible for themselves, have control and the efforts they put in can have a certain result”. In my opinion, what the parents in scenario one should have said is simply: “Oh dear, you have fallen, is it painful? ( Show concern for the child first) What happened? ( Help your child to process what happened.) You ran and fell and it’s painful? So, be careful in the future, walk instead of run. “
In this case, the child will learn that he was responsible for the fall and he needs be more careful and to walk in the future to prevent this from happening again.
In scenario 2, I simply told the child that the teacher has about “40 students in class and his teaching method will suit some learners while other learners like him may find difficulty in understanding.” I then went on and asked him, what has he done so far since he didn’t understand the lessons for the past few months. His answer was “nothing”. I asked him again “if you have done nothing and not voiced out your difficulty in learning, how do you expect others to know?” I threw him the next question like “what could he have done about it?” The boy actually said that he could have asked the teacher after lesson or does revision on his own or asks his classmates. So the boy learns that he was responsible for his own learning and could have raised his difficulty in learning to the teacher and that he could have done a lot more to help himself in the situation.
So teach your child to take responsibility. These simple ways to learn responsibility will help your child to go far in the future as it is the belief that they have control over their lives and can shape their lives. This will help them believe that if they try hard enough and put in enough effort, they will succeed.
c) Keep track of the task that you need to complete.
Teach your child to keep track of the task that he needs to complete for the day. Every school should have a school handbook, so just ensure your child copies down all the homework or things to bring into the handbook everyday. You can help by checking the handbook everyday. I even taught my daughter to put a tick against the tasks that she have completed so as to ensure that she has done everything that she is suppose to do.
2. Financial Literacy: Managing Money
a) Give enough pocket money to allow your child to make a choice.
How much pocket money to give your child? This is a question that many parents ask. I would advise that you take a tour in the canteen during orientation, look at the pricing of the food and decide from there. For instance, in my daughter’s school, the most expensive bowl of food cost about $1.20 and a drink can cost up to about $1. So I give her $2 pocket money a day. Definitely enough for her to get a full meal but not enough to have the most expensive food and drink. So her pocket money is deliberately designed to allow her to make choices on how to spend her money.
Tip: To help my daughter better handle money, I gave her 2 $1 coins during the first week. When she is more confident in using money, I gave a 1 $1 coin and 2 50 cents coins. Finally, I am giving her a $2 note or $2 in different denomination now. This will make buying food so much easier for your child.
However, I have heard parents who give their children $10/day or $5/day. The child does not need so much money at primary school. It is too big an amount for the child to handle and if the child can buy anything and everything, is the child learning anything?
b) Money is a finite resource, use it wisely.
Let me share with you from experience. In the first week of school, my daughter was so excited as this is the first time that she gets to spend money without parental supervision; she spent half her money on snacks and half her money in her school bookshop during recess. In the end, she came home very, very hungry on the first week. My hubby and I discussed and decided that we will not interfere in her spending pattern. As long as she is spending her pocket money and within her means, she is free to buy what she wants. We did help her process her action(not buying proper food) and the consequence ( of being hungry). We felt that the child needs to learn that money is a finite resource that needs to be used wisely. So hunger is just a very small consequence for her to learn this lesson. Finally after one week, she learns that it is not worth it to starve just to buy cards or stationary. So, she learns to eat proper meals so that she will not be hungry and then she will use her remaining money to either buy a snack or drink or even just save it up.
c) Spend within your means – no borrowing or lending money from friends.
For a young and innocent child, they will think that it’s ok to borrow or lend money from friends. However, to me, it is about teaching my child to spend within their means. If you can’t afford to buy something, you need to save up instead of borrowing from your friends.
I also explain to my daughter that lending money to friends is not necessary as if their friend forgot their wallet, they can always look for the teacher for help. This is to prevent more mature students from “cheating” money from your child. Some students (perhaps upper primary) would deliberately prey on innocent primary 1 and would borrow but not return.
3. Time management
School homework. Piano lesson. Swimming lessons. Watch TV. Reading
Teach your child to write down a “to do list” or have a home timetable. For me, it’s simple, piano lesson and swimming lesson is a blocked off time. The rest is simply a routine.
2- 2.30
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Eat Lunch
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2.30-2.45
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Rest and talk about her day.
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2.45-3
| |
3-4.15
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Do homework, learn spelling
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4.15- 4.45
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To fetch her brother home together
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5 onwards
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Depends on whether she has finished her homework or spelling. If not, continues to learn. If yes, she is free to do what she wants. She can even choose to request for me to bring them to the playground or swim. We try very hard to encourage outdoor play in our family.
|
6.30
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Dinner time.
|
7-8
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Family TV time and fruit time
|
8
| |
8.30
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Lights out.
|
4. Character building – Be humble and help others.
a) Be patient and help weaker classmates.
