Multilingual Experiment: the 5th Year Update

FINE MOTOR & COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Jumbo Jet, version 295

Our dear Ju will be 5 years old in a few months. He's asking me often, when he will have his birthday (May), which month are we now (January), and whether tomorrow will be February (no) and so on.

A child appears to have a nebulous sense of time until that magic moment that he figures out that there are 60 seconds to a minute and that when you say "10 minutes" it could actually mean 30 or 1 (well, many Singaporeans seem to think that saying 10 minutes will be understood by the other waiting party as 30 or more so who am I to talk). 

Acrylic on canvas "6 Trains", 2016

But apart from time, Ju has made leaps and bounds in so many areas of development that it's a real toughie to start this post! You can see from his latest pictures that he is something of a minor prodigy when it comes to drawing. If my memory serves me well, he started asking for drawings of trains at 2.5 years and since then he's been drawing non stop. I have enough drawing supplies to stock a small kindergarten. Ju pays very close attention to detail and for better or worse, he's a perfectionist. This means tantrums when he (or we!) doesn't get a particular turbine or cockpit done just right. Teaching him to manage his frustration with his perceived "imperfections" has been one of the main challenges since age 4. 

Christmas present for Oma, 2015.

While Ju can and likes to produce detailed and accurately-represented drawings, these are limited to his two favourite subjects: aeroplanes and trains. With some help from me, he learnt to include mountains, clouds and landscape features but not much else. It is an epic struggle to get him to add people in the trains much less anywhere in the picture. His forte: a train entering or exiting a tunnel. Ask him where the passengers are and he's got a good answer ready: "This train is going to the depot, everyone has alighted at the last station!" We are working on this. 

Ju's cognitive development is normal and his fine and gross motor abilities are developing very well. Since moving to Kuala Lumpur and transitioning to his new international school, Ju has made many friends and learnt to swim, play football, and most importantly read. The British national curriculum for the Early Years introduces phonics and early reading at age 4-5, known as the Reception year. This is early compared to the western European countries. In Germany there is no introduction to reading or even any formal education until Grade One (age 6). After 4 months of phonics training, Ju can now read simple sentences. The reading programme at his school is impressive and the children who finish Reception are usually literate by then and can spell. I'll devote a separate post on Literacy when I talk about school!

SPEECH AND COMMUNICATION

In my last update, Ju was 2 years of age and just starting to speak. In the last 2 and a half years, his speech has exploded exponentially in ALL THREE LANGUAGES. I cannot say this more emphatically and I feel a lovely kind of proud vindication every time I stop to wonder at how he has made it to this point!

People who discover that he speaks and understands German, Mandarin and English never cease to be amazed by Ju's ability. What is otherwise a normal day for him becomes an amazing thing to others watching him switch flawlessly back and forth from Mandarin Chinese to German in a conversation amongst him, his father and me. Family members are now used to Ju's categorical refusal to mix languages. He might be describing his train system to his Oma and Opa in German and in the next minute he would look up and inform me in Mandarin that Opa was driving the train wrongly. The only time he mixes in a word in the other language is if he doesn't know it in the current language. For example, "Mama, shen me shi Zug Schienen?" (Mama, what is "Zug Schienen" in Chinese?) He would actually ask for the term in Chinese if he needs to use it. Strangely, if he does not know how to translate a sentence to the other language, or if he doesn't want to take the effort, he prefers to say "I don't know" or "it's a surprise!" which is a euphemism for "I don't want to say". For instance:

Ju: 妈妈,今天我们在游泳池里跳进水里,然后浅下去地上抓一个东西!

(Mama, today in the pool we all jumped in and dived to the floor to pick something up!)

Oma: Julien, was hast du zu Mama erzalt? (Julien, what did you say to Mama?)

Ju: Ein uberraschung.... (a surprise....)

