Over the weekend I had the privilege to attend a talk by Tony Christiansen. You may not have heard of this extraordinary man, so if you want to know more about him and how amazing his life is despite his handicap, just read about him here on his official Tony Christiansen website.

Listening to him was so inspiring and it made me wonder why we put so much limitations on ourselves when the ones who truly face real challenges don’t limit themselves the way we do. It’s injustice we’re doing to ourselves, don’t you think?

From those who struggle to lose a couple of pounds using sensa weight loss methods to make their food less tasty to those who keep telling themselves “No” in things they want to do, to those who let others steal their dreams, we’re all too negative and hard on ourselves.

Tony Christiansen helped to put a lot of things into perspective for me and it was definitely a great learning experience I had from his talk. We bought his book too and had it signed. Gonna get started on it soon. Looks interesting with pictures of his activities and life.

Did you happen to go for the talk to? What did you think of it?

To read more parenting related articles, click here: Life As A Mummy

Superb talk by Tony Christiansen

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Only a couple of weeks ago I learned from some experienced mothers that you need to register your kids to primary schools very early on if you want them to go to some good schools. I was shocked to learn that parents actually register their 2 or 3 year olds to primary schools already! All along I thought that it was to register them to some play school or maybe kindergarten, I didn’t realise it was primary school they were talking about.

How about you parents out there? How early on did you register your kids to the schools you wanted them to go? If you are at my stage of having a 2+ year old, when do you plan to register your little one?

I guess if you are not particular about the schools they go to, maybe you won’t start to register so early on. But then again, these days all parents are concerned about the schools they send their kids to, as we all want only the best for our kids, don’t we?

It’s just unfortunate that a lot of good schools during our generation have kind of deteriorated in standards today. I have to say that I don’t look at my school the same way as it was before when I was schooling there. It has changed so much and I’m unsure of the standard of teaching there now. It’s sad to lose confidence and faith in the school that we once were proud of, isn’t it?

We can only hope that in the future, something can be done right to train higher quality teachers and perhaps the teaching methodology and syllabus should be reviewed too so that children learn in the most effective manner. Like how it is like in the west, where children are exposed to many different learning styles.

It’s no wonder the teaching profession is a much more respected field than it is here. Over in the west, there’re actually sites that specialise on Education job search for the teaching profession where it is unheard of here. So you can see the disparity of the same profession in different parts of the world.

Enough rambling for now. After all that’s been said, I will seriously consider private education as an option. No doubt it’s costly, but sometimes I feel that I may just have more peace of mind spending that kind of money. And maybe, just maybe, we won’t have to register Ryan to school so early if it’s a private one huh?

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Now that I’m in business for myself, I find that the things I learned while being an employee are useful but I still have a steep learning curve when being on my own. Most of the time I talk to lots of people and therefore need to be at least an interesting person to hold interesting conversations with all sorts of characters that I meet.

This didn’t occur to me until I met some interesting people and they started talking about things that I had no interest in but found that maybe I should read up some if not a lot of them just to be able to have smarter conversations. I’m not saying I have to be a miss-know-it-all, but it does help to know maybe a little of it and then apologize for not knowing the in-depth matter. I think it’s realistic for people not to know everything in-depth, don’t you think?

Some of the conversations that I came across involved financial issues like the Outer banks foreclosures, political opinions on our local as well as international governments, the issue of oil and gas and the speculation of when the resource will finally deplete. There are a couple more conversations regarding more trivial matters but I can’t figure out why they are of so much interests to some people.

I suppose the only way for me to know about a little of everything is to read lots. The only trouble with that is time. I don’t have enough time as it is trying to run 2 businesses, what more to spare some time to read about a little of everything. Perhaps when I become more settled in my work, and also not falling asleep together with Ryan at his bedtime, maybe I can squeeze in some good time for reading. After all I do love to read but have done very little of it in the last few years due to other priorities taking over my time.

What would you do if you were in my shoes? Would you care to read up on anything and everything or would you just tell the person you’re facing that you really have no idea on the matter they’re interested in and therefore let’s change the topic?

To read more parenting related articles, click here: Life As A Mummy

Change of learning curve

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I have wanted to start Ryan on swimming some months ago, but all I did was talk and talk and talk and then came the H1N1 and I chickened out bringing him to a public pool. But we did buy him his swimsuit, and it waited patiently to be worn. Then some weeks back the grandma bought him one of those play pools that we could use at home.