In term 1, I often hear my daughter complaining that some of her classmates are so slow in finishing their work and handing it up. As a group leader who needed to collect their completed work, she was often frustrated and said that she had to wait very long for them to finish. So I asked her what can she do?
It is always my approach in teaching my children. In every situation, I always ask “What can you do?” At first, she says that she can only hurry them. But I taught her that hurrying them may not be helpful to them. Instead, she may just be adding stress to her group mates. Moreover, I asked her how she would feel if she is the one that has difficulty finishing up and if someone else is hurrying her.
So I talked to her about patience and slowly guided her until she finally says that she can help them to complete their work, she can actually be a “small teacher” and teach them. In this case, she can help them complete the work faster and as a group leader, she can complete her duty too.
To me, it is important to teach your child to try to achieve a win-win situation and always to be humble and help others.
b) Give others some time to adapt
What would you do if the boy who sits next to your child often misbehave, disrupt lessons, shouts at your child and takes his stationary? Well, I taught my daughter to practice patience, try to help him by telling him that his behaviour is not acceptable and if need be, get the help of the teacher in class if the situation gets out of control.
On my end, I communicated with the father of the boy so that his parents have a chance to correct his behaviour. I explained to my daughter that some individuals may need more time to adapt to school life and to conform to school rules. In my mind, I was just thinking in the shoes of the boy’s parents. If I were them, I will also like a chance to correct my child’s behaviour.
c) Teamwork
Teach your child the importance of working in a team. In a real working environment, your child will need to work with others. So your child must as well learn to work well with others at a young age. While working in a team, your child will learn to listen, take in people’s opinion or even learn to lead a group.
5. Be on your guard- Not everyone is bad but not everyone is good either.
This was an accidental lesson that my daughter learnt. During recess, instead of going to the canteen for food, my daughter and her friends decided to go to the library to read. So my daughter left her belongings including her wallet on the table and went to a nearby shelf to get a book. To her horror, when she returns her wallet was gone. (Try and remember how terrifying it is to lose your things when you were young.) She came home, looking very down and told us she lost her wallet. Ironically, instead of being upset with her losing it, my hubby and I were secretly glad this happened as it was such a valuable lesson for her. We asked her why she left her wallet on the table and her answer was that she thought no one would take. To her, life is simple and everyone is good and as honest as her. In her world, everything is beautiful and nothing bad can happen. So I asked her what she had learnt. Of course, she talked about being more responsible for her things. But more importantly, she told us on her own accord that not everyone is honest and she has to be careful in the future. In my husband’s words “This was such a valuable lesson that cost us $2 (the amount of money she lost).
So as parents, we should try to bring out the learning objectives of what happened. Scolding the child for losing her things would not be as useful as teaching her that “not everyone is bad, but not everyone is good either”.
6. Ultimate goal is PSLE, the rest are just formative assessment.
Being in such a result oriented society, it is difficult for us as parents not to be concern over results. Any parents that tell you that results are not important is not telling you the truth. The question is “what results?”. For children in primary school, the only result that really matters is the PSLE. It determines where your child can go in the next stage of his life. The rest of the tropical reviews, mid year exams, final year exams and preliminary exams from Primary 1-6 are just merely formative assessment to that tell you what your child know and what your child don’t know. These formative assessments help track of your child’s learning progress to your ultimate goal of the PSLE. So don’t be too concerned about the marks and grades. Look through the paper and see which concepts need to be reinforced.
Also, some children will naturally start comparing scores. Let your child know that the result is to tell about their own learning progress, comparing scores with their friends do not say very much about anything.
7. Self respect and respect for others.
Self respect is linked to self esteem. Fundamentally, it about how much the child value or how they perceive themselves. So start with:
a) Appearance
Physical appearance is fundamental in self respect. When you feel good, your self esteem will naturally be high and hence you will have a higher self regard and self- confidence. However, explain to your child that physical appearance does not mean how beautiful/ handsome, he/she is. But more in terms of wearing properly ironed uniform, ensuring that all the badges and nametags are worn properly. For my daughter, I respect her decision to keep long fringe and hair. But she needs to abide by the condition that she will always pin her fringe up and tie up her hair when she is doing work. To me, this is important because she needs to know that going to school means she needs to keep neat, tidy and an appropriate hairstyle. This is all part of self respect. Take some time to also discuss about appropriate dressing for a female outside of school. You will be surprise that your daughter will be very engaged in a discussion like this.
b) Character and conduct
Self respect is also about how one conducts himself. Through his good actions, one’s self respect and esteem will be raised as they would find value in what they do. What I tell my children is this “You may think that no one knows what you have done. But that’s not true because God and yourself knows. You don’t need people to recognise what you have done. As long as you know that you have done well, it is good enough”.
c) If you want people to respect you, you first have to respect others.
