My nephew is now in primary 5 - his PSLE exams are about 20 months away. Certainly, my mother will play a very active role until then - but what next? My mother would not know her way around a secondary school syllabus and I doubt my sister my my brother-in-law would trust her with the same role once my nephew reaches secondary school. That would be the point where my mother would have to relinquish her role as 'educator' and simply put on the 'grandmother' hat as tuition teachers who are capable of handling the more secondary school syllabus would be engaged. Like, what if she tries to take on his secondary school syllabus?!
I suppose in suggesting that we try this learning centre, I was taking her raison d'etre away from her - I was implying, "you've not really succeeded in educating the boy, let's hand him over to the professionals and see if they can do a better job than you." My mother isn't as highly educated as her three children - but the one thing she is good at is teaching children as she is a retired primary school teacher with over four decades of experience. This is an area where she can contribute and feel useful - but it has gotten to the point where I am seriously wondering if my nephew will be better off being taught by someone else, a dedicated professional who is an expert at what s/he does.
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| I'm torn between considering my mother's feelings and my nephew's future. |
So with his PSLE coming, I don't know if my mother is going to be the best person to guide him over the next 20 months but I do know that she will literally kill anyone with her bare hands who will try to stand in the way of her trying to do so. Do we have to wait till the day my nephew starts secondary school before we can finally say to my mother, "okay mum, thanks for your valiant efforts, now you can relax and just be a grandmother rather an educator." Or is this a role she will never want to give up because it empowers her? (Like if she is so keen on playing that role, I say she should just give tuition.) It's tough - having to choose between my mother's feelings and what's best for my nephew and if only we can have both but right now, the way things are, we can't even begin to talk about this issue in my family without my mother going totally apeshit crazy about it (and that's putting it mildly already). She will start accusing everyone of hating her, trying to drive a wedge between her and her beloved grandson and we back off in fear as she gets totally emotional and irrational about it. Don't get me wrong, we really do care about her feelings too.
Any suggestions on how we can handle this - or do we just have to wait another 2 years and see if my mother is willing to relinquish her 'educator' role when my nephew commences secondary school? Any thoughts, any ideas or suggestion, please do leave a comment below, thank you very much for your help.
Be very grateful to her for the time she's spent, then ask her to prepare for the Secondary 4 syllabus. Since its going to be coming, must be prepared ahead of time. Make her take the tests and see if she can get 100% by herself. If she can't, must tell her that you can't take the risk for your nephew.
ReplyDeleteShe will not be able to cope with the current sec 4 syllabus that I can tell you - she did her (whatever they called it back in those days) O-levels equivalent a long time ago back in the 1950s and the modern syllabus will be foreign to her. Here's what I am afraid of - she will say "of course I can't cope with sec 4 stuff, but surely I can cope with sec 1 stuff since it's only one year on from PSLE. Just one more year." Then she fumbles her way through sec 1 with my nephew and then she will say, "if I can help him with sec 1, then I can help him with sec 2 stuff - how much harder can it be?" And so on ...
DeleteIt's the equivalent of someone walking from the shallow end of the pool towards the deep end - at the shallow end, your feet can touch the bottom and your head is way above the water but at some point, your nose goes under water and you have to call it quits and say, "okay, the water is going to be too deep if I take one step further."
What I fear is that the sec one syllabus is probably still okay for my mother (ie. the water is still up to maybe her throat or chin but not her nose) but any further would be foolhardy and if she makes a mistake, it's not her who's going to pay the price, it's my nephew's education who will suffer if she bites off more than she can chew.
Now you see why we're torn between what's best for my nephew and my mother's feelings.
Here's where the school teachers can help you out of your predicament....you could still let your nephew join the education centre's lesson while your mum does whatever she wants. My guess is your nephew would either be confused and/or rebel against whatever that is not to his liking and I'm guessing secondary school as a whole would be one of it. Once the grades drop fast enough, the teachers would totally advice the parents to get him some more help since whatever that he is doing has not been helping. Fast forward to secondary two streaming, I bet you the gloves will come of and grandma and parents will have to negotiate a truce.
ReplyDeleteIf all things fail, fear not. You can fail english, get a D7 and still get into poly but fail maths or science and god help you. I know because I failed maths and only maths and almost ended up in ITE when everything else was a B3. Lol!
