Last week, the advocacy group “Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood”, whose allegations against “Baby Einstein” videos eventually led to nationwide consumer refunds, declared in a complaint urging federal regulators to examine Fisher-Price and other companies’ mobile apps like “Laugh & Learn”, “Baby Hear and Read” and “Baby First Puzzle”, which claim to help babies learn. The Boston-based group says developers are trying to dupe parents into thinking apps are educational for babies, which researches have proven ineffective. This reminded me of the discussions I had on a Facebook parenting group.
In order to better understand Hong Kong’s early childhood education system, we started to do secondary research, which means reading existing research others had done, based on some questions we want to find out. Some of my questions are:
A few days ago I wrote about the 2 year old with hands taped together in kindergarten (http://pocket.co/sZerG) and how we need to ask ourselves questions about the effects on the children because our relationship with them and the experiences we give them directly shape their neural circuitry, for life!
A few months ago, a picture of a 2 year old child with both hands tightly taped together (http://pocket.co/sZerG), kneeling on the floor in an activity room of a famous kindergarten in Hong Kong, surfaced on the web and caused quite a controversy. While lots of the comments are from parents who detest such atrocity, it’s unfortunate that I still read and hear comments like these:
After watching Thomas the musical, it was around 1 pm. Luc was hungry and tired so we went to a nearby restaurant to eat. We got an extra bowl for Luc and gave him some of our pasta and then we all ate together. Sure Luc still makes a mess when he eats but he has gotten a lot better.
A couple of months ago, we saw ads for a Thomas the Tank Engine musical on the subways. Since Luc loves Thomas so much, my wife decided to bring Luc to see it, even though the tickets were almost $400 a piece.
Yesterday, I attended the “Children’s Learning Style” and “Parenting by Guidance” seminar by Dr. Louise Porter. A lot of the materials were similar to the things I’ve learned in Reggio Emilia, RIE and other early childhood education and development materials. Things like acknowledge your children’s success but don’t praise, empathise with their failures, don’t solve their problems, model good behaviour rather than teaching verbally… and many more. Still, Dr. Louise Porter delivered her messages in a fun and easy to understand way. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were three points that stuck out in my mind.
The below was written back on the 2nd of June, 2012, when I had just started doing the Reggio inspired, child-initiated learning playgroups.
Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, Schools Kill Creativity, inspired me. The future is tough, our society’s system is unsustainable, we need future leaders who are not bounded by the system, who are observant, and who can construct a new, better world.
My son Luc was hospitalized a few days ago because of a recurring cough that has gone on for over a month. We’re lucky to have found a very good pediatrician at the Union Hospital so even though it’s a bit far we travel to see him. He ordered an X-ray for Luc on the 2nd day to make sure that there wasn’t a simultaneous bacteria infection along with the virus.
Today, I brought my 2 ½ year old son to a playground at Cornwall St. That playground is designed for kids aged 5 - 12 (says so on the sign). When we arrived, there was already a Chinese family with a boy and a girl there playing. Both kids are old enough to play on the structure, the parents weren’t too hands on, but would give a hand on the slide when the kids were doing something wild.
Last Saturday’s light box in the dark play time was a success and the pictures attracted a lot of interests.
Today, we ended up having a total of 28 babies and toddlers.
Today, there was an incident at our parents organized, child-led playgroup. An older child who plays a little too rough bit another child’s ear so hard that it bled. Their moms were chatting with each other when it happened and didn’t notice. A grandma who wasn’t part of their playgroup pointed it out to them, and scolded them for not properly watching their children.
Today’s playgroup had 14 babies. Now, I understand why Magda Gerber limited her RIE playgroups to just 6 babies. If you’re teaching the parents how to observe and develop an attachment with their babies, 6-8 is really the maximum you can keep track of at once.
We had a good playgroup today with 10 babies, ranging from 9 months to 3.5 years old.
There was a pair of parents who were first timer, they have a 1.5 year old boy. The Dad would issue commands to his son constantly - No! Come here! Stand up! After observing for a while, I asked if I could say something, and I told them my own story of how our helper forced Luc to eat even though he had signaled he didn’t want to eat anymore, which caused some bad behaviors to internalize an I had to spend months to correct that. I was trying to empathize with them and let them know that by observing and respecting their child at this age, they’ll have a much better relationship with him when his “terrible twos” personality kicks in.
Changing Paradigms is another one of Sir Ken Robinson’s talks that inspired me. It introduced me to the Reggio Emilia Approach (REA). Out of all the different early childhood philosophies I’ve learned so far, I like REA the most. Last May, I started organizing an REA inspired playgroup in my home, providing a nurturing environment and inviting other parents to bring their children to play in.
