parenting

Dumb Ways to Spend Money on Your Kids

We love our kids. We love them above all. We spend our hard-earned money on them so they get equal opportunity like other kids do. But we don’t have spend our bling bling money over them, like there’s no tomorrow.

Some of us may disagree with me. “Yeah, why not. If we love them, we should give everything they want. If they want expensive toys, let them have it. We spend on our kids anyway, not on our next door kids.”

What if our spending habit takes its toll on our financial stability? 

Spending on expensive, branded items is against my policy. I, as a dad of two kids, didn’t argue that we should give them all especially toys. But so far, I manage to divert from buying expensive toys from Toy R’ S.

Well, not all toys. Sometimes, I feel a sympathy over them when they make cute little frown lips and watery-eye-is-about-to-spill tears.

 It’s a battle I should say. If I lose, I buy item expensive thing at branded outlets like Mickey or Toy R us. If I win, we travel 20 kilometers from our home to shopping second hand toys at Amcorp Mall.

As our kids grow older, they may get influenced by yummy advertising shown all over the internet, TV, or radio. They started to choose brand over quality. So they can show off to their group of friends. And we, parent — as always — go for the cheap ones.

But when two interests collide with each other. There will be one side that’s always lose. In order, to save our money from getting drained, and to teach them how to separate them from becoming brand/fashion victim, we must find solution.

Teach them how to choose. The notion of “going for alternative, cheaper brand” must always in their mind.

GoBankingRate suggested that:

How to say ‘no’: For young kids, a fun way to demonstrate that cheaper brands and name brands are often similar is a blind taste test. Ask kids to identify which is the brand name and which is the generic. Even if they’re correct in identifying the products, they’ll notice how similar they are.

There’s another way how to teach them: To be a role model to them. We should not buy our item base on fashion, but base on quality. I know it’s hard to let go of an LV handbag and buy Bonia handbag instead. But for our children sake. We should do that.

5 Dumb Ways to Spend Money on Your Kids [Bankrate via GoBankingRates]

photo by: Digital Sextant

Heartbreak at Annur


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Last week, I had a heartbreak. My daughter broke my heart. Not like she didn’t love me back, or frowning when I expected her to smile back at me. She broke my heart in a way of not being strong enough to be a healthy girl.

It all started when I received a call from my wife, telling me Widad had been warded due to problems with her lungs. And this was what happened after that : I saw my heart, like a fragile mirror, free falling in the air and about to fall into pieces — million of pieces. I was just standing there, waiting for that burning motion to be completed.

I reminded myself: It’s just a light complication in her lung and the doctor just followed the procedures.

There’s nothing death about it.

My bright morning turned into black and white.

How am I going to do work if I can’t stop thinking about her?

My wife told me that she’d be alright, the world’s still here, and there’s nothing to worry about. The doctor needed to examine thoroughly because my daughter failed to respond with the antibiotic given, prior to the day before that.

To tell you the truth, I’m not a strong person when it comes to deal with emotions. That event didn’t weigh any magnitude to bring my daughter to fatality phase or endanger her life completely. I should feel relax because she would be alright after all. But the thing was, I failed to do that.

Outside, my face was showing no sad emotion whatsoever. I even fooled myself with the brightest smile when co-workers passing by.

But I was trembling inside.

I didn’t know what I was feeling then. But I knew things around me seemed like slowly vaporizing, pixelating into darkness. My eyes were half shut like nothing to see. Really, there’s nothing to see if someone I love was bedridden.

If there’s a powerful drug that could turn endless crying into everlasting smile, in a merely second, I swore to god I would buy it. I didn’t care if I had sell my kidney. Because every second Widad crying in agony, it sent a coding error to my world. If it went beyond reparable level, all I could see was numbers and figures, just like the Matrix.

I grabbed my bag, ignored everyone else, and rushed to the front door. My legs kept shaking while waiting for elevator to open. Thank god I wasn’t trip over when I was walking into the elevator — I was thinking hard about my daughter I forgot to control my steps. I pushed G button so hard I just don’t care if it went broke or not. Then, I pushed my way forward to KL Sentral Komuter station.