A simple rule to learn, but some people take a long time to learn. If you want others to respect you, you will first have to respect others. For instance, if you want people to speak to you politely, then you will have to speak politely yourself first. Another example would be, respect people’s property. If you want to borrow an item, always ask for permission first.
8. Personal safety issues
My first concern as a first time parent of a primary 1 child is the personal safety. It is the first time my daughter is away from me for about half a day, in a big school and environment, with many strangers and different characters. Well, after all, from all the newspaper reports about teachers sexually abusing students, statuary rape cases and child molest increasing in Singapore
So how to educate my daughter about these lurking dangers? I thought about this issue long and hard and after discussion with my husband, this is how I deal with it. I set “rules” in black and white. To a young child, there is no grey zones, it is either black or white, right or wrong. So to protect my child, I need to educate her.
Rule no. 1: Intimate physical touch by anyone is wrong and if happens it needs to be reported immediately to Mummy. I taught my daughter that if anyone (be it a friend, teacher, stranger) gets too close physically for her to feel uncomfortable, she needs to voice up by telling the person: “ Please respect my personal space.” She is also to move away from that person. If the person continues his advances and intends to touch her, she will then have to adopt a more assertive and louder voice saying “stop it or I’ll definitely tell my mummy and report you to the police immediately.” Although this is a simple one sentence, but it is so difficult for a young child to say it, especially to an adult of authority. So I made her practice saying it to me everyday for the first week until she is more confident. But hopefully this would deter anyone with ill intention. I strongly believe you need to teach your child what to say. Don’t assume they will know what to do because in that situation, they will be so fearful and will not know how to react. In addition, don’t think the boys are safer, because they are not.
Rule no. 2: Mummy will never ever send a friend or stranger to pick you up.
Once, there was a facebook post that goes along the line of “set a password with your child. So when you get your friend to pick your child up, get your child to ask for the password.” Seriously, if the person has an intention to cheat your child, a password issue wouldn’t be too difficult to solve. If I am the stranger, I could easily say “why don’t you tell me the password and see if it is correct?” To a young and innocent child, would he or she knows the danger? Probably not.
Well, some may argue that in the case of a stranger, it is straight forward. Don’t follow strangers. Then what about a friend? A trustworthy family friend? A mother of your child’s classmate? This is the grey zone I’m talking about. So under my black and white, Mummy will never ask a friend to help pick you up. I will never compromise the safety of my children. Some of you may think that I am very extreme. But haven’t you read the news, some close family friend of 30 years actually sexually abused the friend’s daughter. Fine, this might be a rare case, but can you ensure your child will be safe with your friend? What if your friend who needs to struggle with her own child and your child while crossing the road and accidentally allows your child to run across the road and gets knocked down by a car? At that point in time, do you then blame your friend or do you only have yourself to blame? Or what if one of your other friends decides to pick your child up one day and your child thinks that this is common practice and follows?
For myself, I would not agree and gentle decline to pick a friend’s child as who would want to be personally responsible for the safety of another person’s child? Of course, there will be situation where perhaps, Mummy is sick or has other engagement, so in this case, I tell my daughter, it will be daddy or grandmother who will pick you. It will be a close relative.
9. A Positive Attitude:
I’ll Try Again
An ingredient for success in life is a positive attitude. This positive attitude needs to be cultivated and practised. So start young. Let your child knows that failure is a great opportunity to learn. So what if you fails? Simply try again. Get your child to repeat the line “ ’ll try again” when he fails. When repeated many times, it will change from being a reminder to self into an attitude.
“I am learning because I want to.”
Also, instil in your child that he is learning because he wants to. Many a times when I used to ask my students who do not want to study “ why are you in school for?”, their answer will be “ I’m in school because my parents force me to. I don’t want to study, I hate learning but my parents force me to”. Remember, our control as parents will diminish as our children grow up. So if we are the reason why they learn, once we lose that control when the kids grow up, they will stop learning. Teach your child to take ownership of their learning. Let them self motivate.
There is always something to learn in every situation.