Of course, if you were constantly asked to translate what you just said, you wouldn't want to either, especially if you were 4 years old and had more interesting things to do! In fact Ju separates the languages so clearly amongst people that he would rather say nothing than speak the "wrong" language in front of the "wrong" person.

For instance, he speaks only in Mandarin with his friend and neighbour, Mia, who is Chinese. Conversation proceeds normally with Chinese speakers (Mia's parents and myself) but if Daniel enters the picture and everyone switches to English, Ju will not use English at all. He will answer Daniel exclusively in German. 

In another example, Ju will not speak any English at school in my presence. Getting him to say even a simple "Hello" or "Good morning" to the teacher feels as painful as pulling teeth if I were standing next to him. Mind you, he speaks English just fine, I have video footage from school to prove it. In fact he speaks English with a crisp German accent that is hilarious. He says "Ool of them" instead of "All (Orl, as locals like to drawl) of them" and he stretches out his "here" with "heeya" like you would say the German "hier".  

Strangely, Mandarin tones have not messed up his English or German tones. Ju maintains German and English closely to the native tones. Because German and English are much more monotonous compared to Chinese, Singaporean and Malaysian English has a sing-song quality that matches our Chinese tones, much like how a Hong Konger who is bilingual would speak. My early theory to explain this had been that simultaneous bilingual speakers like Singaporeans and perhaps Hong Kongers who learnt both languages at the same time tend to apply the Mandarin or Cantonese tones to English. This would be more pronounced in later generations who are taught English by non-native speakers and who grow up communicating with Singaporean parents who already spoke more tonal English, or "Singlish" as we call it, replete with lah's and lor's! 

The reason Ju does not speak in the distinctive "Singlish" manner could be down to two crucial factors: 1) I very rarely communicate in English with him and 2) His only English communication in the last 2 years have been primarily in international school where teachers are either British or European. 

First, English in the home is only spoken between Daniel and me, the parents. In terms of air time, Ju has had very little of it compared to the amount he hears in school mainly because Daniel is home after 7pm and Ju goes to bed at 7.30pm. In Brussels, he heard even less English spoken by us because Daniel only came home on weekends from Germany where he was working. Don't get me wrong! I am not in the least ashamed of my Singapore accent, hell, I would be the last person from whom you will hear a fake American or British accent. These days I inject a lot more English when I speak to Ju, but specifically only in cases for scolding or in an emergency like "Get down from there right now or you're going to break a leg!". But since Ju is way past the point for mixing languages, he never ever replies in English. 

Second, English communication for Ju is restricted to a clear social setting: school. Since age 2.5, he had gone to an English nursery in Brussels, then an English international school until he turned 4. His nanny who took care of him between the weekday hours of 3.30 and 7pm was Polish and so they communicated in English. (Interestingly, he hardly spoke to his nanny in my presence as he would be forced to use English! So I would often duck out of the room and spy on them talking just to hear Ju speak in English) After moving to Malaysia, we continued Ju's education in a British international school where he gets all instruction in English and 3 hours of Chinese lessons per week as his foreign language. 

The earlier Singlish influences in Singapore (between birth and age 2.5) were arguably minimal. He had begun basic utterances in English before moving to Belgium, but they were rudimentary and he was far from fluent. The video footage I have show a definite predisposition to Singlish tones, but this was to be expected as he spent close to 12 hours per week day primarily with my parents while we were working full time. 

It does sound rather bizarre for a parent to say that she has no idea how her kid sounds when speaking English. But this is our daily reality. Our son absolutely refuses to use anything but Mandarin and German in our presence. You can imagine the problems we have getting him to do his required reading practice at home. But here's the funny part: Ju has no issues accepting us reading to him in English, but it is an insult to his sensibilities if you expect him to read to us in English. 

Suffice it to say, our multilingual experiment has produced results far exceeding our expectations at the start, and it has also produced unintended consequences that we are just learning to deal with!

Away From The Toxic Playground

Of course I'm talking about Singapore, lah!

