• Nick Wang
  • 2 min read

5 Things You Mustn't Do If You Don't Want To Ruin Your Child's Life (and 7 Things You Must Do For Your Child To Live Life To The Fullest)

5 Things You Mustn’t Do If You Don’t Want To Ruin Your Child’s Life

  • External Command (dictating your child’s life with reward and punishment, especially when using the withdrawal of parental care and concern as a threat.)

  • Intensive Input (book studies, piano lessons, violin lessons, swimming, mandarin, phonics, Kumon math… all scheduled by you.)

  • School-admission oriented (learning for the sake of school interviews and entrance exams.)

  • “Certificate-sization” of everything.

  • Virtual Learning (no real life experience, learned everything through books and computers.)

7 Things You Must Do For Your Child To Live Life To The Fullest

  • Field Learning (hands on, get their hands dirty, learning through mistakes, accidents and uncertainties.)

  • Explorative (give your child time to get bored… don’t schedule things for him every waking minute.)

  • Nature (full of surprises, learn to deal with surprise situations. Develop healthy body.)

  • Labor Intensive (Learning is hard. It takes commitment to overcome hardship in order to learn something good. No pain, no gain.)

  • Individual Long-term Involvement (Many kids today just follow their parents’ herd mentality. Let them follow their own interests to learn something by herself, form her own personal opinion.)

  • Stable Relationship Environment (an emotional story at Make a Difference.)

  • Encouragement from Significant Persons (a mentor who’s not one of the parents.)

Dr. Chan gave a humorous lecture today at Chinese University, the long blog post with a parent’s summary is here.

Related Posts

· 4 min read

What is the Reggio Emilia Approach?

Hailed as the best pre-schools in the world by Newsweek magazine in 1991, the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education has attracted the worldwide attention of educators, researchers and just about anyone interested in early childhood education best practices.

Read More

· 3 min read

Why I think the education system is harmful for our children

I cannot say it any better than Sir Ken Robinson, if you haven’t watched his TED talks, please watch them here: The current system of education was conceived during the intellectual culture of the enlightenment, and in economic circumstances, the Industrial Revolution. It’s modeled on the interests of Industrialization, based on a social structure of “a few elites at the top of the pyramid and a majority of low class laborers at the bottom”. Hence schools are all about conformity and standardization, getting children ready to be a slave in the system.

Read More