There are always 2 sides to a coin. If you choose to see the negative side, you will never be happy. But if you choose to always see the positive side, you will always be happy. So for every situation, teach your child to see the positive aspect, to look for opportunities, don’t always think “what if I was….”.
One random conversation I have with my husband.
Happiness is a choice. One can choose to be happy. If you are not as wealthy but have a strong family bond, then you should be happy and cherish the family. Instead some may focus on the fact that they are poor and wish they have more money. On the other hand, what makes you think that rich people are the happiest people. They may have money but no time or freedom to spend it. Or they may not have as much time to spend with their family. The grass is always greener on the other side. Unless you learn to be contented, you will never be happy.
10. Just because other people have it, doesn’t mean that you must have.
“Mummy, some of my friends have handphones already. Can I have one too?”
“Mummy, my friend had a new frozen water bottle. I like it so much. Can I have one too?”
My answer to her is a firm “No”. The lesson that I need her to learn: “Just because other people have it, does not mean that you must have it too”. Teach your child the difference between “need” and “wants”. Assure your child that Mummy and Daddy will provide what is necessary. If they want anything else, they need to save up for it or earn it one way or another. More importantly, you are teaching your child how to deal with peer pressure. Reason with your child. A 7 year old will be able to reason.
For instance, regarding the handphone:
Natalie: “Mummy, some of my friends have handphones already. Can I have one too?”
Mummy: “ What is the function of a handphone?”
Natalie: “ To call or sms.”
Mummy: “ Who do you need to call or sms?”
Natalie ( Being a smart girl): “ You. In case I have an emergency.”
Mummy: “ When will your emergency take place?”
Natalie: “ In school.”
Mummy:” In this case, you can go to your teacher or the general office and tell them you need to call me.”
Natalie: “ But mummy, I need a phone to message my friends. In case I am unsure about my homework.”
Mummy: “ In this case, can you get their number and call them from our house phone?”
Natalie: “ yes, mummy.. ( conceding defeat)”.
Mummy: “ Natalie, I think you don’t really need a handphone now. I think the real reason is that you want to play games right?”
Natalie giggles.
Mummy: “ I can lend you my phone to play games once in a while. But I don’t think you need one for yourself at the moment. I think a handphone is what you want, not what you need.”
Spend time to reason with your child. Take your child through the thinking process and help her to differentiate between “wants” and “needs”. Tell her is okay for others to have what she doesn’t have because you simple can’t own everything.
11. There are no good or bad decisions, only consequences.
“ If only I have studied harder for this exam, I wouldn’t fail.”
“If only I have one more day to study for this subject, I will definitely pass.”
“ I was sleeping in your class just now because I was tired. Can you teach me now?”
These are common sentences that a teacher will come across quite often. Well, to me, you made the decision not to study hard prior the exam, you made the decision not to start revision earlier, you made the decision to sleep in my class just now, so live with the consequences. It is important to teach our children to think about the consequences of their decision before making them as it will be too late to regret and there is no point crying over spilt milk. The earlier your child learns, the less serious the consequence they need to face. Seriously, in school, what is the worst consequence? If your child decides not to do his homework, he will have to face the punishment from the teacher. If he decides to spend all his money at the bookshop, he will have to face the consequence of being hungry. These are small consequences for decisions that your child makes now. Help your child associate the consequences with their decision or action. So think before your decide or act.
12. How to deal with bullies?
Answer: Stand up for yourself. Luckily for my daughter, she met her first bully in K2 . It was a girl who constantly calls her names and labelled her work as rubbish.
Step 1: Tell the bully how you feel and tell her to “stop it”. (This is part of restorative practice, which I will discuss in my next article soon.)
So, I taught her to tell the “bully” that she feels sad when she calls her names or that her work was rubbish. She was also taught to tell the bully to “stop it because it is not nice to call people names”. However, it did not stop.
Step 2: Get the help of the teacher to get the bully to stop.
Although the teacher intervened, the bullying continues and became worse as time passes. The mother had also been told by the teacher about what happened. But the bully did not stop. One day, the bully actually told my daughter that she will kidnap her and sell her to Vietnam
Step 3: Parental involvement.
Of course, I had to get involved at this stage. I requested for the teacher to call for a parents’ conference where the mummy of the bully, the bully, my daughter, the teachers and myself can sit down and talk about the issue. I prepared my daughter for the conference and I started the conference by asking my daughter to tell everyone how she felt when the bully called her names and told her that she would kidnap her and sell her away. Obviously, the bully immediately knew the seriousness of her action. To cut the long story short, the bully stopped bullying my daughter.
