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Dad: It’s actually ‘our’ year. Year of the Rabbit

G: Why is it your year?

Dad: We were born in the Year of the Rabbit.

G: And me?

Dad: You were born in the Year of  the Dog…

G (at this point looking at little confused): …and after that it’s the Year of the Hedgehog!

Dad: … ????

Throughout almost all of last term, Georgia, moaned and whined and made a fuss of going to school. She would be clingy and there were even daily tears.  It was awful! For those of you whose children skip happily along to school, you’re really lucky…

It helped tremendously that I knew and trusted her teachers and their feedback was always taken positively, and it was great knowing that we were partners working together towards a common goal. However, it was still a challenge every morning.

Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, as a treat to myself, (I had been good ) I read Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles. Now if you like me watched The Secret and liked it but never really got to the practise of  ’the secret’, Canfield’s book provides and almost step-by-step guide (an all very logical too) to achieving anything you set your mind to. One of the chapters in the book, suggests that you list every day, 5 achievements for the day (even if you did not accomplish things that you set out to do that day, if you reflect on your day, you will often find achievements each day) and to focus on goals for the next day.

So we thought, what a great way for Georgia, and especially for us, to focus on what we can achieve and to celebrate the successes each day, and that was how we came to create the Star Book.

In Georgia’s Star Book, we list 3 goals for each day, and every night when she gets into bed we discuss whether the goals have been achieved, and if they have we write a comment (Well done, or Great job) and we decide whether we need to repeat the goal the next day. We close each session by asking her what was the best part of the day and we write this down too. And for every day (it has been 2 weeks) that is a success (which day isn’t?) she has sticks a bright shiny golden star against the date. If you have time in the mornings, it helps to talk about goals for that day too.

Last week, the added bonus of getting to the end of the week was a Hello Kitty Nintendo DS game for a Star every day. I have noticed however that the highlight is really the Stars every day, and she hasn’t even asked for a prize this week! It’s an amazing way forward and something I would thoroughly recommend to all parents to do. It may take an extra 5 to 10 minutes of the sleep routine, and older kids may well be able to write their own successes and goals for each day but it is a great way to end the day.

If you’d like to try it out, this is what you need

a) A diary is ideal for this, but we couldn’t find one that we really liked so we just use a ring bound book that Georgia picked out.

b)It is essential to use positive language in your goals and always, always, ALWAYS focus on the positive. For example, instead of ‘Not cry at school’ Georgia’s goal every morning is ‘Bring a smile to school’.

c) Reward the day, whether it’s a star sticker and a favourite character sticker, it’s important to reward the day.

I’m in the process of designing a page layout for this, and will share the PDF when I’m done. Wouldn’t you like to just buy a Star Book off the shelf?

A note sent home from georgia’s class…
I love the idea and the approach, don’t you?

A recent article Why Chinese Mothers are Superior in the Wall Street Journal has caused a lot of controversy and raised a lot of emotion amongst it readers and it’s certainly worth a read. Being an immigrant (Malaysian Chinese) to a Western culture (we now live in the UK), this article has certainly struck a chord for many reasons….not least because I too am, to a certain extent, trying to instill my child with ‘Asian values’ while being surrounded by Western Culture (I wrote about this when Georgia was little more than 1 here);

 it also resonated with my thoughts on the responses of the UK’s Department of Education (supported by the PM and DPM) on the drop in the UK placing for the OECD, PISA rankings (but that’s probably for another blog!).

So as another Chinese mother, even with the same Hokkien heritage…do I agree with Prof Chua?

I must admit, that her methods were not a shock to me. While my mother was not quite as brutal, the expectation to achieve and over-achieve while never spoken were always implied and results were always demanded. I remember telling her the results to an English test one day, saying “I got 100%” and her response was “Is that all?”. I promptly burst in to tears.

This however was the norm amongst my peers. Everyone strove to achieve, success was measured by how many As you got; praise was something that was refuted by your parents when their friends commented one your achievements. Top students were exalted and god-forbid you failed any tests. Somehow though, the need to achieve became internalised, and certainly for me, I always felt the need to achieve…rightly or wrongly…to the extent that if I could not do something well, I would give it up!

