On 28 th March 2007 , the ParentsInSync 2007 workshop was organized for all Sec 1 parents. Prior to this workshop, all our sec one girls had gone through the workshop on “ Dealing with Change”
The objectives of this workshop were :
For parents to gel as a group to form a support network.
- Gain an awareness of the challenges Secondary 1 students face today with changes in their school life and areas to support your child.
Despite our busy schedule, some of us took time to attend this workshop. We found that it was indeed fruitful.
- One of the things we were asked to do was to share one thing about our daughter which we are proud of and one thing we are concerned about. Many of us took a while to pick one thing that we are proud of but found it easy to list the things we are concerned about our daughters. We tend to be overly concerned about our children so much that we dictate to them the path which we want them to take rather than the path they may be more interested in. Some of us may have unconsciously pushed our children to fulfill our dreams.
- Our facilitator, Juliana, who has five children, shared with us her experiences of her initial year as a mother. She has learnt over the years to let the kids decide what they want to learn as they will be able to pick it up faster when they have the interest. Today, even with five children, Juliana spends $140 per month on Chinese tuition for only one of her children and all her children are doing well.
- During this workshop, feedback from the recent students’ workshop on “Dealing with Change” was also shared. The parents’ facilitators shared how girls were required to account for the time they spent on various activities. We noticed that most of them ended up having as much as 36 hours of activities. They were then taught how to prioritize and review the activities which are essential and our girls were able to do so. Knowing that they have gone through this, I personally feel that we as parents can also reinforce them by setting good examples like prioritizing our daily activities and managing our time. God is very fair in that every one of us whether young or old has the same 24 hours a day to do what we want. Hence, what is really important is how we optimize our time usage to achieve our goals.
There are indeed many more takeaways from the workshop. I highly encourage all parents to attend such workshops as we can reinforce what our daughters have learnt and network with other parents for they may probably be facing the same challenges too. Why not share it out as there may be practical solutions to learn from each other too?
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