It took 45 minutes to arrive at my destination. Along that way, I was recollecting my moment with Widad, her smile, her childish acting, her cute new-learner legs that sometimes you lose confidence in her to walking straight on her own, and her curly hair that reminded me of how much she resembled me. She is mine and always be mine.

I was Feeling deprived and sadness when I entered into the elevator. It took me and 5 other persons up to level 3. I walked out of the elevator to find my daughter’s ward.

****

[Lily One Ward, Widad Saffiyah]

I was standing in front of it for a few seconds and reached a door knob with my right hand.

A bright light, came from the slight of the open door, blinded my eyes right before I saw my wife and my daughter. I put a smile on my face. My wife immediately noticed that I was wearing weird, stone look as if a mindset of emotions was drained out of me. I responded that I needed to see our daughter and then everything would be OK.

My daughter smiled at me. Like a Walt Disney cartoon, enchanted flowers manifested around her in a magical way.

Tiger Parenting Gets Criticized

In the western civilization, most of the people are against the Tiger Parenting approach, maybe because it seems too harm to raise a children like that. It’s like next domestic violence. But the truth is, like my own family, we need some sort of force to get us in line. My mother is an asian tiger; when we failed, she sinked her fangs into our skins.
Matt Davidson wrote:
Invariably this approach results in a selfish, temperamental prima donna lacking essential interpersonal skills for being a good team member, and lacking courage and grit in the face of challenge. It may seem like tough love designed to prepare kids for the “real world”, but in reality it’s a lethal combination of human neglect and overt coddling resulting in a cat without claws that is at the core soft and insecure.
There’s no, whatsoever, a proven scientific study that tiger parenting or authoritative parenting is bad — so bad it will give huge impact in negativity to the child’s emotion, education and health.
I have 6 six siblings and everyone of us were excel in school and university. All of us got straight As in UPSR, above average result of PMR & SPM, and graduate with bachelor’s degree. Two of us even have Master’s Degree. And I’m about to take class for a Master’s Degree as well, next year. Now, tell me what is wrong with Tiger Parenting?
Matt Davidson wrote:
This is the truly unfortunate part of the polarizing discussion that has, in my opinion, resulted from Chua’s work on Tiger Parenting: it has entrenched parents on opposite ends of equally wrongheaded approaches to developing the excellence and ethics needed for success in school work and beyond.
For conclusion, the goal of parenting is to achieve our children’s needs and demands until they can figure out on their own. Whether it is Tiger Parenting or soft parenting or other parenting approach as long as it’s effective to meet our goal.

How To Deal With Parenting Problems



The Main Idea: job as a parenting is more demanding than you think.

  • parenting is a lifetime job. There’s no try-out, escape, or just testing.
  • It ask to be more enlightened parent. For me, we really need to put pressure — a good pressure I must say — on our children, and not be supportive and kind in all aspects
  • You should know that parenting is hard and there are a lot of obstacles to be a good dad

    • WeightLossRevisited wrote:

    Parenting is the hardest job and that applies as to if you’re a first time mother or father or whether you already have several kids. Parenting is probably the most underpaid job ever and you do not even earn anything from being a parent.

    I am a father of two children and It really testing my patience; the truth is , I can’t manage my temper when it comes to nursing them. The reason I don’t hire local or Indonesian maid because I want to take part in nurturing them to become great adult.

    I try to improve myself by reading, and writing about my children. Parenting is turning me into a better man with responsibility.

    [ How To Deal With Parenting Problems via WeightLossRevisited]

    Long Distance Relationship With Your Children




    Photo: emrank

    Tech help us for blow away our cravings of communicating with our love ones.For an instance, how we skype with mom at kampung. We really miss her, we want to skype just to see her face or what cooking she makes for dinner.

