I want to a sportsman when I grow up

September 4, 2011 · By ·

With a father that loves golf, and a granddad that enjoys tennis, it seems rather natural that an active and energetic child like Kyle will have a natural inclination towards sports.

I have toyed with the idea of sending him to speech and drama, since he is quite a drama king. And even art classes, as he has been asking for it. However, we have a limited enrichment budget and since I don't plan to over-schedule activities in a week for him, hb and I have decided on swimming and golf lessons. It seems quite common to send a child for formalised lessons as young as 2, but I have delayed lessons till this year, as I think that it is important that he shows interest, has the attention span and is able to follow instructions.

He enjoys swimming tremendously, and he is doing well in lessons with group instruction. He just had his first test from the swimming school, and despite the crowd of children having the tests the same day, he was game to go through it.

 

As for golf, we have justed started lessons last week and he is having loads of fun. He was able to tell me that his teacher taught him 'putting' and 'chipping' and even loudly exclaimed during his lessons to his coach, "Why I am only learning half swing?", when the rest of his other two classmates who joined earlier were doing full swings. No rush, my dear boy…one step at a time!

 

I have read this article that claims that it is too soon to think of sports for a 4 year old. I will agree with some of the points that the article mentioned, but I think physical and mental skills development required to learn a sport varies from child to child. Also since most sports require learning or playing in a group, the child needs to be ready to 'perform' in front of people. Looking at how outgoing and 'showy' Kyle can be at times, facing that pressure to 'perform' in a group/crowd does not seem to be a problem, in fact I always find that he needs to be reminded often to tone down his boisterousness.

Learning sports have been advantageous for us so far, as it has been effective to wear out his energy. Often he is like this 'energiser bunny' with the energy that never seems to tire out. On top of that, his appetite seems to have improved, and mealtimes are less of a chore :)

 

These days, he tells me that he wants to be a sportsman when he grows up, "To be a sportsman, I don't need to go to school and study right?"

Nice try, my little sporty guy.

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No pretty flowers in our park

August 13, 2011 · By ·

We have been given our first parent-child project assigned by his school; a flower pressing home-project. The kids will then be encouraged in class to do 'Show-and-Tell' to talk about the 'adventure' they had in the gathering the flowers and the process of flower pressing with their parent, subsequently, show a final product of a card/bookmark to the class.  I discussed with Kyle on the options we could take and he was initially insistent on going to Dairy Farm Nature Park to do his flower picking activity, but the lazy mom convinced him that he could get the same flowers in the neighbourhood park.

We ventured into the park, he pedalled along with his bike, looking out for flowers on the wayside. I recalled a certain spot in the park that had many butterflies and wildflowers a while back, but this time round, we saw nothing but bushes of dull shrubs.. Either we missed the season for blooming flowers, or the people sent by National Parks Board have been working hard to weed out the wilflowers, so as to maintain their flower-less and lifeless bushes and plants.

The only flowers we saw were a couple of Lantanas as well as droopy almost dead-like looking ones like these on trees, which I figured had little of its beauty left to preserve in a flower pressing project.

The other flower that we spotted were Fragipanis…pungent smelling flowers. The irony was that they there were the only flowers that were spotted thriving in the park, and flowers which had the symbolism of funerals and death in some Asian cultures.

We tried, but were disapponted by how there was a lack of decent looking flowers in our neighbourhood park. And ended up taking the easy way out and bought Geberas from the nearest florist. Maybe we could have better luck if we went to Dairy Farm nature park instead. Well, at least the boy had some fun pedalling to and fro and around the park

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A permanent resident

July 11, 2011 · By ·

We have found ourselves a new permanent resident…

In hb and my room that is.

Just when I just declared to someone who visited our house last month that Kyle sleeps alone in his room. Technically, it is not wrong cos he has been sleeping by himself since he was 2.5 years old and somehow discovered the joys of co-sleeping :(

The routine has been like this for the last 2-3 months;

1. I tuck him into bed after bedtime stories, bible devotion then a prayer

2. I lie down next to him on his bed and we chat for like 5-10 minutes, until I declare that he needs to sleep and stop talking or asking me questions

3. I announce that I will only be next to him for like 5 minutes, halfway through that 5 minutes he ask for extra 5 minutes. So we end up with more than 10 minutes. When 10 minutes ++ is up. I declare loudly that I am moving to sit on the floor next to him, for like 1 minute. Will then do a mental countdown of a 1 minute and then tell him time is up. He asks for one more last minute, I tell him this has to be the last '1 minute'…then I do another mental countdown. After the 1 minute is up and stand up, kiss him on the cheek then say goodnight, he then grudgingly answers me with a muffled goodnight with his head buried in his pillow.

On good nights, he sleeps when I leave the room. On not so good nights, he quietly opens the door, stands outside my study, and hides at the side of the door until I feel a set of eyes watching me from behind my back. On regular nights (at least for the last 2 months), he sleeps through for like 3-4 hours, leaves his bed and room, opens our door and climbs in hb and my bed. Some nights when I am too tired, I set aside space for him in our bed, on other nights when I feel less lethargic, I will walk him back to his room while berating him loudly in the wee hours of the morning.

Most days, he ends up crawling into our bed again when he hears the birds chirping…usually at daybreak.

I am certain most sleep experts have no problems picking up all the problems in this routine that we have. But I am feeling so tired of starting sleep training all over again that I think he will be getting away with this for now. Like how long can he go on wanting to sleep with us, by 7 or 8 years old? Oops…that's like another 4 more years to go…sigh…

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