My son, Jay, came home from school on Friday a little disappointed. “I got basketball” he told me, with a hint of sadness in his eyes. It wasn’t what he was hoping for, but after a bit of a chat, he decided it was, not just okay, but a potentially good thing.

You see, here in Singapore, primary 3 students (that’s elementary grade 3 for the North Americans) get to choose a CCA (Co-Curricular Activity). The choices include things like science, music, dance, martial arts, scouts, red cross, a few different sports, and some others I can’t remember at the moment. I think there were about 16 choices in all, and the students get to list the 3 they are most interested in. read more

It’s Julie’s first day of grade 5 and her parents are excited and decide to tell everyone they know by taking a photo and sharing it with friends and family on facebook. There she is in her school uniform and her parents leave the comment “First day of grade 6 for our princess at Whatchamacallit School”

It’s what we all do, right? Tell our friends and family what our kids are up to and share their lives. For people like me, living in Singapore, with family in Australia, Indonesia, and Canada, it makes sense sharing online. read more

This past weekend was the Chinese New Year, and like most years we headed back to Indonesia to celebrate with my wife’s family. This is something that we try to do every year, since it’s an important time for SO and her family.

For those who don’t know, SO is Indonesian, born and raised there, but is ethnically Chinese. Both her parents were born in China and moved to Indonesia when they were teenagers, and as such still follow a lot of Chinese customs. This means family is very important to them, and a family gathering at CNY is always done. read more

There’s nothing worse than leaving something till the last minute, and for Jay, my son, he invariably leaves his homework until he’s run out of time. No matter how much we remind him, or tell him to do it, he always puts it off until he has no choice.

So what can be done about it? That’s a really good question, but what’s the answer?

We’ve tried talking to him, explaining how it’s better to get it done early and then he doesn’t have to worry about it, and he can play without it, or his parents, nagging him. We’ve tried giving rewards for completing it early, like going out to a special place or getting to play certain games. But nothing seems to work. It’s always just before bedtime, the night before it’s due, and he finally gets around to doing it. read more

Recently Jay went back to school, on the 2nd of January, to start grade 3. For those not in the know, the school year starts in January here in Singapore. Which means that the long summer holidays, although it’s always summer here, are in November and December.

As a side note, Singapore has two seasons, hot and dry, and hot and wet. I haven’t seen a winter in 18 years now. The closest I came was summer in Canada, where even their August weather is colder than anything I’ve experienced in a long time. And yes, I did get some odd looks for wearing jumpers while I was there. read more

I think this is a question most parents will end up asking themselves at one point or another. When should we put a limit on our children’s creativity? And has it been destructive enough to require punishment?

Maybe a little background is in order. A few years ago Jay got angry at SO and basically threw a tantrum. The specifics aren’t important, and in any case, I don’t remember them. The next day, SO came home from work to find “I love (heart) you mummy!!!!” written on our couch (as seen in the above picture), as an apology. We didn’t end up punishing him for it, although he did get a talking to not to do it again. But should we have? It was a creative way of saying sorry, but at the same time it was also destructive. read more

Because of work and other life commitments, we decided to stay in Singapore this year for Christmas. This made it Jay’s third Christmas that he didn’t spend in Australia. This was a big deal, because it means it’s just the 3 of us spending the day together. Although this year, one of his cousins from Jakarta was staying with us, and even though he’s in his twenties, it still gave Jay someone else to play with.

Of course, in Australia we usually just spend Christmas day with my parents and my brother, so there’s no other kids for him to play with there either. But we do usually see some of my cousins while we’re there, and Jay gets to play with their kids. read more

Since we got married, SO and I had only had a couple of Christmases in Australia. But after Jay came along, we decided to try to go there as much as possible. This year is only the third time that we haven’t gone back since he was born. The first time I’ve already written about. The second was the year my brother got married in Canada and we spent a month there with him and his new wife earlier in the year and didn’t want to take more time off work. This year we were just too busy to take time off and travel. This post though, is about times we did go there. read more

Since it’s almost Christmas, I’ve been thinking of the past and specifically of Jay’s first Christmas. Since he was born in the first half of November, he was only around 6 weeks old when Christmas arrived that year. Also, since he was adopted, we had spent most of that time finalising the adoption and organising his trip to Singapore to join us here.

As it turned out, his adoption was finalised about a week before Christmas Day, but then we also had to get him a passport so that he could actually travel. Because of work, this task fell to SO, while I stayed in Singapore.  SO went to Jakarta, where Jay was being looked after by her family, and went to work getting all the paperwork organised and applying for his passport. By some miracle, and SO’s extraordinary powers of manipulation, I mean hard work, she’s not manipulative at all, she managed to get the passport on Christmas Eve. read more

In last week’s article I started to talk about our trip to Legoland Malaysia, if you haven’t read it yet you can check it out here.

When I left off we had just headed down to dinner. There’s not much to say about it other than it was a buffet, which is something Jay always likes. The food was okay, but not as good as you would expect from an expensive hotel, particularly the western dishes. The Asian dishes were better, which is common in Asia with the western dishes never as good as what we get back home, unless you’re really willing to pay for it. read more