Distance Parenting – from a mother’s perspective

It was in Feb 2010 when my husband decided that he was going to start a business in Sg.Petani, Kedah. When he made this decision, he gave me the option to choose to move to SP or to continue living in KL. All my life, I have been in KL. I just could not imagine going to any other state, thinking how much advanced KL is. After much thought, we both agreed that we were going to live separately until our first child completes his pre-school in KL, ensuring that he has solid foundation and a good start in education, which means we will live apart for two years. Discussing this was not easy, but once we had the decision, we felt better, relieved in a way that I know my son will get good English start at an English medium school in KL and I do not have to be away from my comfort place, KL. But when the day came to sent my husband off, how heavy my heart was that I will never want to relive that experience ever again. It was so difficult for me and my son and moreover now that I have a baby, only 3 months old at that time.

It was the most testing time of my life, having to juggle everything on my own without the support of my other half. My son who is very attached to my husband is badly affected in the first few weeks. He would cry at night, he would cry in the morning before going to school, refusing food and when asked to eat, he will break down and cry telling me he misses his father. He became a little sensitive at the beginning. So I had to ensure that all communication with my son has to be done tactfully. I would call my husband to allow my son to speak to his father every time he asks about his father. I had to make arrangements on weekends to take my kids out and have a good time so that their weekends will be as same as the weekends they use to have when their father was in KL.

In a way, I was their mama and abah at the same time, I remember spending good time at night with my son to read him good story books, I took this opportunity to instill spiritual knowledge and practice in my son during those trying times. As he tells me about his sorrow, I listen and emphatize, I teach him to look at the reasons why abah has to go away, why abah made that decision. I will invite him to pray with me, teach him the verses from the Holy Quran, and teach him to seek Allah’s help to relieve his sadness and to reunite us in the near future.

All of a sudden, I had to be on the go all the time, juggling with my baby, son and work. From getting them ready in the morning, cooking, teaching, nurturing to playing football, I did everything on my own. But thankfully, I had the greatest support from my parents and siblings.

Creative Art for Healing

A recent workshop on using creative arts to help children express themselves in therapy was such an eye opener. Having been trained in using the usual talk therapy, this workshop has definitely enlightened me in so many ways. Creative art is such a powerful tool to provide an avenue for children and young people to express their feelings. It gives them a safe space where they have no fear of sharing what is going on in their minds and hearts. It provides an opportunity for expressing feelings associated with trauma, loss, illness, reduced capacity and depressed. Through creative arts, children and young people learn to express and regulate their emotions by identifying how they feel in different situations and learn how best they can cope with those situations. It gives them an opportunity to express their feelings which they may not be able to express using words.

Creative arts allow one to explore their inner feelings without feeling threatened of the consequences that may take place in a typical daily life setting. This exploration provides opportunity to rediscover oneself. The best part is it also allows one to discover hidden talents! I myself felt very relaxed to perform all the activities including making faces and even dancing, which i usually would not do, given that I am rather an introvert.

The spontaneity nature of these activities provides a room for you to bring out the REAL YOU and see for yourself, how you usually react in situations. With this, it gives you a chance to reflect if that is the best way of handling situations. It creates a space to learn new ways to cope, better decision making, better social skill and the list of benefits just goes on.

PARENTING – Does your child REALLY deserve that scolding she/he got?

It’s 7.00 in the evening, it’s raining cats and dogs outside, your colleagues are leaving the office one by one to hit for home or anywhere else better than work and you are stuck juggling reports which dateline is next week but all of a sudden, your boss decides he wants it tomorrow early in the morning and you have a family waiting at home. Your patience level is thinning, you feel like there’s a volcano that will erupt from within you. “Mommy”, you start hearing your children’s little voices. Fast forward the whole scene, you arrive home at 9.30, greeted by your lovely angles. As soon as you reach the door they jump on you and pull you down together with your reports, everything is scattered. You get so mad that you yell at them saying they’re just making your life miserable. Sounds familiar?

In today’s challenging world, many parents have unintentionally use harsh languages or gestures with their little ones as a result of life’s stress. When we yell, shout, scream or reprimand our children, they immediately cease whatever they’re doing that would have caused their parents to be angry but in cases such as depicted above, how will a child understand the wrong of getting exciting at seeing their mommy coming back home? This is a classic situation of parents’ projecting their anger towards their child when actually they are angry with someone else or something else. In the case above, the mother yelled at the children with hurtful words out of her anger towards her employer, unfortunately she could not say it out directly to her employer, thus it’s bottled up causing her emotions to be extremely fragile. The first powerless person who happens to touch that fragility will experience its effects, thus the children getting yelled at.

