Give them roots and wings

From left to right : Members of Parliament Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar, Indranee Rajah,
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Sharon Tong, and Education Minister Heng Swee Keat.

I managed to catch snippets of the recent Conversations with PM, and the discussions were on having children, education and the future of Singapore.  One thing which Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar said stayed in my mind “I would encourage parents… let the child discover himself or herself through school, through failure, it’s ok”.

When I first heard it, I thought – Wow – can any parent really do this?

But I always encounter situations when I am shown, right before my eyes, the detrimental effects of not allowing children to fail, and therefore robbing them of the opportunity to learn and grow. Here’s the story.

Today is an eventful day for me, to say the least.  Among the many things that happened, Elkan called me at 10am to tell me that he had forgotten (yet again), to bring his completed homework to school.  It consisted of 2 full Maths paper 2, and 2 full English papers, which means close to 8 hours’ worth of work.  He asked me to bring the work to him.

We are in our final days of revision before the PSLE starts in less than 2 weeks’ time.  The teachers are on a fast-pace to get the children to do as many practice papers as possible, and they go through the answers in the class.  If Elkan does not bring his papers, it means that he would have lost the opportunity to get the correct answers for those hours of work he did.  In short, he would be wasting this “public education” which is all that he has for many of his subjects.  The kiasu parent in me screamed:”What if those questions come out for the PSLE?! Then all his classmates will know the answer, and he would not!”

This is NOT the first time this happened, but it was the first time he asked for my help, which means that this time, I can save him those hours of work, and help ensure that he learns his Maths and English.  What should a parent do?

For me, I looked at which option will help my child learn and grow more, in the long run.

Elkan is a sweet, simple child.  He always smiles for the camera. He is happy, simply with a good foodcourt meal. He tells me – he just wants to be happy.

I have three boys who have very different strengths and weaknesses. Elkan needs no help in learning. He is by nature diligent and can be focused. He is willing to work, but being still a child, is immature and gets distracted. However, he would need a lot of help to score well for his IMPENDING PSLE. He simply was never drilled sufficiently for examinations. He is also a tad on the arrogant side and tends to disregard sound advice on how to answer accordingly to ensure that he can score.

Given a child like this – his final days before the PSLE are critical because these are the only times he is going to learn the art of acing examinations. Yet this is a case of serious irresponsibility on his part.

We have rescued him before.  Last year, his Green Wave project stalled. We enlisted his brother – Elias (who is in the same school), so he can do a group project. To confess, I helped him a lot in it…

It was a difficult call, but I told Elkan, mercilessly, that I will not send him the homework. It is certainly very distressing for me. No matter how much I focus on the wholistic development of my children, I do want my children to do well academically. I am aware of the implications of poor PSLE results. I am aware of my sense of guilt and doubt if his results were to be disappointing.  Of course rationally, these two weeks and those 8 hours of questions are unlikely to be the cause of any downfall for him, but no mother can be completely rational when it comes to her child.

Then again, I think that parents, myself included, sometimes sweat the small stuff too much. Many may disagree with me – and say that PSLE is not small stuff. I agree. It is not small stuff. But I think in this instance, for Elkan, it is a small stuff. I know my child – I am confident of his self-esteem. He thinks he is incredibly smart and doing badly in PSLE will show him the reality that intelligence can only carry someone so far. He would be sorely disappointed of course, but I doubt if it would crush him.

Anyway, my decision and its implications remained distressing to me, until something more distressing happened.

I will not share the details as it involved someone else and is private, but it suffices to say that it involved a certain young adult and it gave me a vivid image of a child who was not brought up to understand personal responsibility.  The incident was so troubling that it strengthened my resolve to teach my children right values from young.

The value which I was determined for Elkan to learn in this instance is that he alone is responsible for his own life – his success and happiness. As his parents – we will provide for him, love, teach and train him when he is young, and forever be his friend and prayer intercessors. However, he must learn that his every action has a consequence.  If it is a bad consequence, no one else, including his parents, can rescue him from it.

More than a month ago, I read this excellent article in the ST, titled “Snowplough Parenting – Hurdles in childhood give good training” by Simon Chesterman, Dean of the NUS Faculty of Law.  He described “Snowplough Parenting” as parents who clear away any potential obstacle in the child’s path.

I love this picture, taken from the ST article. It depicts so well the efforts many of us put in to ensure an optimal environment for our children to do well in school.

In his article, he talked about Singaporean students’ “unhealthy fear of failure”.  He used the Olympics as an example:-

“..the individual achievements of the Olympics are actually built on failure.

No one wins a god medal without having struggled against opponents who were stronger. And the Olympics would be pointless if the only people who took part were those who knew for a certainty that they would take home gold.

The reason we care about the Olynpics – and a quality we need to develop in our own lives – is the struggle to do your best without knowing if it will be enough. To know the risk of failure, and keep trying anyway.”

I also like what he said at the end : “The problem with snowplough parenting is that it creates the illusion of success by over-preparing our children for a very limited set of tasks.”

I don’t think that Elkan will suffer from having the illusion of success and I don’t think anyone can accuse me of over-preparing him for the PSLE.

As I watch him diligently doing his work again (another 4 hours worth of work), disappointed with himself, sorry for his errors, my heart goes out to him, my compliant, sweet, easy-going boy.

I forgive him, for he is still a child, and he is learning.

I hope he will forgive me, if he does badly for his PSLE as a result of my parenting choices.  It might be bumpy for him in the next few years but I believe it will serve him better in the long run.