I’m soooo really, reeeally mad right now!!!Since May of this year, I had started to notice my son’s “terrible 2’s” behaviors / personality beginning to emerge. I decided to spend more time with him, putting my limited Reggio Emilia Approach knowledge to work. I organized a “Parents led, child initiated” playgroup, got to know some truly awesome parents and REA educators! Learned about RIE and fell in love with it. Through it all, my relationship with my son has grown sooooo much (I was away for most of his first year of life and worked full time most of his 2nd.)Sadly, came September, work began to pick up. Speaking engagements in Japan & Hong Kong. I also thought about scaling my REA playgroups idea so that I can help more parents, (I feel that this is so important, it actually has potential to change the world!! Just imagine a whole new generation of passionate, confident, independent thinkers who are not afraid to challenge the status quo!!) I began to spend more and more time with this work… applied and beat out 80+ other teams to join AcceleratorHK, so now I’m full time trying to make this dream happen.These 2 months where I started to spend less and less time with my son, I watched his behavior turned back… worse and worse. :(Just now, we had a hell of a time putting him to sleep. Going to sleep used to be the most peaceful thing just before September. We would go through our nightly routine, and then Luc would happily go pick his story books and we would go into the room. I would read him 2 or 3 stories, then he’ll hold on to the story books and quietly fall asleep.These days, sometimes I can’t even get through the entire story with him. He would go back outside, scream at the top of his voice for our maid, or mom, and then may be back to me. The slightest move to stop him from something, he would scream. I used to calmly talk to him about alternatives and I had repeatedly told my wife and our helper, but somehow, I’m the only one who can really do it. These days, Luc spend most of his time with the maid, and it has just, been, the, fucking, WORST!!!!! I cannot stand this anymore!!!!! Nothing is more important to me than my son’s well being. NOTHING!!!! I need to go back and restart my morning playgroups. Every! Fucking! Morning!!!I think the saddest, worst part of all of this, is that I know I should’ve been there for my child, but I wasn’t, and now the maid has caused all these problems, and instead of getting pissed off at the maid, I get pissed off at my son. :( I’m really reeeeally hating myself for this right now :(
Haven’t touched my personal blog for a while as I’ve been concentrating on my “Early Childhood Education” blog, which is my new project to help parents like myself raise confident, independent thinkers who won’t be afraid to challenge the broken education system! With that, I was lucky enough to beat out 80+ other teams from around the world to join the AcceleratorHK program!
Sept. 7th
Just now, I was playing with my son Luc and my daughter Sel on the bed. Luc was doing his usual jumping around, I have to keep reminding him that I don’t want him to jump on the bed when his sister is lying here.
Sept. 2nd
Today, for the first time, I saw Sel turned over on her tummy by herself, the whole way! She was able to get her hands out from under her chest once too! But this new position is still too new & unfamiliar to her so she cried out loud when she successfully turned onto her tummy! (Which was kinda cute :P I’m sure she’ll learn to enjoy the new position and perspective very soon.
August 27th, 2012
Somedays, when you are all charged up, you have so much patience you’re like Buddha! It is at these times that you’ll see the miracles of RIE!
Diary - Aug 25 - Fake Sleeping
My son L is only 24 months old and already today he gave me a fake sleeping response to my long winded explanation of why I wanted him to wash his hands. Great!
I just saw our helper holding 5 months old baby girl S, sitting on her lap watching TV!
Here’s another example of different of opinions between my wife and I. While I think it is horrible holding a baby up, not to mention watching TV!! My wife thinks it’s OK, because “she’s not doing anything anyway.”
Aug 18th
Today we have a new family joining our playgroup, mom Marta who’s another Reggio Emilia Approach inspired early childhood educator, sweet natured 2 year old boy T, and dad Andy who brought T to the playgroup. We had some good talks about parenting and lives in Hong Kong. T is really awesome for his age, I think it really shows what a big difference being a RIE / REA parent can make!
Aug 12th
About a month ago we bought a wooden train set from IKEA for L, his first train set. He loves it! At first I didn’t want to show him how the rails could connect, I sat beside him and watched him play with the trains on the floor as if they were just cars. After may be 10 minutes (probably less), I caved. I put 2 pieces together while he wasn’t looking, and then 2 more, and then connected the bridge… but even after seeing the pieces joined together, he still didn’t grasp the concept. By the next day, my wife or the helper had “helped him” put the whole track together!