After giving much thought to the content of my very first post after a 2 year hiatus from writing anything else besides internal emails and shopping lists, I've decided to talk about the answer to a question that I've been asked by several people: What has changed?

I have changed.

FROM TOXIC PLAYGROUND TO TOXIC REALITY

To be sure, no one remains definitively the same from moment to moment, or year to year for you skeptics out there. Imagine an emotionally high-strung person (such as myself), we swing from mood to mood in a single morning, and emotions, which drive decision-making, create the multiple realities that we experience in a single day. I might be calmly drinking my coffee and having breakfast with Ju thinking what a blissful time I am having despite being a weekday single Mum (more on this below); 15 minutes later I am sitting in my car stuck in a gridlock between my apartment and Ju's school (it is a 4 minute drive) cursing the Brussels traffic system, the gold standard of Belgian  government inefficiency. 

Chateau de la Hulpe, Autumn 2014

When people in Kuala Lumpur sympathise with me for having moved here from Brussels, I inform them wryly -- to looks of astonishment and disbelief -- that life in Malaysia is not much worse than that in Belgium. The same uncontrollable traffic snarls, the same ISIS types lurking in the vicinity, in fact the weather here is preferable and with the lower cost of living I get more bang for my buck. 

Daniel thinks that when your expectations are not matched by reality, your subjective judgment of how good a place is to live in fares more poorly. This is especially true for Brussels, a place most people mistakenly imagine as a First World city. Being included in the same continent as Germany, I am sorry to say, does not help foreign visitors at all when it comes to first impressions. The phrases "rude shock", and "utter disappointment" sum up one's experience more aptly, particularly if one has to live there. In fact I have never seen my former boss show more emotion than his sighs of resignation when he is talking about the Belgian state. In fact my boss had about a total of 6 facial expressions and 4 of them were of resignation with how things were run over there. Oh, one is eye-rolling, we did a lot of that in Brussels. No wonder Singapore is warmly labelled "Asia for Beginners" by Western visitors. The opposite logic holds true for Singapore and Southeast Asia. 

But this isn't a smackdown of Brussels, I've done enough of that on Facebook and with friends over the last almost 2 years living there. Away from the toxic playground of Singapore (also poorly-nicknamed "Disneyland with the death penalty"), I was able to think about ideas I had long taken for granted living in one place for over 30 years. Living in Brussels then Kuala Lumpur, I was forced to examine my ethnocentric views* and most important of all, take stock of my own flaws. 

I changed in small and monumental ways. I had to make changes to my beliefs, and then to my behaviour, which were really adaptive responses to the external stimuli that I was experiencing and the challenges that threw me off kilter. It was not only about the places we were in. It was about the choices we made and the attitudes we chose to use in making our choices. Singapore feels toxic because of the many taken-for-granted axioms that its citizens go around with about the country, which can be summed up in the following adjectives: convenient, safe, orderly, efficient, predictable, comfortable. Away from these safety nets and devoid of familiar friends and family, one has to evolve a new set of mechanisms with which to manage the tasks of daily life. You never really get to grow in your thoughts and beliefs because they are hardly ever challenged in the uber-comfort zone that's Singapore.

SLOWING DOWN

I realised that the biggest gain I had made away from the sanctuary of a well-planned state was to Slow Down. This was as much an adaptive response (because it is necessary when everything shuts down on a Sunday, your entire staff are out the door at 5 sharp every day, and the check-out counters at every Carrefour are designed for the patience of people aged 50 and over) as it was a personal choice.