Basically, teach your child to stand up for himself/herself. You cannot always be there to protect her or stand up for him. Trust me, dealing with bullies at a younger age is much easier than dealing with bullies when they are older. If they can’t even deal with small bullies, when they meet bigger bullies, the consequences will be much more serious.
What I have learnt:
- Control your urge to protect your child.
Over protective will do your child more harm. Primary school is basically still a safe environment for your child to learn. The consequences of their actions or decisions will not be very serious. Do not interfere too much. The less you interfere, the more your child learns. Don’t be a helicopter parent, instead help your child build up their confidence.
- Teach your child to manage. Not manage for them.
- Manage their disappointment and failure, always be encouraging. Our role is mainly to nurture and to encourage them.
- Teach them to manage stress.
At a young age, many children may not know how to manage stress and therefore, fail to cope with it and falls into depression. For me, I am always looking for outlet to reduce stress. For instance, play sports, go to the playground or trampoline park to release the tension. Also, as parents, we can look out for signs of stress and depression such as the child being more withdrawn or always complaining of headache.
Sometimes, my daughter cries while learning spelling as she just can’t seem to learn to spell that word. I would ask her to stop, give her a long big hug and get her to rest and play awhile before coming back to learn. Often, I would let it rest and get her to learn the next day and miraculously, she can spell.
- Encourage non academic development as well.
Character building is more important than just academic excellence.
Your child may have many other talents. Discover them and encourage them to develop in the aspects.
- Learn thru fun
Associate learning with fun. The love for learning is so much more important than what is learnt. Once your child has the love for learning, they will definitely succeed in life.
- Know your child’s friends
Be updated of who your child “friends” or “unfriend”. Ask her for the reason of why she like a particular type of friends. This will tell you what values she values more. For example, “ I like Sarah because she is polite”. So in this case, being polite is something important to her.
You would definitely agree that the friends your child mixes with is important. So get to know them personally. In fact, I allow my daughter to invite her friends and their parents over to our house so that I can get to know more about her friends and their parents. I am glad to say that the parents of her friends and I share the same values and I feel more at ease now for her to mix with her group of friends.
- Advise but do not force. You will only force your child to lie to you.
There are so many things that you want to control. For example, the type of food your child eats or drinks during recess. So what do you do when your child comes back and tell you that he ate snacks or drank sweet drinks? Scold him and threatens to beat him if you find out that he does that again? Well, you have just forced your child to lie to you in the future or think of ways to avoid detection.
Natalie used to be scolded for drinking the drink mogu mogu in school as it is a very sweet drink that we want to discourage. So every time she brings back a bottle of unfinished mogu mogu, she will be nagged at (not by me). Eventually, she learns and secretly confided in me one day that she still drinks mogu mogu but she no longer bring back the bottle. Instead, she empties her water bottle and pours in her remaining mogu mogu drink ( her water bottle is purple in colour so it’s hard to detect the sweet drink inside).
Important lesson for me to learn, we can only advise her but we can’t force her. It is better to know the truth and deal with it right?
Useful Tips
- Set up a parents’ chat group.
In my daughter’s school, during orientation, we will elect a parents’ representative and he/she is in charge to creating a whatsapp group to include all the parents in class. I find it very useful as it is so much easier for us as parents to clarify things or communicate with other parents. Also, if your child is absent, you can even check what homework there are for the day.
However, you need to be cautious when having such group. Don’t let the group be changed into a group which is negative, which constantly complains about everything in school.
- Give money in a way which is easier for your child to handle.
To help my daughter better handle money, I gave her 2 $1 coins during the first week. When she is more confident in using money, I gave a 1 $1 coin and 2 50 cents coins. Finally, I am giving her a $2 note or $2 in different denomination now. This will make buying food so much easier for your child.
- Invite your child’s friends and their parents over.
Have a tea party or play date and learn more about their values systems and exchange parenting tips. You will be surprise that you after the party, you will have even more friends and can organise even more play dates.
- Important telephone numbers.
Create a nice card with all the important telephone numbers on it. Make sure the card can fit into your child’s wallet. I laminated the card as it is intended for long term use. I created 3 of such telephone cards- one to be in the wallet, one in the school bag and one in the file. This is to make it faster and more convenient in case the child needs to call us during an emergency.
In the card, I included:
Mummy’s Hp
Daddy’s Hp
Home telephone number
Grandmother’s Hp
Grandmother’s home telephone number.
I give her all several numbers just in case one of us is engaged at the moment and is unable to answer the call. At least she will have other options.
I hope you find the points and tips in this article useful. If you have any additional points. Feel free to add on..
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