Many parents post happily about their children garnering academic awards, but no one posts about the pain he goes through when he gets his child to do work.
First graders don’t have homework, but I subject myself to hell by signing my son up for the “I’m a Young Zoologist” badge. I’m partly motivated via my professional standing. I’m the coordinator for the school’s sustainable applied learning programme — and one component involves students undertaking such badges from the Science Centre.
Today, I picked him up around 4.45pm because I knew that it would take him at least 30 minutes just to type a few sentences. But having anticipated his response time didn’t make things easier. It was excruciating watching him type one letter at a time. More so when he pressed a letter for long, resulting in sighhhhhhhhhhhhhh-inducing moments.
Luckily, the task I picked was interesting, and I picked up some fun facts from this exercise:
- each penguin’s feather pattern is unique!
- an emu delivers a powerful kick!
- a cassowary looks like a dinosaur!
- a kiwi bird is unique to New Zealand!
The exclamation marks were his idea. He wanted a chance to input special characters!
At the end of the day, I consider myself lucky for being strategic enough to schedule sit-down time with him. This should help me not break down when I need to review his spelling and 听写 in the future.