 Without a doubt, it has in very clear ways made me the person I am today (I have a PhD, play 3 instruments, swum competitively and was a competitve archer; I also learnt, Japanese, Mandarin and French (languanges are not my forte though!). I definitely attribute much of my success to my mothers mothering abilities.

However as a mother myself today, would I do the same? In one word No, BUT neither would I wholly subscribe to the ‘Western-style’ of raising children.

Being somewhat ‘in-between’, I have come to realise (as many in similar situations have) that the true value of being a happy, successful person lies somewhere in between the two extremes.

Happy being the key word here.

Our Asian heritage teaches us many wonderful traits, among them, hard work (which Prof, Chua very clearly instills in her daughters), respect (especially for parents and elders), humility, compassion for others but the bottom line in the Asian culture is always how successful you are, never how happy you are. Often success may be achieved at the cost personal happiness, as long as “my Parents are happy”.

My life experiences however have taught me that the most important thing in life is to be happy and at peace with yourself.

Perhaps here in the West, happiness and satisfaction are severely over-rated and we often tip-toe around people for fear of hurting their feelings. However, the freedom of children (to be children), the ability to ask questions and learn from asking questions, the immense value placed on creativity and individuality are all wonderful hallmarks of a Western upbringing. Unfortunately this is also often at the cost of striving to achieve more where academic success is not valued, over-achievers are taunted and successful people are football heros or pop idols.

So where does that leave us?

My personal philosophy to raising Georgia has been to instill the value and the pleasure of good, hard work; to know that it is important to respect people for who they are, to be humble and compassionate and yet equally we encourage her creativity and constantly praise her efforts in everything that she does; answer all her questions as honestly and as truthfully as we can.

Only time will tell if this is the right way…but for now, that and all our love will have to suffice.

Were you raised in the Asian or Western way? and if you have kids, what are your parenting philosophies?

Have you ever wondered though what it might be like to ‘unplug’, to live without ‘live’ television at home?

Two years ago we did just that, we pulled the plug on our television, well sort of….

The first thing that happened was our Digibox (digital set-top receiver) died a timely death. By that time we had gotten used to recording all the programmes we wanted to watch on the internal hard disk which meant we could fast forward through all the advertisements. So when the DigiBox met it’s untimely death, much as we wanted to replace it, at that time we actually did not have a budget for it (there were so many more important things to pay for like heating and electricity!).

Having halved our family income also meant that the money we could save simply by not paying for a TV License was significant. The decision was made easier by the fact that while I had stopped working to Stay at home, I realised that Georgia who was almost 2 at the time, was so engrossed by the television that she could easily spend hours in front of it. Obviously because it kept her quiet and gave me time to ‘get on’ with what I wanted to do, often 3 to 4 hours might pass before I actually realised she had had so much screen time!

I realised that because the TV was so central to our time, days and weeks seemed to whizz by at an alarming rate. That was when we decided that we had to Switch Off…we have not had our TV connected to a receiver for almost 3 years now. What is it like? As with everything there are pros and cons, it may be hard to believe but there are actually cons to completely tuning out of TV as we have found. Firstly the positives…

1. Time .. and lots of it
We found that once we turned off the TV and tuned out of it, we had so much more time! This I think is the main pay-off for tuning out. Georgia does not look to the TV as the first thing to do to fill any ‘down’ time. Instead we spend a lot of time talking, playing, baking, cooking, reading, generally having fun… did I mention talking?

We used to spend at least an hour each day (if not more) catching up on ‘must watch’ TV series, but once we got over the withdrawal symptoms (the NEED to know who killed who or whether that couple got married), we found that we not only did not miss it, we completely forgot about it.

2. ‘No news is good news’
We also realised that a significant amount of our dissatisfaction and unhappiness was atrributed to depressing news on TV. News is hardly ever positive so without actually realising it, the constant innudation of ‘this is wrong’ with the World message actually gets you down! – so we found!

We do still keep up with the news, we read news daily on the Net, but with reading online, we have found that you have a choice of what you read. Sure, there is still the inevitable share of murders and crimes, but the choice to read the entire article is now your own.

3. Money saved
Clearly because we no longer receive TV signals we now do not pay for a TV license.

There is some confusion about the paying for a TV license, we have been told by TV Licensing, that as long as you do not receive TV signals you do not need to pay for a license. You are still allowed to use your TV to play video games or watch DVDs.