Relax. English is not that important in Engineering school which also explains why you see so many mainland chinese students there and not in say business school.
All of the above is on the presumption that y'all have no plans for him to get into uni...JC is a whole different beast with the new H1/H2 syllabus. Good luck!
I think you're confusing some issues here (as much as I appreciate your efforts to help here).
DeleteHis grades aren't great at the moment, but they could be better. And yes, fortunately, the parents do eventually get final say (but boy do they fight and argue with my mother non-stop over my nephew's education) - it is unreal how much they argue. It always boils down to the same thing: my sis says, "it's for his education" mum accuses her of, "you're trying to prevent me from spending time with my grandson."
On the issue of English - we don't know if he is doing badly in English because he is being taught badly (ie. by my mother) or if he really just has no affinity for the English language. If it is the latter, so be it, but if my mother is the reason why his English is so bad (ie. her English is pretty bad, so how can you expect his English to be any better than hers when my mother is the one teaching him English), can we try to give my nephew a better shot at a future by letting someone else try to teach him English instead?
I don't know why I didn't mention this but I had a look at his science homework and oh boy, I wasn't impressed either by the standard of his science... Then I have to back off and say, he's only a kid and my standards are way too high.
Our concern is what is best for him in the long term - and how that creates conflicts with my mum trying to play an active role in that context (rather than just being a grandmother...)
Your nephew's parents are your sister and brother-in-law. Parents make decisions for their children and they and their children will live with the consequences of the decisions.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what the end goals are in this case - is it purely to maximize PSLE scores? If so, will draconian drilling tutors be the best people to achieve this goal? I'm not sure what the needs of an autistic child are but I am sure the child's parents will have a better idea of the child's learning needs, and balance it with considerations of his emotional, mental and medical needs. Perhaps the child is only comfortable with grandma and learns best under teaching coupled with love? Or perhaps he's not learning a thing as he's able to manipulate his way out of studying with her? There are many possibilities but I think parents would have some inkling.
Hi Rachel and thanks for your comment. You raise a very good point about the end goals in this case. Perhaps I am losing focus of it, perhaps I am being too harsh on my mother.
DeleteThe situation I see developing (or rather, the situation that has developed over the years) is a development of an unhealthy codependency: my mother desperately needs this 'educator' role to play to feel valued, my nephew seems to only want to 'study' when my mum is teaching (or so my mother claims, I don't actually believe this). The problem with this relationship is that it is limited: my mother simply cannot handle a secondary school syllabus in this day and age - my nephew has got to be able to learn from other adults, other teachers who can give him the knowledge and skills he needs in order to fend for himself as an adult eventually.
So whilst my mother may wish to see herself as a martyr who has sacrificed so much in terms of time and effort for my nephew's education over the years (no one can take that away from her) - am I the only one to see her set my nephew up ultimately for failure if she has indeed created a situation where she is the only person he will respond positively to?
You see, her paranoia about everyone (including me - like you won't believe the shit she accuses me about) trying to drive a wedge between her and her grandson doesn't help us deal with this issue in a rational manner - oh no. Like what could I possibly gain by driving a wedge between my mother and my nephew? Duh.
Empty nest syndrome hits all parents and some grandparents to varying degrees. Who knows, your mom might take letting go better than her kids expect her to :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe if I am you, I might say, "Hey mom, you are important in your grandson academic performance. But you're not everything. Why are you scarifing one thing everything? Learning isn't just learning from you, he needs to learn from other things like books and people."
ReplyDeleteSomething like that, empathising on that she's not everything and that there's impt areas for your nephew to learn from.
Of course. That's why I say that you need to give her the Sec 4 syllabus. Because in the end, she will have to teach it. And so if she's not ready for it, you must tell her that it will be worse for your nephew to change halfway through the term. Because then he will not have enough time to learn Sec 4 and if she is the only person who can teach him, then he will have no way of making it, and she will damage his chances of succeeding.
ReplyDeleteGive her a task she is incredibly unlikely to succeed at. Let her find her failure herself. Because otherwise she will always think bloody hell they forced me out. And if she manages to succeed, then so much the better; maybe she can teach him.
In other words. Throw her in the deep end.
Perhaps I am assuming the worst of my mother - we'll see if she will force our hand or if she will gracefully step back. I'd hate to have to throw her in the deep end. I may bitch about her on my blog a lot but I am still human after all.
