my shopping cart and i ran into a very nice mum today during one of my tri-weekly park n shop $1500 trips.
after showing her sebastian’s writing book, which is filled with comments like "try harder, sebastian!" and other positive ways of saying, "this isn’t good", we started talking about the pressure in hong kong for kids to obtain academic excellence. she was really worried about this.
i looked at the book in my hand and said, "friend, this generation is raising thousands of academically brilliant, multilingual kids. they’re writing earlier, they’re learning so much, and we’re training them to believe that good jobs are what counts, and only what counts."
and then i started warming up.
"but 30 years from now, would you rather call your child and have 80 per cent of the converation be about their job, or 80 per cent of the conversation be about their friends, life and activities. no matter how much money we make, we’ll always want more."
yes, i was simplifying the issue but i am realising more and more that there is a bigger picture, and the person i want my children to be is not about education. it is about being happy with who they are, about being creative and knowing they are loved for their talents. and being willing to try new things. from there, i think succeeding at their educational niche follows, wherever that is. i might be wrong.
and as we enter into the competitive world of writing neatness and maths and reading levels i need to remember:
raising children to have excellent relationships is more important to me than raising children to have excellent jobs.
