Play & Intervention

Brought the two boys to this fairly new playground at Amara hotel. It was a small  space but suitable for kids under 3. Good thing is that crowd is small even during peak hours (<15 kids).

Cayen made a few friends at the playground and hence, he was able to play for extended periods using simple props like the balls and the slide etc. It was good as he had seldom played extensively with other kids like catching and devising their own games . Think the small setup made it easier to make friends. Anyway, the friendships weren't without any trials, he had a shouting match with a three year old before they started playing and decided they were best buddies. Then, he played with a six year old for about 3 hours and in between, they had a tussle over the exercise ball and he tried to bite the kid because he said he got to the ball first. But later on, after he calmed down, he went over to apologise and they resumed friends and were best friends again. They also admitted another cute Japanese girl into their play. 

Even I made a friend. I was also chatting with another mum who shared with me on the stresses of Primary school like how difficult the Chinese was, how the parents were summoned to school to learn problem solving skills so they can help to teach their kids at home. And how her daughter memorised 150 sights word using sequence at age 5 and how she got her to recognise the words instead. She commented on how the government schools are very good (her kids go to My Little Skool) as their syllabus allowed kids to transition to Primary school easily. I can't help but feel a bit stressed. 

Anyway, I resumed play with Cayen and the other kids by giving them some ideas of how they can play different games together and that helped them to play non stop for 4.5 hours in that little place.

As I was being the enthusiastic cheerleader there, suddenly I heard a kid crying very loudly in the trampoline station but no one came to his help. I tried to ask around but seemed like his caregivers were not there. After what seemed like a long time, a helper rushed out and took him out. I saw that she's also tending to a young one in the kids area so she didn't hear him. (Though it's a small area and it's quite loud). 

When we were about to leave, suddenly I saw that she had smacked the boy very hard on his hands when he tried to pull her pants down. I don't know what happened before that but I fell compelled to go speak to her and so I did. 

Before I could really say anything, she started to explain that the boy was trying to hurt his two year old brother (who was crying) and he's a very naughty boy who always won't listen. Then she shared a lot of details about how their parents didn't spend time with their kids, and whenever she feedback about the elder one having issues, his Mam would just ignored and said that she should handle since she's bringing up the kids. And how the Mam is stay at home mum but doesn't like the kids in the house as they are noisy so she has to single handedly bring the two kids out on her own. She's with them 24 hours and sometimes she can't handle as the elder one gives a lot of issues. And when the elder kid is hitting other kids, instead of asking him to stop , Mam sometimes dispenses advice like "if someone hits you, hit them back". She said she can't correct as she's not their parent. And she feels like a lot of the problems the elder one is having might be due to his parents not spending much time with him. 

After hearing these, I felt so sorry for the helper and for the kids. So I suggested for her to tell her Mam that a stranger had seen the behaviour of the elder one (he appears to have some kind of adhd or behavioural issues to me) and suggested for her to try therapy or do something to try correct behaviour. Hopefully, he will become more manageable and there will be less instances of the helper hitting him. 

However, key takeaway to all of us here as parents is that we can delegate certain menial tasks to helpers but we cannot delegate the responsibility of proper upbringing. 子不教，父之过. Sometimes to chew on.