You know those rumours of people checking up on you, to see if you really don’t watch TV….well they are true!
At least we have had someone, from TV Licensing, knocking on the door, during the peak of the Football World Cup season, asking if we watched TV. It must have been unbelieveable that we actually did need to know the latest score!

We physically moved the TV so that it is no longer connected to the TV aerial.

4. Advertising
Georgia no longer asks us for things she has seen on TV…clearly because she doesn’t see anything on TV. And we feel a lot more satisfied in our life without constantly being bombarded by the things we could potentially own and not need.

All these great positives but would you believe if I told you that there actually are downsides (albeit minors ones) to switching off?

1. Constant contact
We have come to realise that without the TV’s baby-sitting services, almost all of Georgia’s waking moments are full-on and hands on. We have an almost constant level of interaction. We are almost always doing something together, either some activity or playing of talking. It is extremely helpful that we work from home and can afford to give her that time, but, in all honesty, it does get very draining at times.

2. Attention span and being easily distracted
Now this is something not scientifically supported or tested, it is merely based on our observations and comparisons. We have actually noted that Georgia actually pays less attention and seems to be more easily distracted compared to her peers who have a healthy dose of TV. She does easily spend hours doing things she enjoys; making, cutting, crafting and sticking, but she seems to be so sensitive to the going-ons around her that every thing that is happening is reason for a question.

This could well be that it’s just her personality…but as we don’t actually know of anyone else without TV access it makes for difficult comparisons.

In summary, given that for now, we have been doing quite well without TV, and don’t actually miss it, it is unlikely that we will be plugging it back in anytime soon. But would we reccommend it?

While our no-TV policy might be quite hard to just take up if you’re used to watching several hours of TV a day, it is certainly worth noting how much time your children actually spend in front of the television.  Going cold turkey might be hard, but it may well be worth cutting down screen time and seeing what happens.

Other Q & As that might be of interest…

Do we watch anything at all?

Yes we do have dvds, very occassionaly we watch BBCs iPlayer, and youtube videos.

How much screen time does Georgia have?

This ranges from none to probably a maximum of 3 hours a week. We do not regulate this or keep a timetable. We have just found that once you don’t watch TV, you actually forget you ‘need’ to watch it.

Does Georgia play computer or video games?

We only very recently (in the past 2 months) bought Georgia her much sought after Nintendo DS (XL version). Here again, she probably plays on it a maximum of 10 minutes a day….if she remembers.

Are you thinking of unplugging or cutting down on TV? Would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts or if you’re thinking of unplugging the TV!

The Secret: Her very own Star Book…read more about it here.

But for now, Well done Georgia!!!

Today I found an email in my Inbox with an invite through LinkedIn to add Dirk to my network ….

… and I was really surprised to find that I was no longer annoyed or even remotely angry at Dirk. It would have been a completely different reaction 4 years ago. To say I detested him then was quite an understatement…I physically shook with anger when I encountered him or even saw his name!

Dirk literally was the ‘straw’ that broke the camel’s back. He contributed significantly my decision to leave the Academia.

But 4 years on, I now know it was the best decision in my life.

I spend all my time with the people I love most in the World. We talk and laugh and share and eat. We work for ourselves and have full control of our time, we are happy with our successes and find joy in everyday.

So…once again, I thank you Dirk!

Mrs Wall is the Maths Co-ordinator for Georgia’s school.

On our way home from school, after a long first week back to school, we were making plans for our weekend when we met Mrs Wall leaving school.

“Oh, has Georgia told you, we had extra lessons today?” she said.

“No…” this had certainly piqued my interest.

“Oh, she’ll tell you more about it, I’m sure,” Mrs Wall added walking off.

Thankfully, she did turn around and say, “Georgia came to my Maths sessions and we did some Maths together”.

It turns out, Georgia is one of two children, in her class to be sent to Mrs Wall to ‘do Maths’. The other children are apparently from the year above. And when asked what she actually did in those sessions? Played games!

Sounds like fun…Way to go G!

What an acheivement!

So as you can imagine, we start discussing what animals might be on the road..

Me: Oh…what animals do you think might be on the road?

G: Mmm…an elephant!

Me: (playing along)…a pink elephant?

G: Duh! A grey one of course!

*Seriously though, does anyone know which animals were on the M4 that night?*