My attempt to dispense advice on child rearing... Ha ha

Sometime during this week, I had a conversation with a friend during lunch time about this and that.

I like her, I really do but aku a bit bosan sebab she likes to talk about her children a trifle too much. Of course I do not mind listening to her stories, but since as time goes by, her children's milestones resembled that of Clark Kent, aku tension gak.

But as Dan always said to me, dengar sajalah. Tak larat, don’t go out with her anymore.

Sure, sure.

The other thing yang aku a bit tak larat is her penchant to criticize other people’s parenting as oppose to hers. Anak Superman, mak Jor-El lah kan… Hmmm……..

Plus her children are oh-so perfect, nobody can say or do anything. Dia cakap pasai anak orang takpa, siap bagi nasihat lagi. Tapi kalau pasai anak dia, baru nak ambik napaih, telinga dia dah berdesing dulu. He he.... terrible ain’t it ? Me that is… As… right now I am about to do something I really dislike about her. But of course, aku buat di belakang takbir. Ampun.

It was a bit shocking listening to this story because she had always liked to paint ridiculously glossy pictures about her family, telling me about her daughter being kicked out of the clever class seemed a bit surreal. Maybe she was pissed off so she had for that one moment, let her guard down.

Probably. Hmmm…

Anyway, as I already and should know her daughter is a bloody gifted 10 year old and is in the advanced class. However recently she was asked to change class because the teacher feels the daughter could not cope with fast paced learning and would fare much better in the second class.

This is what she said, “Mana boleh anak aku masuk kelas bodoh ! Aku yang paling banyak menyumbang kat PIBG, senang-senang aje nak tolak anak aku pegi kelas bodoh….Banyak tau aku bagi kat PIBG. Ada cikgu cakap aku penyumbang paling banyak dalam sejarah sekolah ! Dia orang tak boleh buat macam tu kat aku !”

Pulak.

Hmmm....

Okay.

In my dream, this is what I told her.

Eventhough my son is not stupendously clever as yours but he is the advanced class too. However if he is ever kicked out, I will ask him first. If his studies are suffering due to his laziness, I would get angry (Tunjuk baik... sesungguhnya aku akan marah tanpa usul periksa dulu… Naik hantu dulu, ask questions later). But if he said his teachers teach too fast and he couldn't understand his lessons, then it is better for him to move to a slower class to have better understanding of the subjects. He is not ready to move on to a new topic, but his mates are .. do you think the teacher would stop for him ? And thefore, apart from past lessons that he couldn't make heads and tails of, he has to learn new things ? By the end of the year he will be totally swamped and left behind. There will be too many for him to catch up on.

By forcing your daughter to stay in an advanced class, her studies could really suffer. What is more important ? Your pride or her studies ? Plus, if I am not mistaken, something I caught during her spates of bragging, there are about 4-5 classes of Year 4, so it does not look like second class is kelas bodoh. Plus... err... they are not doing anything to YOU but to your daughter. Why is this about you ?

Of course, I can’t say that well because first she was so fired up, I fear she will be spewing fireballs if I open my mouth. And I did have my favourite tudung on. Plus, well if she had been talking about clothes or some other stuffs I would have given her my opinion. But since we are talking about her children and she is very, very sensitive on that subject, well… I chose to save myself.

And therefore I dispensed my 2 cents worth via my blog that she doesn’t know existed.

Hopefully.