“Aye! I am talking to you!” The little six-year-old banged the table as she shouted loudly when her many attempts to hijack the attention from my mother during the latter’s 85th birthday celebration failed. So, I decided to tell her off in public.
I know. I felt bad after that to have embarrassed my cousin about his daughter’s behavior. So I called him to apologize and offered to spend an afternoon to see if I could help.

*Ari is not ready for formal school when she starts next year. Despite being a very intelligent child, I believe she will suffer because she is not school ready. No matter how intelligent a child is, she will not do well if she is not ready in other areas. Unless we do something about it.

They say if you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys, I always have the mum guilt, because the Youngest One left kindy not knowing how to count or read. If I had sacrificed more financially even though we were not well-to-do by then, and send him to the same kind of kindy his older siblings went to, perhaps he’d do better.

When the kids were young, I was not a very involved mother and I could give all sorts of excuses for myself for being so. My first three children were born in three years. I was also listing the company I founded and had majority shares in when my fourth child was born.

The easiest thing to do was just send them to the most expensive kindy I could find, and that saved me from a lot of guilt.

My first four kids did really well in the academic department. When we were in China, The Daughter shocked her teachers in the international school when she was already reading The Chronicles of Narnia when she was just five, while her friends were struggling with the alphabets.

Old Boy could read at 18 months old, and Sunshine Boy could read the university textbooks I teach from when he was ten. I am not sure if the expensive kindergartens I sent them helped, but I know that the Youngest One was eventually the youngest in our family to graduate from the university.

The kindergarten landscape will change drastically in Singapore, with the introduction of the MK or MOE Kindergarten. Children who attend MK with a primary school will have priority over children who don’t under otherwise same circumstances.

To me, it seems that the age of formal education has now lowered from the primary one to kindy since the choice of kindergarten will affect the choice of the primary school.

It also seems that the option of keeping the child at home to teach is less and less viable now.

In less than ten years, I would expect more than half of our kindergarten children choosing the MKs, which is a no-brainer, really, for it gives the child an almost guaranteed entrance to the primary school of choice. Many kindergarten will close their doors, and the range and choice of curriculum will narrow to a small band, making the preschool education experience of most children almost homogeneous. To some extent, it will be less vibrant. In addition, how the primary schools choose their kindy children going forward will be an interesting development to watch.

Given the lack of variety of curriculum in the near future, parents should be even more involved in their little ones’ education. My preschool team believe for children below six, these skills are important to build and impart: school readiness, playground politics, advanced reading skills in English, basic writing skills, numeracy, learning how to learn, self-discovery and awareness, sportsmanship and musicality.

A child’s brain grows the fastest below six years old. and it is urgent for parents to know the options and make wise choices for their kids.

Money can buy a great education. however, I think if we learn to teach them some very important skills ourselves at this young age, then no matter which kindy they go to, they will be well-prepared for a great future.

Why did you teach him how to do simultaneous equations at seven? Huh???

With more than 97% of our students taking tuition, the shadow education industry is worth a billion a year in Singapore. Parents are forking out cold hard cash just so to get a good education for their kids. To me, it is a sad phenomenon that needs attention.

I truly think that parents who put their kids in tuition are either (1) clueless on how to help their kids do well academically themselves, (2) are lazy to do the grueling work or (3) have children who are so competitive they insist they must have tuition.

Most, if not all, parents are the best teachers for their children.

While I do see benefits of sending a child to tuition temporarily because they are unable to catch up on certain topics, I sincerely believe that mandatory tuition just to get good grades not only does not benefit our families and children, it is detrimental.

Why.

First, I know families who struggle just to put their kids into tuition classes and enrichment, hoping that these tuition can perform miracles for their kids. If a parent chooses to work just to earn enough to put their kids to tuition or enrichment, then the family has already missed the point.

Research shows that the most gifted kids come from families with stay-at-home-mom or dad. So if there is a choice, choose to spend more time with your child.

If you don’t believe me, just ask track any family that has made that kind of financial sacrifice for the kids. You will see that the hard work they put in can be so futile and sad.

Second, many parents use tuition teachers as baby sitters, a way to outsource the task of monitoring kids, or to ‘burn’ active kids’ time. This is even sadder. I’d like to think that our kids’ time is precious, our kids’ time with us is even more precious. We should be protecting that instead of throwing that away.

I think that talented tuition teachers should not be wasting their time baby sitting, but be absorbed in the education system. I also think that our teachers in the education system should have a better status in our economy. I think that being teachers must be so prestigious and well paid that our brightest would choose to teach than to be doctors.

Third, parents must be the ones to instill the joy of learning, and from a very young age, so that children want to learn themselves. If this is done, then there shall never be a need to send them to tuition centers and enrichment to play catch-up. Learning at will is fun, studying to catch up is a horrible, arduous and stressful task.

How do you do instill the joy of learning by teaching while the kid is enthusiastic?

Just now, I received a message asking me if it is too early to teach a four months’ old how to read. My reply: we should start to teach a child how to read from 1 day old.

It is so fun, it is the best thing to do for the parent and the baby.

One of the strategies I teach is to train the visual pathways of babies at birth, so that they are ready for near vision instruction. A baby’s vision between 0-6 months is not developed yet, and can therefore discern black and white best.

Therefore, we can surround the baby with black and white soft toys so that when they wake up, they get to observe the defined lines between black and white. That activates the curiosity in the baby.

This is against the conventional approach of choosing pink or blue for the baby’s stuff. While these colors are beautiful and cute for the adults, they are too light for babies to discern, and serve no purpose for the child’s intellectual growth.

As the kids grow beyond six months old, we activate their learning through games, culminating to them reading without having to learn a single phonic (meaning no stress and no reading school). After that, we step them up with the right materials (often free) until they are ready for the university.

Such ways of learning can save thousands and thousands of dollars, and really happy children who are motivated to learn more everyday.

Over the years, I have tried to share my strategies in parental seminars. Many who have followed the simpler ways I teach are marveled at the success they see in their own children. A fortnight ago, I met up with a parent with a very sick child who had to skip school often. Using the simple beliefs that were taught, the mother helped her daughter get into a university a year earlier than her peers. Mothers always do wonders.

If you want your kids to succeed and escape the sad fate of tuition or the tragedy of being diagnosed with all sorts of disabilities, if you want to save money and give your child the joy of learning from the person they love the most, regardless of your education, then teach before you have to leave the teaching to people far less qualified. We must activate the creativity in a child so that they learn to figure things out themselves.

Start when the baby is one day old. Or start immediately. You will be immensely satisfied with your parenting journey in the many years to come.

I have no clue how Old Boy figured out simultaneous equations at seven, he probably read it somewhere or figured it out somehow, just like how his sister figured out how to add at 15 months old, and how his brother figured out how clouds were made at 9 months old.