    Let say if I had to get separated with my children, because of my employer required me to station outside of my local area for a long time, I definitely follow advises from Diana Mercer

    She wrote:

    Every few days plan to read or tell your child a favorite or familiar story over the phone (or by webcam) before bed, like Goodnight, Moon or your own favorite story from childhood. The story can be short, less than 15 minutes long. If you each have your own copy of the story, you can turn the pages together even though you aren’t in the same room. This is particularly good for a smaller child as it’s interactive.

    While a long distance relationship is not as healthy as a close relationship, sometimes you have no choice if your work is transferable to any available branches. Perhaps you should seek a new job that is closer to your family. For person like me who don’t believe in long distance relationship, I will always keep looking for a new job if I ever get transfered to another branch.

    [Long Distance Parenting via Huffingtonpost]

    My 2011 Parenting Goals

    Photo: iUnique FX

    I know I should post this resolution last month, but January was a hectic month for me. My work at the office also needed me to planning and setting the goal for 2011. So I had to put aside other matters and concentrated to my office work for a while. For this month, I have all the time in the world to update my post, and I hope it wouldn’t be too late for the new year’s resolution.

    Actually I have been planning inside my brain on December last year, then after that, I only have firm goal on mid January. I put my parenting goals on paper and hope to stick to it. The main objective of my parenting goals is to be a better parent who understand the need of my children in many aspects such as education, health, and emotion. I hope to attend more parenting talk, classes, discussions than I did last year.

    These are the 7 parenting goals for 2011. I wonder whether I could achieve all the goals without getting past through big and heavy obstacles along the way.

    1. Unleash Amirul’s Speech
    I have bought one dedicated notebook to enlist all the words Amirul has been said for all his life. It doesn’t matter whether Amirul can pronounce properly or not. As long as Amirul point at something and say something German — that we couldn’t understand — it also considered a word. For an instance,  Amirul says EEUU everytime he sees crane, digger, and tower crane, and I have to write down EEUU as one of his word in the book. I hope Amirul can speak his own name, favorite things; tractor, cars, crane, train, favorite animals; fish, elephant, giraffe, favorite character; Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Kung Fu Panda, Toy Story, and, Despicable Me before my birthday.

    2. Amirul Can Make Three Basic Sentences Before My Birthday.
    I want my son to practice a full sentence when he wants something important to him especially milk; his essential resource for food. Another sentence that I want him to practice is to say he wants to watch his favorite cartoon. And the last one is saying “Daddy/Mommy, I Love You So Much”

    3. Read and review more books about parenting maybe one book one months
    Last year, I have bought several books about parenting at BigBadWolf because they sold the book at the very low price. I was tempted and felt I will lose my insanity if I ignore the deal and walk away. So I hurt my credit card balance so easy that I have to pay off two thirds the amount with my yearly bonus. Okay. I have succeded on buying the books on bargain last year. What I’ve failed was getting myself to read all the title. I have no time to read or I was too lazy too read or I deliberately didn’t put up any efforts to fuel up my reading habit. But this year, I want to finish reading one parenting book per month. This does not include reading the mountain of fiction novels worth RM300++.

    4. Fully utilize ipad as a teaching tools for Amirul.
    One thing that I love about iPad is it can be a powerful teaching tool. One significant improvement that I see is he can arrange puzzle (for kids) without much troubles. He also learn  to pronounce alphabet every night as it is interactive and fun. Most of the apps are kids-friendly and the multimedia presentations are attractive. I also follow iPadForKids to get news and tips.

    5. Maintain 30 – 60 Minutes Of Teaching Amirul.
    We have met the doctor on our latest speech therapy session, 2, 3, and the doctor gave me homework to do — learn to follow instructions, build lego imitation, and new nouns and verbs. So every I have teach Amirul — from Mondays to Fridays at least 30 minutes and up to one hour with many break because Amirul only can concentrate in short time.

    6. Bela arnab.
    Amirul loves watching animals especially chicken and fish. He already own the fish and I can’t effort to pet chicken: it needs hardwork to keep up the hygiene of the surroundings and I couldn’t stand the smell of the chicken’s drop. I have decided to pet rabbit instead.

