Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

Today the kids got their hands (and feet!) on a few colouring stuff.

Coloured pencil. Crayons. Watercolour.

They drew and scribbled. They used a sponge and dabbed some watercolour on the paper.

And Vai apparently managed to make some ‘hand and foot prints’ too!

Anyway, it was a nice sensorial colouring experience for the kids, I think.

PS: To minimise the ‘mess’ in our living room, I spread out some newspaper and taped the corners to the floor. I then taped the drawing paper onto the newspaper to prevent it from moving about (mostly caused by Vai, really).

And after the kids got all messy with the colours, they then went to have their shower and a bit of waterplay in the bathroom.

This way, kids were happy. And Mommy’s headache-free.

I was SO inspired by today’s sharing at our Women’s Fellowship.

Here’re some thoughts I’d like to share with you.

>> Family is an institution, a unit, that God Himself has established. And at the very core, it’s about the relationship between the husband and the wife.

>> One of the wives’ tasks is to ‘help the husband to be the leader God wants him to be’. When a wife takes over the leadership role in the family, the husband loses his identity, and the household will not be in balance.

>> Wives, after they have children, tend to focus only on the kids, and no longer on the husband. And when their kids have kids, the wives then focus on the grandkids.

If a wife’s focus is hardly ever on her husband, the family will face potential danger where ‘someone else’ meets the husband’s need for attention, respect and care.

…

>> If a couple fails to continually work on mutual respect, open communication and a loving relationship, husband-wife relationship will deteriorate over time.

And if both fail to realise the potential danger of this, they unconsciously will grow further apart from each other (buried in their own busyness with career and kids) though living under the same roof. And it’ll be hard to ‘fix’ the relationship ten or twenty years later.

>> In today’s era, it’s realistically hard(er) to find family togetherness.

Parents tend to be busy with work and other things. Kids are often sent to attend lots of tuitions and courses that they too spend so little time at home and with other family members.

>> Computer, TV and games (like PlayStation, Xbox) also tend to give ‘less desirable’ impacts on us, especially the kids.

They can take away: the much-needed communication, social interactions and togetherness. Even good manners.

[eg. when a child is in front of the TV, he can be so focused on what he’s watching that he ‘ignores’ Mom or replies impatiently when she’s talking to him]

If parent-child relationships are not strongly built since young, they unfortunately cannot be ‘repaired’ and ‘redeemed’ at a later age
>> Relationship with others tend to be superficial too, now that most things are communicated via sms and emails (read: phone calls nowadays get less popular, compared to text messages).

>> Young children (below three especially) naturally depend on their parents, emotionally, physically, psychologically, to name a few. And if parent-child relationships are not strongly built since young, they unfortunately cannot be ‘repaired’ and ‘redeemed’ at a later age.

…

The kind of society, technology and world we live in tend to make us and our children more individualistic (read: less loving and less ‘together’ as a unit).

It’s critical that we continually sow the seed of Faith and Truth in our family, as well as the importance of relationships, morality and characters.

Such a teaching must come from us parents, especially when the children are still very young.

A strong foundation must be built from within.

And it must start from us.

From our own family.

The kids had their eyes checked today.

Apparently there’s this study on ‘Strabismus, Amblyopia and Refractive Error in Singapore Preschoolers’ and our home was one of the selected ones.

Anyway. I thought it’d be interesting to find out the condition of the kids’ eyes too. And so we went to the Medical Centre and participated.

Other than me getting interviewed on our family’s ‘eye history’ and how the kids usually spend their day, Anya went through the whole process (and she took it quite well too, to my surprise!).

From reading alphabets from afar, identifying ‘coloured dots’ (to check for colour blindness), to getting the ‘inside’ of her eyes checked and examined too (using state-of-the-art machines, of course!)

To get the best results when examining the eyes, they apparently had to ‘enlarge the pupils’ and ‘relax the eye muscles’. And they do this by applying different types of eyedrops.

The kids’ vision will afterwards be affected for a period of six to twenty four hours! (read: blurred vision, unable to ‘read’ and sensitive to bright lights).

[Frankly I was a bit concerned about the eyedrops and its effect. But then the friendly doctor assured us that there’s no side effect. I also found out that there were 1006 other kids who have gone through the same procedure. And so I felt better about it]

And oh, Vai had eyedrops applied to him too when he’s napping (he was already SO sleepy when we arrived). But as expected, he wriggled and woke up after a few drops.

