All Sorts Of Weird Parents

I am a housewife by day and tuition teacher by night. I have students come by my house at night for tuition. I used to teach primary school children aged between 8 and 12. Now I am teaching secondary school children aged between 13 and 17. I have been teaching for almost 7 years now.

Most of my students would tell me stuffs that they would not tell their parents. After so many years of listening to their tales and their point of view, I became a better parent. Most of their tales were actually complains about their parents. Fascinating and unbelievable too. Will share them with you one by one in my post from now on.

The most heard of tale is about how parents lie to them to coax them to get good grades in school. Every batch of my students there would be at least one, who would complain about how their parents lie about their own grades in school. The more the child finds it hard to believe, the more he / she would want to dig up more about their parents past.

A few of my students already did some digging and found their parents school report card and used it against their parents when they lied about their good grades again. I would ask my students why they think it is a lie, their reply normally were that their parents could hardly speak English or Bahasa Malaysia. Every time when encounter with homework problems and ask their parents for help, it looks as if they don't know anything at all.

Parents out there, please take note. All these are facts that I gathered from a child's mouth aged between 8 to 17. If you think you can simply come up with a story to bluff your child into getting better grades, think again. No doubt they are only children but they ain't as dump as you think they are.

Normally when my sons ask for help in their school work, anything that I am not sure I will get them to help me find the answers from reference books, encyclopedia or the internet. We will look up for the answers together and I would normally say " So that's how it is suppose to be. I have learned something new today". By showing them I am willing to learn, it also influenced them to learn too.

I always tell my sons that knowledge will always stay with us, will never be robbed of it. The more knowledge you have the wiser you become and learning is not difficult but fun. Parents should show some leadership here, the more you are willing to learn the more your child would follow and you don't have to come up with weird excuses as to why they should get good grades. When a child finds learning fun and the happiness that comes with achievements be it academically or otherwise, the good grades will follow, no nagging, no punishing, no lies or tuition required. They can even self study, like how I trained my sons to do.

Thanks for reading and hope parents could share some parenting skill with me. Happy parenting to you.