I slowed down when it came to Getting Things Done. First discovery -- I could be as efficient as I wanted, finish as much as I could, but I couldn't get anyone else to work on my time schedule or fit themselves into my deadlines. Getting things done depends entirely on the 10 or so people you rely on to finish the damn task. Second discovery -- it's not about how quickly you get it done, it's how many mistakes you avoided. We love being the fastest and the first in Singapore don't we? But when things seriously cock up, thumbs get stuck up asses and fingers pointed more quickly than it took to build the Marina Bay Sands. I had to really push out the Big Picture Ending in many cases in order to  zoom into the tiny details we all hate to "waste time" over. I had to oversee and check on the people who were helping me (in other words "supervise") just to prevent little preventable errors. It could be a matter of minutes scanning through a quotation and finding a small detail in calculation (that blew up into a long and costly battle 2 months later); or reading a 5 page contract for a line that would come back to bite you. It would be easy blaming the staff for not doing their due diligence, an excuse we like to trot out, but as we also say, it was my neck on the chopping block. 

Koblenz, Spring 2014

I slowed down to live life. No, there were not that many roses to smell (nor time to smell them) on the dirty, dog-poo littered streets of Brussels, but Europeans are generally happier in large-scale surveys compared to us islanders, and there's a good reason for it. Besides forming the new habit of sorting my trash (I actually found it therapeutic to sort my garbage into the 3 trashcans in my kitchen) and rushing for shopping on Saturday before the supermarkets closed, we learnt to use those sacred weekends to do something other than retail shopping and eating at new restaurants. It was enjoyable to simply bask under a rare spring sun on the grass of the Bois de la Cambre (they let their dogs shit everywhere except the park) while Ju cycled along the Sunday car-free lanes that wind through the expansive park in the middle of the city. We could spend a slow morning at one of the outdoor markets, meandering through the stalls buying our supply of French saucissons (dried sausages), olives and my favourite fresh chicken innards, or an afternoon at Brussels' popular Tram Museum riding a vintage tram through the woods of Terveuren. 

Brugges, Autumn 2014

Oh yes, Europe can be an inefficient mess with most  of the bureaucracy (wait till you hear how I dealt with my export taxes on my car), but it doesn't cost much to be happy, if your idea of happiness is the simple joy of watching your kid build a sandcastle, eat an ice cream or take walks through old cobblestone streets and sip wine in the evenings as the sun set at bedtime in summer. Since we had no babysitter, we took Ju with us everywhere. Ju at 3 and a half years could sit quietly at a restaurant through dinner without much drama. 

I slowed down most of all in the way I viewed the world and its inhabitants. I had been cussing and swearing in frustration while driving my entire adult life. After moving to Belgium and Malaysia, I wondered why on earth I had found it necessary to complain about Singapore roads and traffic. There IS NO TRAFFIC in Singapore. What you would call a jam is a minor congestion in KL or Brussels. While the proportion of idiots driving in KL is certainly larger than that in Singapore (by simple fact that there is no pricing control on automobiles or prohibitive road-use taxes in Malaysia), the level of road courtesy here is miles apart from that found in Singapore. In fact I would go so far as to say you should not expect any sort of courtesy from Singapore drivers. It's as if the rat race which they view as symbolic of their lives permeates the manner in which they react to those who jostle with them on the roads. Malaysians are terribly patient about things they cannot change: rush hour congestion, people cutting into their queue and taxi-drivers who mostly drive as if they are drunk or high on drugs. I had to learn the same. There is no other way to live without going insane in KL. 

MAKING CHOICES

The biggest change I had to make was to decide what kind of mother and employee I wanted to be. Daniel had taken a job that moved him to Hamburg so I was home alone with Ju on weekdays while Daniel would visit us on weekends from Germany. Even with a part-time nanny who looked after Ju after school till I got home, it was never lost on me how I was juggling two roles by myself and how heavy this responsibility was. While every one of my Singaporean colleagues (who were childless) worked past 7 or 8pm, I left at 6pm, 6.30pm latest every day to go home to my son. In Singapore, I hardly ever worked late even with Daniel around all the time, but in Brussels I was Ju's only constant parent most days and I simply could not arrange my son around my workload, which was in fact endless. I often drove three hours with Ju on weekends over the border to Germany so he could spend time with the grandparents or Daniel when he was in the western areas of Stuttgart or Freiburg. Planning our family meetings became as normal as planning my calendar of work events. It was not normal, and the toll only showed itself when Daniel was offered a posting to Malaysia. 