In all the situations where we have been angry and act harshly towards our children, have those acts been valid? Did our children do something wrong or bad to deserve being reprimanded? It is so much easier getting angry at children because they are not equal to adults in terms of power. They are not our match; hence we use that and make them scape goats. Things can get out of hands sometimes when parents don’t stop at what happened that instant but instead continues to nag about past events and hurting a child’s personality, saying things like “you are useless”, “always giving me problems”, “making my life difficult”. These statements can live scar on child’s emotions and they drag it with them like a baggage with a broken wheel. Just imagine what does a bag with a broken wheel can do your floorings? Taking this analogy into child’s life, think what that broken wheel will do to him/her? It will scratch and leave scars on their self esteem and confidence, and this in turn will results in a hose on other emotional related problems later on. Is this what we want for our children? The next time you feel a volcano erupting within you, take a walk or even better, shower! and analyze what is the actual cause of the anger. This can help you avoid hurting your little angels.

Turning the Environment into Your Child's Classroom

I truly believe in engaging the environment in teaching children. Learning becomes fun, informal and meaningful when you turn your surrounding into your child's classroom. It also provides opportunities for learning at any given times, even unexpectedly. Here's my experience of how I have used the environment to teach my son. My son loves cars and I took that interest and turned it into an exciting learning experience. I taught him the concept of colours by pointing out the colour of cars around us. I started with blue and pointed at every blue car and said "that's a blue car", and I did that every time I saw a blue car. The next day, I asked him to point at any blue car if he sees one. Then, i went to red cars and every time he mastered, i taught him a new colour. It was simply amazing. He could tell all the colours up to silver when he was 2 years old. I have also used the same technique to teach shapes and many other things.

I make it a point to talk to him just about anything around us. The environment is a wonderful classroom that provides you with abundance of opportunities to teach your child something new every time. With this, you do not need to allocate a specific time for learning. Learning becomes natural and takes place almost all the time. Just describing what you are doing already provides a lot of room for learning.

Here are some suggestions you can try:

1. Take your children to the supermarket, tell them the names of vegetables and other food items. This will surely be more interesting than just hanging a poster of fruits and vegetables in their room.

2. Make them read car registration numbers to you to help reinforce mastery of numbers and alphabet.

3. Teach the concept of numbers by making them count items whenever you encounter a situation that permits, such as counting slices of cake on a plate while having tea. Or during morning walks collect dried leaves and count them as you and your child pick them up.

There are many more things you can do with your children that without you realising it, they're actually learning new stuff. It is crucial that we make learning enjoyable and fun for children and when learning becomes natural where it takes place anywhere, anytime, children will develop curiosity to almost everything around them and it is this thirst for knowledge that you want to develop in children.

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6 Ways Parents Can Help Kids Cope With Social Cruelty - On Parenting (usnews.com)

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Two Simple Ways to Be a Happier Parent - On Parenting (usnews.com)

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BULLYING AMONG CHILDREN - How shall we train our kids to cope with bullying?

This topic has been in my mind for quite some time. We read in the daily newspapers about bullying in schools and how horrific it can get. It recently popped up again after my son spoke about what he wished to do to the person who bullied him. Here’s what happened:

My son attended a nursery when he was 2 years old. Observing that it was nice with a relatively pleasing play area, fish pond and lots and lots of toys and sound educational books and materials, I decided to send my son to this nursery. Moreover, it was being managed by a person whom I thought had the right qualities. For one, she’s a graduate in early childhood development and I was so so pleased to know this fact because I thought “okay, this lady sure understand kids very well and I bet there’ll be lots of fun stuff to do and my kid will be in good hands.” She also seems to have a nice personality and looks friendly with the kids (at least that’s what she portrayed in front of us, the parents). My son was doing fine in the beginning but later on, he was disturbed with the idea of having to go to the nursery. He was overcome with anxiety. Imagine a 2 year old waking up at 6 in the morning crying, asking whether he has to go to the nursery on that day, and this happened every day. I felt sad to see my baby crying and worried every day but at first I thought it was just separation anxiety so I kept sending him there. Whenever we arrived at the nursery, he would cry and this got worse as he started wailing and one day he just screamed and ran to our car. “That’s it!” I said. Something must be so wrong with this place. I tried asking my son but he won’t tell anything. He kept everything to himself until he is 4 now, as he is slowly sharing with us what happened. He was practically bullied by the son of the lady who runs the nursery. He was beaten and picked on. Nothing was done about this at that time. The lady never reprimanded her child for bullying small kids.

Now my son says that he wants to do the same thing to the boy as a way of revenge. I told him that it is not the right thing to do. Hitting the person who hit you doesn’t solve the problem. It just makes you like them. The question I asked myself is how do we teach our kids to cope with such situations? How can we tell them to walk away. Can we teach our kids diplomacy?