How to handle PSLE anxiety
We are in the month of June, with just about three months to go before the all-important PSLE for our Primary Six students. The stakes are still viewed as high, even with the government’s efforts in recent years to reduce an unhealthy emphasis on academic results. Some students may have entered the start of the year raring […]
How to get children to do tasks and follow routines (2-6 yrs)
“My child refused to do anything I asked him to do!” “Why can’t my child follow routines?” “These are tasks my child can do in school, but why not at home?” If you are also a parent with young children at home, I am sure you find these complaints very familiar. As a mother, I can […]
Mini Quiz On Parenting Styles
What would you do in the following situations? 1) You pick your 5 yr old son from school. The teacher informed you that he had taken a toy that other children wanted to play with and hidden it under a mat, so no one else could find it. The teacher managed to find it after much […]
Do I need depression counselling?
Life has its ups and downs for all of us. Things happen, people change and circumstances evolve over time. We do our best to deal with it, but it is possible to feel overwhelmed by it all and feel ‘depressed’. But does feeling depressed mean you have depression? What is ‘depression’? Google around and you […]
On rewarding children
Many parents and educators are well aware of the concept of rewarding children as a positive reinforcement strategy, i.e. when the child has done something good that you wish to encourage, you reward him/her. It can work remarkably well for young children between 3 to 10 yrs of age, and so this is the age group I […]
How to make my child happier?
I was chatting with someone who lamented sadly to me one day, “I asked my son to rate his happiness on a scale of 1 to 10, and he said 4. Reasons were – always getting scolded, coping with school is so hard… And I just felt that childhood should not be one big, long […]
I don’t know what I can do or say to somebody who has just experienced the loss of a loved one?
A friend asked this question when she found out that an ex-classmate’s spouse had died from an unfortunate accident at home. Know that people show their grief in different ways. How much they show it does not necessarily equate to their level of grief or sorrow. You would not want to make a faux pas […]
How do I approach a difficult family conversation?
I know a family who is trying to build a collective effort in caring for one of their family members, an elderly person suffering from dementia. As the elderly person is unmarried and childless, it is one of her nephews who is trying to organise an extended family meeting to discuss caregiving plans for her, […]
Our family has never been the type to say ‘I love you’ or to show physical affection. Now that my child is turning into a teenager, our relationship feels cold and distant. What should I do?
Know that there are many ways to show love and concern. While it is perfectly fine not to physically express your affection, it is not OK if you only keep all the love in your heart. Love and concern for someone needs to be expressed outwardly in some way, in order for the person to […]