scouts honor, that we provide opportunities for erita to experience (swimming, skating, skiing, dancing, gymnastics, calligraphy, math, brush painting, piano, violin, ballet, martial arts, gardening, baking, ... whatever),
entice her to do certain absolute basics (giving the swim teacher karen one per lesson thomas train toy characters to give to erita for attending each successive class),
play on her competitive character to give each act she does not favor her best try (i.e gymnastics), and
pray that she picks up on the basics (i.e. swimming, martial arts, math, reading) and develop interest in the basics due to pride of achievement and
spare some extra but natural enthusiasm on some extras (i.e. painting, dancing, ballet, calligraphy)
when she wanted to quit gymnastics due to whatever, we spoke about her reasons (i.e. the pain), and concluded with her it wasn't so much the pain, but the fact that she wanted instead to use the time for her painting act
at erita's 13th birthday, we would consider ourselves fortunate if erita is good enough at the basics, and focus on one passion
at one point we discussed whether to drop erita back a grade at school as she, being the youngest (born october cut-off) in her class was having trouble with math concepts as well as chinese language ability. we didn't know the right answer. we discussed the issue with erita as we did with many parents with grown kids.
erita said she wanted to try and stay with the class and would do so by working with tutors. my wife and i discussed our own experience in school re age, understanding, achievement, and effort - spiral.
parents we respect advised that as long as erita wants to try, let her but help her.
we did, and all worked out just fine.
we are definitely not tiger parents; but just trying to be good parents.
we do believe whatever we wish to instill in kids, the download must be more rather than less done by age 12 - not easy.
jack shall likely be another story, one that i do not yet have a sense, but suspect he will be exceedingly different from erita, how i do not yet know. should be fun figuring out if he lets on :0) |
