Sharing Jennifer Lopez Twins Joy!

Seems like twins is the latest fashion statement. Jennifer Lopez is on the latest People Magazine cover with her twins, Max and Emme. Her twins boy and girl were born last month on 22 February.
I share Jennifer's twins joys when my twins, Asher and Gwyneth was born on 12 October 2004. It is a indescribable feeling but it is marvellous. You felt incredibly blessed with a girl and a boy born to you at the same time. See Lopez's tired eyes and glowing face and you would probably understand what I meant.

Amazingly, Jennifer Lopez is not the only celebrity having twins. Angelina Jolie is pregnant with twins now; Marcia Cross from "Desperate Housewife" is also happily blessed with her currently 13 month old twins girls. Even Dora The Explorer, one of my twins' favourite TV show, had caught up with the twins' fashion with a twins brother and sister!

Teaching my kids to be offensive to School Bullies

The last time I wrote about my twins being bullied in preschool, a website "Coffee Grounds", primarily discussing about school bullies, picked up my story to relate to his readers. I find that interesting as finally some parents congregate to share and hopefully seek some practical solutions in a common issue that they faced with their young kids.

Perhaps as a first time parent, it amazes me that school bullying could occur at such a young age (my twins were only about three years old when the incident happened). At that time, I was thinking hard if my parenting skills could have gone "hay wired" in anyway? Maybe as parents, we could have entrenched such a strong mindset of good behaviour in our kids that when school bullying occurs, the kids did not know how to deal or react to it.

So recently, my husband and I decided to teach our twins to be on the mildly offensive side to their school bullies should any incident happen again.

"If Jarren beat you again, tell him to stop it, and quickly tell your teacher about it." We role play in front of them a few times. I noticed that my twin son brightened up immediately as if he was armed with a "new weapon". We got both twins to role play with us until they are both confident about saying,"Stop it, stop beating me .....I'll go and tell Teacher Michelle now...".

A week after the role play, my twin son told me cheerfully that he had fend off one of his friend who tried to beat him. I praised him for being brave. He definitely feels more confident in preschool now. It is a stark contrast in comparison to his worried face every morning when I brought him to preschool previously.

Are kids having fun?

In our daily and busy life, we often sent our kids to the childcare centre early in the morning before we went to work and brought them home after work in the evening. The kids followed a routine almost daily for 5 days.

Sometimes, they would ask,"why do I have to go to a childcare, why do I have to take a nap in school, why do you have to work?". These are questions that are easy but also difficult to answer. In this "cat eats dog" society coupled with rising inflation, a dual income in a family is almost ascertain to ensure some quality of life. So talking about kids having fun? Are they? Perhaps on the weekend only where you would bring them to the zoo, parks, excursion for some fun. You can see the delighted faces smiling at you for the whole day.

But I pitied the new generation of preschoolers or young kids. Before they joined the first year of primary school, they have got to recognise words, understand simple arithmetic and science. They need to familiarise with all these to be in the "norm" group and not in the "outstanding" group of students. So some preschoolers' weekends are spent in phonics, brain stimulation, science and language enrichment classes, just to prepare them for a good head start in their life. And these enrichment schools usually emphasize 'learn through play'.

During our generation, we only needed to know the letters of the alphabet and recognising the numbers, who cared about addition, subtraction in arithmetic or spelling of words in English?

So are the kids today having fun? I wonder?

Can happiness be inherited?

Yesterday, I read a very interesting news article on the topic of happiness.

It is discussing about a latest study of nearly 1,000 pairs of identical and non-identical twins in which they found that genes control half the personality traits that make people happy while factors such as relationships, health and careers are responsible for the rest of our well-being.

So it seems like if we inherited the "happy" genes, we may tend to be a happier person. But what if we inherited the "sad" genes? Perhaps then we should "breed happiness thoughts" to these people since young? So that they could have a stronger inner emotional support later in life?

I was intrigued by these thoughts as I observed some difference in the emotional state of my fraternal twins. By the way, what this new study also showed was that the identical twins in a family were very similar in personality and in well-being, and by contrast, the fraternal twins were only around half as similar. I found that strangely true in my fraternal twins.

My twin girl, Gwyneth, tends to be happier and is always in a cheery mood. On the other hand, my twin boy, Asher, tends to be more worried and needs more assurance.

And it looks like this study has given parents a new task of "moulding" the other half of the children's happiness regardless if they inherited the "happy" or "sad" genes. Perhaps more so in the child who inherited the "sad" genes?

Read article:
"Happiness can be inherited, research finds".

Comic Strip on Preschool Children

Although the comic is about a five year old boy who has a blog where he shares his life and thoughts to the world, the scenario portrayed here actually happened to my three and a half year old boy who is in preschool.

I totally had a good laugh, it's really what happened to my kid who sometimes find excuses not to go to school!

School Bullies in Preschool?

Think that school bullying will never happen to preschoolers?

My twin son just told me last night before he slept,"Mommy, Jarren used a duster to hit on my head.....and also on Gwyneth (his twin sister)." He was also showing the action of the duster hitting his forehead concurrently.

I asked him immediately what his reaction was. He said he had told his teacher and Jarren, his preschool friend, got a "scolding". I commended that he did the right thing and should inform the teacher should such incidents happen again.

In anyway, this is not the first incident since the twins joined the preschool. End of last year, both of them were beaten (on the chest and face) by a bigger size boy in their class, though they were not physically hurt. Apparently, another boy in that class had joined the action, thinking that it was fun. It went on for about two weeks even after my twins "complained" to the teacher and both of them started to develop a fear for school. I quickly spoke to the principal and teacher regarding the bullies "beating" incidence and my then twin toddlers' phobia about school. I think the preschool realised how serious the "bullying" was and not just toddlers or young kids messing around with gentle fight (my kids did not even fight back!). The preschool separated them into different classes this year, counselled both "bullies" and spoke to their parents about the beating incidents. That was when my twins started to re-settle into preschool life; but they remembered that incident and sometimes would still talk to me about it.

Sometimes, as a desperate mommy, I wish that my twins are the school bullies instead of being bullied; I wish that I could tell the twins that if the bullies hit you, hit them back instead of just standing there; I wish I could tell those young bullies off directly; and I also wish I could confront the parents of these bullies. But they were just desperate wishes to protect your own kids and everybody knew that they could never be deployed in the civilised world.

I suppose school bullying is what the twins got to manage in many years to come in their school life.

Terrible Twos' Comic

terrible twos The above comic strip is done by Australian cartoonist John Cook.

I thought it was really funny and look like one of the many challenges that parents faced in raising a toddler. It got me laughing......at least.....what about you?