Btw, for kids his age, the study obviously cannot be as detailed. It was tough enough to get him to sit still and ‘look’ at the ‘shining light’ from the doctor’s ‘tool’ (sorry for the totally ‘non-medical’ terms. Heh)

Anyway. Here are the results for both Anya and Vai.

>> No Amblyopia (lazy eye) nor Strabismus (cross-eyed, wall-eyed)

>> No spectacles needed

And specifically for Anya’s case:

>> Long-sighted on both eyes (the power: + 4.00 and + 3.50)
Basically for kids her age, this is normal, and the power will slowly go down as Anya grows up.

>> She has astigmatism! (the power: – 1.50 and – 1.00)
She’s just like me! And it came as a surprise because I never knew kids her age can already get astig. And apparently, this condition will not get better. She may need to wear spectacles later on when she starts driving. Hmmpff.

And oh, a few other interesting findings from today’s check up were:

Anya’s now 94.8 cm high and 14.2 kg

Vai is now 85 cm high and 12.2 kg!

[note: no shoes worn when weighed and measured]

Anya’s measurement was as expected, but I was honestly surprised when it was Vai’s turn to get on the scale. I even lifted him off and let him stand on it again a couple of times to make sure the numbers were right.

Vai’s mealtimes have been much tougher these past two weeks. He’s not that interested in eating. He’d look the other way and push the spoon away. And so I sort of expected the scale to go down. Not up. Hmm. I guess ‘some things’ are just beyond our understanding.

Anyway.

I feel so blessed that the kids are in good health.

Can’t thank God enough for his blessings.

Lately Vai shows more interest in actually drawing on a piece of paper than putting the crayons into his mouth (though at times he’s still curious about their taste!)

And at this age, he’s interested in spending only a few short minutes scribbling and drawing. Which of course is completely fine with us.

He’s after all only a year and two months old.

Keep on exploring, little guy …

People in general tend to (unconsciously) judge others from the kind of work they do.

If one works as a cleaner at a food court and the other is an executive working in a bank, there’s a tendency to value the cleaner less, and respect the ‘corporate worker’ more.

More respect (unfortunately) seems to be given to those who earn more dollars and cents.

We are all equal and worthy in the eyes of God, THE Creator, and we should also treat and value others accordingly.

The question is, how do WE treat others who are different from us? (economically, socially and intellectually, to name a few)

If our values do need a bit of changing, it’s never too late to start the process now.

Vai likes to copy what Anya does.

He INSISTS that he gets a toothbrush after he’s done with his shower. So that when Anya stands on her toilet stool to brush her teeth, he TOO has one in his mouth.

He likes to climb up the same toilet stool, stand holding onto the basin and try to turn on the tap. Just like his sister.

He does a ‘high five’, says thank you by nodding (more like ‘jerking’ his head forward!) and wipes his face with his hand when I turn on the shower above his head at bathtime.

When we reach home and have taken his shoes off, he’d place his socks into his shoes, pick them up, place them into his shoe compartment and close it.

He’s got quite a mind of his own. He can be friendly and smiley to everyone. BUT he can also refuse to be nice (no smile, no handshake, no high five) and just look away (while making a quick grunt!) IF he chooses to.

He (still) needs to be constantly distracted during mealtimes. Especially during formula feeding (in order for him to open his mouth and for me to squirt drops of formula into it).

He’s (still very much) into breastfeeding. He can force himself to stay awake way past his usual nap time, if not breastfed.

He can go to bed (night time only) WITHOUT breastfeeding since mid August.

He sleeps for about 10 hours throughout the night, wakes up at about 6am asking to be breastfed and goes back to sleep.

He’s 11,4 kg.

>> When one receives something without working to achieve or accomplish it, there’s a tendency to take what was given for granted (read: less appreciation for it).

>> We all love and nurture our children. But when we make our children’s life materially and financially comfortable at all times, always giving to them whatever things that they ask for (sometimes, even when they’re all grown-up already), then we’re actualy letting them grow up not knowing:

– that it’s actually okay if they do NOT always get what they want
– that time, process and hard work are normally involved before something is achieved

>> Many things in life are gifts, given to us for ‘free’. And yes, we need to be grateful always. Appreciating the givers and the gifts.

But the thing is, in life many things do not happen ‘instantly’. There’s a process involved. And that means it involves time and hard work too.

Like how a mom carries a baby in her womb for nine months, often going through tough first-trimester morning sickness phase, before going through labour pain to deliver the baby.

Or how a husband and a wife need to work hard together in educating their children and in building a ‘better’ relationship with each other that’s based on trust, understanding and love.

When we go through a process and work hard towards something, interestingly, we get to enjoy the fruits of our labour more.