    7. Maintain My Sanity When Nursing My Children.
    Ok, here’s my weaknesses: my voice becomes thunder of high octane, when amirul doing somethig wrong and naughty, or when he didn’t listen — intentionally or not — to my instruction. Ever since I became a father, my heart becomes easily broken when things don’t go my way. I’m so fragile that I lost my temper when my family member doesn’t follow my demand. If something happened against my will, I get angry easily. Or when I things went unexpected — like Widad cries all of the sudden without a reason — I lose my insanity. This year I want the dark side of me to be vanished and make changes for the good of the family. But somehow it is not an easy goal, and this is the biggest challenge: avoid the insanity.

    Hope and Fears
    Every slot of time is counted. Every positive progress leads to accomplishment of a goal. So I hope I could meet all my goals without many challenging obstacles. Although, it is good to experience challenging obstacles — they will make you a better man — but I’m afraid that I couldn’t carry on and stop the train in the middle of a railway before its destination. The only person that can catapult me further and further is my wife, with her enthusiastic mommy spirit — and her homemade brownies.

    Give Hugs And Kisses Encourage Child’s Self-Esteem

    Photo By: JetSharkLambo

    When I look into the eyes of my son, I know that he can be a confidence and high self-esteem boy. Only sometimes, my strictness discourage him to do things creatively. That’s the weakness of authoritative parenting style, or chinese parenting style; your children are limit to explore something new because they might afraid their parent disapproval.

    BabyCenter Wrote:

    Give unconditional love. A child’s self-esteem flourishes with the kind of no-strings-attached devotion that says, “I love you, no matter who you are or what you do.” Your child benefits the most when you accept him for who he is regardless of his strengths, difficulties, temperament, or abilities. So lavish him with love. Give him plenty of cuddles, kisses, and pats on the shoulder. And don’t forget to tell him how much you love him. When you do have to correct your child, make it clear that it’s his behavior — not him — that’s unacceptable. For instance, instead of saying, “You’re a naughty boy! Why can’t you be good?” say, “Pushing Gabriel isn’t nice. It can hurt. Please don’t push.
    Regardless of how my children get rotan or pinch or cubit, I — always and never will forget — kiss them every night before going to bed. Every time they outcome obstacles such as flash card exercise, learning ABC, or doing puzzle (on iPad), I give hugs and kisses, and tell them, ‘I always love you’

    Chinese Parents Are More Superior Than Western Parents

    If children do not excel in education at school, there’s something wrong with their parent. Well, it looks like Chinese parenting is far more better than Western parenting if you read what Amy Chua wrote.

    It is a comparison between Western and Chinese parenting. Both of them are different from ever perspective, such as, approval and disapproval, and level of expectations.

    The Western parents believe by praise your children more would boost morale. Therefore, your children would learning harder. While the Chinese would smack, rotan, pinch, and punish if the children didn’t excel or meet their expectation. And their expectations are really high; A is only in their eyes. There are no other alphabets.

    Both parenting styles pursue different methods and approaches; Chinese parents are strict and authoritative, as if an altitude of pressure is hanging in the air when you are inside their house. On the other hand, Western parents are more cooperative and reassurance, and they believe by doing that they would develop or maintain the children’s self esteem. Furthermore, the emotion of the children are more contained and adequate.

    Chinese parents only concern what matters, such as grades and grades only. Western parents concern about everything – sports, play, grades, social life, and emotions.

    “the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be “the best” students, that “academic achievement reflects successful parenting,” and that if children did not excel at school then there was “a problem” and parents “were not doing their job.””
    Funny thing is
    My mother did the same to me and my other siblings. Back then, she was so strict she would pinch and smack us if we were naughty and didn’t listen to her. I remember that I got bad grade in primary school and my mother scolded me and made me ashamed of myself.

    At the end of that year, I got straight As in UPSR result.

    I believe that
    ..not only Chinese mother are superior. Parents who practice authoritarian style are superior, because they boost their children self-esteem and determination by put pressure on their children head to study harder.

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