A birthday invitation for Snowylass, one teacher migrating (among other things)

It's probably the only time in my children's life that they'll happily (more like obliviously) allow me to go through their school bags daily.

I have to. She's only all of 3 years old as of last month.

Before departure: Towel, check.  Change of clothes, check.

Water-bottle filled with water, check. Snack box filled with at least 2 variety of snacks (usually one form of biscuit and a fruit), check. Milk packet, check.

In the evening, apart from taking out the 'dirty clothings' and airing the towel, I got to check the rest of the bag carefully.

Sometimes, there's a goody bag when a schoolmate had a birthday party. In fact, with around 50 kids, there's at least a birthday party every month. Many of the kids are from expat families, so giving away goody bags became 'tradition'. But most significant for this check is to find if the teachers put in leftover pieces of the birthday cake somewhere in the bag. I'm sure they don't mean to hide it, but these cakes do have a habit of becoming shy.

Once I was so tired that I put off the 'bag process' until the next morning, only to find discover the presence of what the previous day was fresh-cream cake, wondering why it was neglected overnight, and it was totally ... gross.

Though the school wanted to make it a point for the kids to learn to inform their parents whenever there's something 'extra' in the bag, I could not help but sometimes wonder if the teachers gave up the fight with my daughter's class. She never tells us anything about it.

This week so far, there's a birthday party invitation from Luca.

As this is only my 3rd blog entry, perhaps it might be useful to note down a bit more about this boy Luca.

His parents are German. He was already there in the Bunny class (entry level for these kids) when Snowylass started. The very first day in school, Luca kissed and hugged her (And from this birthday invitation, I only now learned he's a couple of months younger than Snowylass). Now, the father in me wasn't very pleased about his first and only child then being kissed by a boy. I was even less impressed when I was told Luca 'had a girl in every class'.

I made it a point to teach Snowylass that if she doesn't like it (and she doesn't have to like it), she should tell him "No." But apparently, Luca's kisses washed off her like water off duck, so I bore with it as stoically as possible, hoping it will pass.

It didn't really pass, after more than one year (they are together in the Sweetpeas class now), though I was given to understand he reduced the number of girls he's kissing now, and does it to Snowylass less often.

But he is on the same bus home with Snowylass and he's been trying to get himself invited to our residence, and invite Snowylass to his. His mother (a trained psychologist) actually talked to Snowylady (they're sort of friends now), and they promised to try to arrange something ... someday ...

Me? I just want to know how long would Luca's parents be in Singapore. Others might find it cute the children going around saying "My Snowylass" etc., but this father is too acutely aware of what boys get up to, especially in their adolescent years, and doesn't want his daughter to have unrealistic and overly optimistic innocent ideas ... right from young.

I must say she gave me less reason to worry a couple of weekends ago at another birthday party that her class was invited to. During that party, Luca's father told Luca's mother, who told Snowylady that he observed another boy hitting Luca when the kids were playing on an inflatable castle. Then he said he observed Snowylass stepping between the boys, held a hand up to the hitter and told him firmly "Stop."

I wished I caught that. I was present, but between me handling Snowylad at that time and Snowylady talking with Luca's mom, we missed it. I was proud of her of course, and I have some hope now that she won't be a person easily impressed by guys showing off, so if any guy really wants to impress her, he'd better have some real substance.

 

There is another note I found in her bag this week. This time is to inform us that one of Snowylass' favourite teacher, a 杨老师 from Shanghai who was mainly responsible for instructing the class in Mandarin, would be giving up her Singaporean PR to go to Canada with her husband.

On the one hand, 杨老师 talks to the children a lot and got them to talk more in Mandarin as compared to the other Chinese language teacher.

And the other hand, she also touches up her makeup in school, something which Snowylass picked up very quickly. A few months ago, Snowylady left her handbag on the bed. Snowylass happily went through it and found a lip moisturiser in a compact, and was cheekily doing her own lips when caught by her mum. Snowylady took the chance to remind that Snowylass is a girl, even if she's only 3 years old. I am still trying to understand what it means - I got no sisters.

Back to 杨老师. The principal told me yesterday that 杨老师's husband was also from China, and they were posted to Canada by SingTel. I don't know what SingTel is doing in Canada, but in anycase, the principal also told me that 杨老师 and hubby planned to return to China when they want to start a family - Singapore is too stressful and they don't care for the environment for a family.

Some ethnic Chinese families don't care to raise their children in the West though they'd want to study or work there.

Most thought Singapore is a safe place to raise children.

Some Singaporeans choose to migrate to Australia for a less stressful environment.

Snowylady, being a teacher, was already thinking about our children.

I told her I didn't feel stress when I studied in Singapore, all through Primary, Secondary, Junior College.

Neither did she, she said.

We had time to play after finishing homework. Okay, so I did skip doing homework once or twice, and paid for it by doing it till late a night, but overall, it's a breeze.

Snowylady now saw the students being given more and more stuff to do.

Frankly, I'm not sure if that's a good way for them to do learning.

Snowylass' cousin, 6 months older, was being taught reading alphabets and words.

So far, we've not done anything of that sort actively, except recite to her the alphabets in Sesame Street books. We are still thinking that she'll ask to learn when she's ready. Meanwhile, she doesn't need to know to read in order to learn the names of the things around her, like ladybird, coconut, or that we stop because the traffic light is red.

I just hope we can continue doing things at our own pace and resist external pressures as she grows.