Holding our kids' hands....

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Today as I went through some practice maths with Alr (getting the logical side of my brain to work), I'm thinking my folks never really sat down with me, not close to 10% as much as I have to now with the kids.
Is the curriculum harder or are the kids softer ?

We have to check on their bags,  remind about homework, packing worksheets etc etc ..... nag nag nag to clean up after themselves.. toys and books.  I don't remember as much, I don't think we were that good.
Or I think we just didn't have that many things.

They need to be entertained more and can't seem to do so by themselves unless it comes with a game console attached. Board games only hold their attention for so long and reading instructions seems painful.

More sheltered, I suppose too.  Last Saturday, Alr and I caught a cab to go to Sengkang. It was a 20 minute ride at best. The thing is, there was a stench in the cab. The smell was something like dried(preserved) fish or prawn, some passenger before us had probably just came from the market and with closed windows of course the inside of the cab just soaked up the odour.

Anyway I could bear with it, but my son could not. He complained about it all the way, and I think tried to hold his breathe for the most part of the trip.  And I said to him, there are worst smells than this.  To him this was bad.
I said to him that he was lucky to have mostly clean spaces in Singapore, no slums or random dumpsites where you could get the strangest smells. So they are less tolerant too.

Do we shelter them too much or is it that they need that much more attention today? 
Or are we just that much more demanding and protective? 

Comments

Melinda said…
Helen, I can so relate to this! My husband and I talk about this alot. I do remember my dad helping me a lot with Algebra and Geometry, but other than that, I don't remember them helping me NEARLY as much with homework as I do my kids. I don't even remember doing much homework! I do think we are more child-focused than our parents were -- and not always in healthy ways. I think sometimes we care TOO much and don't allow them to fail and experience disappointments. I know I struggle with that.
14/11/10
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