Saturday, April 29, 2006

Toward a Stress Free PSLE
The school organised this talk yesterday. So Luke & I made the trip. The speaker Danny Ng is a psychologist, father of two boys & a friend. Was a 3 part talk. First, to both parents & boys. Second, to parents alone. Third, to the boys. End result. To get the boys to agree to a time table. Where the hours for Rest, Spare, Meals, Subjects are all clearly defined. Where the expectations on either side are spelt out.
Actually Luke has a time-table already. But neither of us have looked at it for the longest time. Breaches on either side have made it obselete. We really need discipline to keep to it. I'm awful at that. Truly awful. Think that's why my boys are equally, if not, more awful. This is the way I rationalise it. I'm an awful parent because I was never supervised when I was growing up. And I loathe breathing down my boys' necks. So every now and then, I get a spurt of energy and try to do that. But it is, at best, haphazard.
From listening to all that jabbering yesterday, I also realized that I hardly ever encourage or praise the boys when they do something right. Have to work on that.
Best take away that I wish to implement:
Reward effort, not results.

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