Last week, the advocacy group “Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood”, whose allegations against “Baby Einstein” videos eventually led to nationwide consumer refunds, declared in a complaint urging federal regulators to examine Fisher-Price and other companies’ mobile apps like “Laugh & Learn”, “Baby Hear and Read” and “Baby First Puzzle”, which claim to help babies learn. The Boston-based group says developers are trying to dupe parents into thinking apps are educational for babies, which researches have proven ineffective. This reminded me of the discussions I had on a Facebook parenting group.
In order to better understand Hong Kong’s early childhood education system, we started to do secondary research, which means reading existing research others had done, based on some questions we want to find out. Some of my questions are:
A few days ago I wrote about the 2 year old with hands taped together in kindergarten (http://pocket.co/sZerG) and how we need to ask ourselves questions about the effects on the children because our relationship with them and the experiences we give them directly shape their neural circuitry, for life!
A few months ago, a picture of a 2 year old child with both hands tightly taped together (http://pocket.co/sZerG), kneeling on the floor in an activity room of a famous kindergarten in Hong Kong, surfaced on the web and caused quite a controversy. While lots of the comments are from parents who detest such atrocity, it’s unfortunate that I still read and hear comments like these:
After watching Thomas the musical, it was around 1 pm. Luc was hungry and tired so we went to a nearby restaurant to eat. We got an extra bowl for Luc and gave him some of our pasta and then we all ate together. Sure Luc still makes a mess when he eats but he has gotten a lot better.
A couple of months ago, we saw ads for a Thomas the Tank Engine musical on the subways. Since Luc loves Thomas so much, my wife decided to bring Luc to see it, even though the tickets were almost $400 a piece.
Yesterday, I attended the “Children’s Learning Style” and “Parenting by Guidance” seminar by Dr. Louise Porter. A lot of the materials were similar to the things I’ve learned in Reggio Emilia, RIE and other early childhood education and development materials. Things like acknowledge your children’s success but don’t praise, empathise with their failures, don’t solve their problems, model good behaviour rather than teaching verbally… and many more. Still, Dr. Louise Porter delivered her messages in a fun and easy to understand way. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were three points that stuck out in my mind.
The below was written back on the 2nd of June, 2012, when I had just started doing the Reggio inspired, child-initiated learning playgroups.
Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, Schools Kill Creativity, inspired me. The future is tough, our society’s system is unsustainable, we need future leaders who are not bounded by the system, who are observant, and who can construct a new, better world.
My son Luc was hospitalized a few days ago because of a recurring cough that has gone on for over a month. We’re lucky to have found a very good pediatrician at the Union Hospital so even though it’s a bit far we travel to see him. He ordered an X-ray for Luc on the 2nd day to make sure that there wasn’t a simultaneous bacteria infection along with the virus.
Today, I brought my 2 ½ year old son to a playground at Cornwall St. That playground is designed for kids aged 5 - 12 (says so on the sign). When we arrived, there was already a Chinese family with a boy and a girl there playing. Both kids are old enough to play on the structure, the parents weren’t too hands on, but would give a hand on the slide when the kids were doing something wild.
Last Saturday’s light box in the dark play time was a success and the pictures attracted a lot of interests.
Today, we ended up having a total of 28 babies and toddlers.
Today, there was an incident at our parents organized, child-led playgroup. An older child who plays a little too rough bit another child’s ear so hard that it bled. Their moms were chatting with each other when it happened and didn’t notice. A grandma who wasn’t part of their playgroup pointed it out to them, and scolded them for not properly watching their children.
Today’s playgroup had 14 babies. Now, I understand why Magda Gerber limited her RIE playgroups to just 6 babies. If you’re teaching the parents how to observe and develop an attachment with their babies, 6-8 is really the maximum you can keep track of at once.
We had a good playgroup today with 10 babies, ranging from 9 months to 3.5 years old.
There was a pair of parents who were first timer, they have a 1.5 year old boy. The Dad would issue commands to his son constantly - No! Come here! Stand up! After observing for a while, I asked if I could say something, and I told them my own story of how our helper forced Luc to eat even though he had signaled he didn’t want to eat anymore, which caused some bad behaviors to internalize an I had to spend months to correct that. I was trying to empathize with them and let them know that by observing and respecting their child at this age, they’ll have a much better relationship with him when his “terrible twos” personality kicks in.
Changing Paradigms is another one of Sir Ken Robinson’s talks that inspired me. It introduced me to the Reggio Emilia Approach (REA). Out of all the different early childhood philosophies I’ve learned so far, I like REA the most. Last May, I started organizing an REA inspired playgroup in my home, providing a nurturing environment and inviting other parents to bring their children to play in.
