Jay can be sneaky when he wants something, and this is a story of how he tricked my wife, SO, into giving him an answer and access to something he wasn’t supposed to. This happened when he was 4 years old, and he’s only gotten better at tricking us since then.

For a little background, we are a fairly techy family. We have a couple of iPads, a tablet, desktop and laptop computers, and of the wii, PS3 and PS4, and an old PS2 that doesn’t work anymore. This story involves the first iPad we got and which we had installed several apps/games for Jay to play that would help him with his learning. You know, like the alphabet, spelling, counting and simple math. read more

I’m fairly certain (at least 20% anyway) that most parents are like me and think that kids get to many holidays from school. So you can imagine how I felt when a couple of weeks ago his school decided that they would only have classes for one day that week and the kids would have a mid term holiday. But it wasn’t just his school, all the primary schools did it. And no, it wasn’t an official mid term school holiday.

So why did they close the schools down for 4 days in one week? Because of the PSLE marking. What’s that, I pretend to hear you ask? It’s the Primary School Leaving Examination, which all grade 6 students do to determine which High School they can get into. Now, I don’t know about most people reading this, and I don’t know if the system has changed in Australia since I went through it. But when I finished primary school, we didn’t have nationwide (or even statewide) exams to get into high school. Although I think there were some private high schools that had their own entrance exams. read more

Have you ever wondered how much studying your child should be doing? How many hours should we expect from them after school? What about weekends? Holidays? Do they have time for sports or other activities? Do they even have a childhood of fun and play anymore?

Let me set the scene. My family and I live in Singapore, and if you missed it I’m Australian and my wife and son are Indonesian. The school that Jay, my son, attends has classes on Monday from 8am to 3pm (with 2 breaks for a snack and lunch), and from Tuesday to Friday from 8am to 1.30pm (with 1 break for a snack). After school he used to have 1 tuition session on Thursday afternoons, however the tutor was unable to continue the class and we haven’t replaced it with anything else. read more

When I was growing up we always had dinner as a family. Well, okay, there were times when one or both of our parents were out. But the majority of the time we sat down and ate together. And whilst the TV was quite often on, we did talk to each other while we ate. It wasn’t just a case of sitting at the table eating and watching TV at the same time.

Since Jay came into our lives, we’ve tried to eat together as a family as much as possible. We don’t even have the TV on while we’re eating. And even if it is on, we can’t see it from the table anyway, so it’s not important. read more

Have you ever wondered how common it is for children to get foreign objects stuck in their ear? Well, last Friday we found out, after Jay, our son, decided to put a Tic Tac in his ear. Apparently it’s very common, even for 7 year olds who should know better.

Let’s go back a moment to Friday morning before it happened. My wife, SO, and I had taken the day off. SO was at home because her Mother and Sister were her for a couple of days so her Mother could see her Doctor. I, on the other hand, had an appointment to get injections for my Torticollis, which I’ve talked about here. read more

A few weeks ago I wrote about how I installed Pokemon Go on my phone to help get my son out and more active. This post, I guess, is an update on how that has been working. Or not. See, the thing is, after the initial jump in activity, we’ve fallen back a bit. He’s not as eager to get out and about to catch them.

On the other hand, I’m more active now. I walk further when I’m out during the day, stopping at pokestops to collect items, and walking around to help catch pokemon and hatch eggs for him. I’m doing this, not just for my health, but also because he is still excited about the game. He’s just not as excited to go out and catch as he was the first couple of weeks. And when I get home in the evening, he wants to see what pokemon I’ve caught or hatched. read more

Eight years ago I was diagnosed with Torticollis (or wry neck), three months later my son, Jay, was born. Whilst I am nowhere near disabled, it does effect my life and consequently how I can interact with Jay. And that’s what I wanted to talk about today.

First, for those who aren’t familiar with torticollis, a little info on the condition. There are 2 ways it can develop. The first is through an injury or other physical trauma, which can normally be rectified by fixing the underlying cause. I know of one person who had it from bad posture sitting at his desk, and all he had to do was rest for a few days and correct his posture when sitting. The other cause is genetic and is passed down through the family. This can not be fixed and will be a continuing condition for the rest of your life. This is what causes my condition and every 3 or 4 months for the past 8 years I have had around 20 injections into the muscles on my neck and shoulders to reduce the tension and relax the muscles there. read more

If you asked five different people that question, chances are you’d get five different answers. The funny thing is they could all be wrong, or all be right. Even if most adoption workers claim the best time to tell your child they’re adopted is between the ages of 2 and 4, I personally think this is a question that the adoptive parents have to answer for themselves.

Why? Simply because a lot of the way that the child reacts to the news is based on the parents comfort level in having that discussion. If the parents don’t handle the topic positively, this can rub off on the child and they will receive a negative view to the news they are adopted. Even if they don’t comprehend what adopted means, they can get negative connotations to the word. read more

Okay, reading that title probably makes people think my son, Jay, is avenging my death. Even if it’s just a death in a game. Well, I guess that’s half right, it was in a game, but I didn’t die, I was kicked from a server we were playing on together.

I suppose a little background is needed here to clarify what happened, and also to help non-gamers to understand what happened. We were playing a mini game in Minecraft on the PS4 where the idea is to break blocks out from under other players to make them fall and die in the lava below. The last person standing wins the round and the first person with 3 wins, wins the game. There’s also the ability to kick players who are disrupting the game play or are cheating in some way. read more

As a conscientious parent I’m wondering where the line between rewards and bribes is. When we give something to our children for something they’ve done, does it constitute a reward or a bribe? How do we know the difference? Is it just a matter of perception? Or is there some quantifiable way we can determine it?

I’m thinking of this now because my son, Jay, is on school holiday this week and while he’s at home we’ve made him an offer. Basically we’ve bought him 2 books to do extra practice with, 1 mathematics and 1 Chinese. They’re supplementary books for what he uses at school, and will help him to get ahead with his work. He said he wants to do them, but the problem is he can become distracted by games and books. What we need is an extra motivation for him to put down his toys and do some study. We’re not asking for much, and have told him we only expect him to do 1 hour a day. So how do we motivate him to do the extra work? read more