And so here I am now, fast forwarding to the present. I no longer work for my previous company, a choice I didn't make without pretty heavy soul searching. The time away in Brussels gave me an insight into changing the way I used to think and behave, about time, about parenting, about what quality of life means. And the time now in Kuala Lumpur has given me a much-needed pause to reflect upon the direction of my future: how my thoughts have changed, how I choose and decide on a daily basis, be it my behaviour, my emotions or my health. It is ironic that you feel your responsibility most acutely only when you have ultimate freedom with which to use your time each day. 

Hamburg, Summer 2014

You will have  probably noticed that I have dealt quite effectively with my decision to quit my job. My current vocation? On Sabbatical. One of the most toxic parts of life as a Singaporean is the norm that one needs to label how one spends her hours between 9 and 5. I certainly do not Stay At Home even though I am only called "Mum" now rather than "Boss". After all that I have gone through, I can safely say that the people who couldn't understand my decision and who asked me the rather condescending "are you just going to be a full time mum?" might never see a perspective beyond their prescribed roles within their organization or chosen profession. 

Finally, I could describe my life now as something akin to recovery in a mental health spa retreat. While Ju is in school, I am doing the things that fulfil only the needs of my own physical and mental health: swimming, reading, playing the piano, thinking. Yes, it sounds like a luxury only the moderately well-off might afford, but it's not true.  Daniel and most Type A personalities, even many of the Type Bs, who likely only see the inside of a swimming pool while on holiday in Bali would find my life now quite aversive ("but, but...what do you DO with your time?!"). 

We all have to do the same things with our limited time -- learn something new and be a better person (oops, if you disagreed with that, then just skip to the end of the paragraph). Making a living, carving out your career, bringing up your children or taking care of your parents,  finding self-fulfilment, these are choices that are laced with preferences, mostly culture bound to where you grew up and formed most of your identity. At their most fundamental, they mean nothing more than or as much as the next person's choice. How toxic you wish each aspect of life to be depends on the importance you place on a choice. I guess Singapore is about as toxic as the next city, the next country. We each create the reality that we are a part of and the meaning that's in it. It wasn't easy digging myself out of my old attitudes and changing my view of the world. 

Life is about as meaningful as you want it to be, whether you're in Singapore, Europe, Malaysia, being gainfully employed or bumming like a low-maintenance tai-tai. 

*  *  *  *  *

*Ethnocentrism refers to the belief in the superiority of one's own culture or cultural practices and beliefs. It also describes the negative appraisal of foreign cultures against the yardstick of one's own.

Moving To Belgium

The title says it all. When I told our close friends C and G that we had something to announce, they sighed with disappointment when I disclaimed right away of any pregnancy. It's better than another baby, you guys! I protested. We're moving to Europe!

Indeed it came as a complete surprise when my company offered me the posting to Brussels, Belgium. I had previously declined an offer because Ju had been, in my opinion, too young at the time. He will be almost 2 and a half when we leave Singapore, his potty training is coming along very well and most important, Brussels is only a 3 hour drive from Dan's parents in Germany. The fact that Dan is an EU citizen and can work in Brussels sealed the deal. 

My job certainly grinds all plans for a second child to a screeching halt. I will have maternity benefits even while overseas, mind you, but it is not entirely feasible to take off for 4 months at a go for reasons that are internal to my organization and shall remain undisclosed. I shall go so far as to say that as an employee, I take my job responsibilities seriously enough that I would not put my self-interests before my work unconditionally. This decision is not entirely for fear of organizational disapproval which might affect my career prospects, though as a full time working mother, it's always on my mind. No, the reason is more pragmatic: adjusting to a completely different job in a vastly different culture (my operating language will be French) will demand all my wits and energy in the first year. There is also a young child to mind in terms of his childcare and schooling needs, as well as a household to co-manage on top of a full-time job.

