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?

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!

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?