I’m soooo really, reeeally mad right now!!!Since May of this year, I had started to notice my son’s “terrible 2’s” behaviors / personality beginning to emerge. I decided to spend more time with him, putting my limited Reggio Emilia Approach knowledge to work. I organized a “Parents led, child initiated” playgroup, got to know some truly awesome parents and REA educators! Learned about RIE and fell in love with it. Through it all, my relationship with my son has grown sooooo much (I was away for most of his first year of life and worked full time most of his 2nd.)Sadly, came September, work began to pick up. Speaking engagements in Japan & Hong Kong. I also thought about scaling my REA playgroups idea so that I can help more parents, (I feel that this is so important, it actually has potential to change the world!! Just imagine a whole new generation of passionate, confident, independent thinkers who are not afraid to challenge the status quo!!) I began to spend more and more time with this work… applied and beat out 80+ other teams to join AcceleratorHK, so now I’m full time trying to make this dream happen.These 2 months where I started to spend less and less time with my son, I watched his behavior turned back… worse and worse. :(Just now, we had a hell of a time putting him to sleep. Going to sleep used to be the most peaceful thing just before September. We would go through our nightly routine, and then Luc would happily go pick his story books and we would go into the room. I would read him 2 or 3 stories, then he’ll hold on to the story books and quietly fall asleep.These days, sometimes I can’t even get through the entire story with him. He would go back outside, scream at the top of his voice for our maid, or mom, and then may be back to me. The slightest move to stop him from something, he would scream. I used to calmly talk to him about alternatives and I had repeatedly told my wife and our helper, but somehow, I’m the only one who can really do it. These days, Luc spend most of his time with the maid, and it has just, been, the, fucking, WORST!!!!! I cannot stand this anymore!!!!! Nothing is more important to me than my son’s well being. NOTHING!!!! I need to go back and restart my morning playgroups. Every! Fucking! Morning!!!I think the saddest, worst part of all of this, is that I know I should’ve been there for my child, but I wasn’t, and now the maid has caused all these problems, and instead of getting pissed off at the maid, I get pissed off at my son. :( I’m really reeeeally hating myself for this right now :(
Haven’t touched my personal blog for a while as I’ve been concentrating on my “Early Childhood Education” blog, which is my new project to help parents like myself raise confident, independent thinkers who won’t be afraid to challenge the broken education system! With that, I was lucky enough to beat out 80+ other teams from around the world to join the AcceleratorHK program!
Sept. 7th
Just now, I was playing with my son Luc and my daughter Sel on the bed. Luc was doing his usual jumping around, I have to keep reminding him that I don’t want him to jump on the bed when his sister is lying here.
Sept. 2nd
Today, for the first time, I saw Sel turned over on her tummy by herself, the whole way! She was able to get her hands out from under her chest once too! But this new position is still too new & unfamiliar to her so she cried out loud when she successfully turned onto her tummy! (Which was kinda cute :P I’m sure she’ll learn to enjoy the new position and perspective very soon.
August 27th, 2012
Somedays, when you are all charged up, you have so much patience you’re like Buddha! It is at these times that you’ll see the miracles of RIE!
Diary - Aug 25 - Fake Sleeping
My son L is only 24 months old and already today he gave me a fake sleeping response to my long winded explanation of why I wanted him to wash his hands. Great!
I just saw our helper holding 5 months old baby girl S, sitting on her lap watching TV!
Here’s another example of different of opinions between my wife and I. While I think it is horrible holding a baby up, not to mention watching TV!! My wife thinks it’s OK, because “she’s not doing anything anyway.”
Aug 18th
Today we have a new family joining our playgroup, mom Marta who’s another Reggio Emilia Approach inspired early childhood educator, sweet natured 2 year old boy T, and dad Andy who brought T to the playgroup. We had some good talks about parenting and lives in Hong Kong. T is really awesome for his age, I think it really shows what a big difference being a RIE / REA parent can make!
Aug 12th
About a month ago we bought a wooden train set from IKEA for L, his first train set. He loves it! At first I didn’t want to show him how the rails could connect, I sat beside him and watched him play with the trains on the floor as if they were just cars. After may be 10 minutes (probably less), I caved. I put 2 pieces together while he wasn’t looking, and then 2 more, and then connected the bridge… but even after seeing the pieces joined together, he still didn’t grasp the concept. By the next day, my wife or the helper had “helped him” put the whole track together!