DeleteRemind her that if she has imparted good work and study habits, she has already done your nephew a great service. It's not the knowledge that is paramount, but the habits that will assist in his success. If she continues to ensure he keeps those standards in secondary school, she can consider herself important in his life. Many SIngaporean parents look at the results but not the process that led to the results. A child needs independence and risk-taking to be good active learners. Those skills will take them through university and work. The rote learning and spoon-feedig will lead to disaster in later years. Leave the syllabus to the tutor, and instill in him good learning habits at home and at school.
ReplyDeleteI think if your mother is complaining that you are trying to prevent her from spending time with her grandson, then why not reassure her that even if her grandson is taking tuition elsewhere, there will still be time for her to spend time with him. My impression is that your mother is being too clingy, but it doesn't seem like she is insistent on being the sole educator of her grandson, this probably arose because she still has the 'teacher instinct'. I think it's most likely that she will relent with regards to his secondary school tuition, although it would be a problem if your nephew's PSLE isn't too great.
ReplyDeleteAiyoh Ron, I assure you - no one is trying to stop her from spending as much time as she likes with her grandson, I swear no one in the family even dares to get in her way when it comes to her and her grandson (we all know how she dotes on her grandson and heavens have mercy on the person who dares to get in her way). We don't want to upset her - why would we?
DeleteBut I think it has become an emotional crutch for her, like I said so many times - she is irrational, unreasonable even paranoid in her old age. We're not dealing with a .... reasonable person here (choosing my words carefully): she is difficult to say the least. In the last 10 years or so, we have totally gotten used to her making up crazy bullshit about people around us - unfortunately, my poor sister (the mother of her grandson) bears the brunt of my mother's paranoia and there's little I can do to prevent it from happening as my mum is getting more and more cranky and unreasonable with each passing year. If not for my nephew, I swear their relationship is so bad I doubt they'll be on talking terms at all - but it is my nephew who cements that relationship.
Thus this crazy false accusations have to be seen in the light of the poor relationship my mother has with her own children - she is resorting to accusing us of all kinds of crazy false bullshit (such as driving a wedge between her and her grandson) to get back at us because she doesn't want to deal with the outstanding issues she has with her children. If you think I have mother issues, you should talk to my sister (the mother of my nephew). There is a lot of very passive-aggressive crap going on with my mother I'm afraid.
Looks like this is a rather tough problem to solve. Perhaps your sister may have to decide whether to let your mother continue teaching him or not
DeleteI say doing it too suddenly would cause a shock for her. I propose you get an action plan for the next 12 months like extra enrichment classes or some tuition session for your nephew and slowly ween back your mother's involvement while at the same increasing the involvement of the other party.
ReplyDeleteIt might be tougher for your nephew in the short run but unless you're willing to suddenly cut back 100% on your mother's involvement there is no other better way I can think of.
Hi people - how time flies. My nephew has finished his PSLE and is supposedly now in the happy period between the end of his primary school and doesn't have to start studying again until the new year. Or so I thought.
ReplyDeleteAs I skyped my family today, I realized that my dad has been still continuing to teach my nephew more Chinese in this period and I had to tell my sister in no uncertain terms to tell my dad to back off until the new year starts. Aiyoh. Poor kid. Leave him the hell alone just for this period, until 2016 lah, please lah. How often is the poor kid going to be completely free from his studies?!
Hi LIFT, has your sister considered filing a Personal Protection Order (PPO) against your mum's abusive language? Its a nifty legal document that's useful in getting people to be civil with one another (and only takes an afternoon to file).
ReplyDeleteHi Dace. This article was written 2 years ago and my mother has really mellowed with age lah. She is quite harmless at the end of the day, I don't think there's any ill-will, any malice at all on her part; it's just that sometimes she says stupid things without thinking. I won't go into details but recently I was talking about investing in property with my sister and my mother asked one question throughout the entire conversation and I had to control myself; because I wanted to say, "you've been sitting there all this time but you've not listened to a word we're saying are you?" I don't know why - it's like she cannot even follow a normal conversation any more, that's why we barely talk. What ends up happening is that I speak to my sister, she 'sits in' and 'listens' but doesn't participate and doesn't really take in any of the information.
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