We decided to let him have his first swimming experience in that little pool last weekend. It’s a very small one, but just nice to fit him into it with lots of his “toy friends” to play with.

He was very excited about it and willingly let his daddy change him into the swimsuit. But when it came time to go into the pool, he insisted that he wanted to remove the suit! There was no way we could get him into the pool with the suit on as he kept struggling to get out.

In the end we had to explain to him that the suit was meant to get wet and he HAD to wear something to swim. He still refused and made us take it off. We let him sit naked in the pool for a bit and then forced a t-shirt on him. But I was still uncomfortable with him being half naked in there so it was through more persuasions that we managed to get him back into the suit.

But even then, he was really funny. He refused to sit in the pool. He kept standing, possibly to avoid getting the suit wet. Then slowly, he went down on all fours and stayed that way playing with water. At the most, he would sit in that kneeling position. He just refused to land his butt on the floor!

Anyway, what matters most is that he had a happy time. I think it should get easier as we have more swimming sessions with him in the coming weekends. I just wonder how long it will take for him to be completely ok to get his swimming suit wet!

I also don’t know how long it will be before we bring him to the real pools due to hygiene issues especially with scary diseases going around these days. Some well-meaning friends who have pools in their homes for rent offered us to use them but I don’t think they are ideal either.

A friend recommended a pool that we can go to in one of those clubs nearby our place, as he finds it clean and not congested because people who are non-club members need to pay to get in and apparently club members don’t really use the pool. I guess that might be one alternative I will consider when we’re ready to take him to the pool. Well, more like when he’s ready to get wet!

Where do you take your kids to swim in?

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My son wanted to swim naked!

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I’ve never really known how to teach a child about delayed gratification. I guess we have tried to teach Ryan about this in a subconscious manner where we ask of him to save or postpone something for later.

But I do not expect a child of 2 years to naturally save something for the future if they can do or have it now. Children are mostly about instant gratification. Why wait to watch a Barney episode when you can do it now? Why wait to play with a favourite toy when you can play it now, right?

However, it does seem like whatever we’ve imparted to Ryan seems to have worked on him building up a natural delayed gratification habit. On Sunday I gave Ryan his first taste of a Crispy chocolate bar. He loves chocolates and he loved that small bar of Crispy too. I promised that I’ll let him have another bar the next day because I limit his candy intake in a day.

Came Monday this busy mummy had forgotten about the promised Crispy and my guess is that Ryan forgot too. Last night when I was rummaging through my handbag, I found that little Crispy bar and I immediately went to give it to him. He lit up at the sight of it and he was so happy. I tore it open for him to sink his little teeth in and he was happily enjoying it.

Then when he was halfway through the bar, he handed his half eaten chocolate to grandma and said “Keep this, tomorrow bring to Aunty’s house to eat”. Both grandma and I melted at that gesture. He loved that chocolate so much but he was willing to stop eating and keep the other half for the next day, without being asked to!

So when I heard that, I told him to eat it all up to his heart’s content. I promised to buy him some more so that he can eat them again. Only upon hearing this did he take his half eaten candy back from his grandmother and continued to happily chomp it down.

I’m so proud of my little 2-year old. If he understands the concept of delayed gratification now, I think it will be quite a breeze to start him young on financial education. After all, part of being smart in managing one’s finances involves delayed gratification.

In fact, we have already started him on the habit of saving by giving him coins on a daily basis. He enjoys dropping the coins into his huge piggy bank. It helps that it’s a transparent container and he gets to watch as the coins fill up. Now it’s full to the brim (thanks to grandma!) and we’re ready to go to the bank.

By the way, if you ask Ryan what he should do with his money, he will say “Put in the bank”. Anyone who gives him an ang pow, he would hand it over to me and ask me to keep it away in the bank. He learned this when he turned 1 year old. Now that’s my boy!

So you see, it’s never too early to start teaching your children financial education and start to cultivate a good financial blueprint for them. I have every determination to start Ryan off in the right track when it comes to money after reading a book that changed me. If you would like to know more about the book, you can read my review on Secrets of The Millionaire Mind.

Have you started your kids on financial education? Want to share on how we can best train them from young to have good money habits?

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