So it isn't surprising that my first retort when my friends exclaim their well-wishes for our new expatriate life in Europe is not that of unfettered agreement but of cautious restraint. I'm not a complete pessimist but I have enough cynical realism to put a lid on the illusions of grandeur that some others might feel about getting an opportunity such as this. When I think of the next couple of years, I don't immediately see a life of fun away from home, or see the posting as an extended holiday. 

I consider it a great professional challenge -- working in French (a language I thought I had escaped for good after university), juggling multiple management responsibilities for the first time -- and also a personal challenge. For the first time as a working parent, I would be without constant and convenient support from family members; I will not have part-time help (which I use now) to do the chores that neither Dan or I want to do. My husband is giving up a good career in Singapore to come with me and to support our family, something that many can agree is hardly an easy decision for any male to make in any modern patriarchal society. Finally, I will have to be responsible for separating Ju from his grandparents, a decision that might not have grave implications for Ju now, but would definitely tear at my parents' heartstrings, having become used to having him in their lives. 

In making this decision to accept my posting, Dan and I had discussed at length how we would manage all of the above, and given the unhappy fact that we would have to do it in the dead of winter next January. Yet the decision came easily because of Dan's supportiveness of this step (there will be no financial disadvantage) and our proximity to his parents even if the distance is akin to driving from here to Malacca which is not far really, by European standards. Another major pull factor is the fact that Ju will not have to undergo the local school system since we intend to enrol him in the German international school there (I have written about my disapproval of our school system elsewhere in this blog). We will have to balance this advantage with the loss of formal Chinese education but this is a trade off I am willing to make. We will be keeping up OPOL (me in Chinese) with Ju and I will look for Chinese weekend class for him once he is 3 or 4. Mind you, this is not like the "TUITION" that the kids in Singapore get in order to keep up with their school lessons. It is to give Ju very basic exposure to Mandarin Chinese in a city that speaks mainly French and Dutch.

Another push factor for me is that of self actualization, something I think not all women are able to experience once they become mothers and have to make compromises in their career in favour of their role as mothers. I would like Ju to see in his own Mum, the example of a woman who is capable, strong and successful in spite of her competing demands in her family role. I would also like for him to see in his Dad the example of a man who chose an equal rather than an inferior, a man who is able and willing to sacrifice his short term self-interests (his career and financial independence) in support of his wife's opportunity and career. In short, I would like Ju to grow up in a family that sets its own rules and boundaries despite the norms of a society that limit and stereotype the roles of the man and woman. I am certainly not aiming as high as Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) expects of working women nor am I putting myself in her league, but I think Ms Sandberg's message is one that ALL women who want more for themselves than to depend on a man needs to hear and seriously contemplate.

Life isn't a walk in the park, and we should not expect it to be one! I count my blessings every day for all that I have worked for and everything that was dished to me by the stroke of luck and good fortune: a good husband and partner, a healthy and happy child and supportive parents and relatives. Oh yeah, and a good brain that works fairly well! It's all you can hold on to really, when you choose to do something that takes you out of the zone you've been so comfortable in, and I admit, I have grown too comfortable in Singapore and am ready to be jolted awake again.

I will continue to blog about this tragi-comedy called life and parenting Julien The Two Year Old Terror since I love writing. But I hope to bring a little more to the table now, as I take our journey on to Belgium. Stay tuned for more!

Project Baby: The 24th Month Update

 I am happy to announce that Ju is almost at his 2 year mark, having crossed his 23rd month with a slew of new tricks, tantrums and toys. He has also learnt to pose for the camera, as can be seen below.

Juju at 23 months

Communication 

The last couple of months had me slightly worried as Ju still didn't say much more than the occasional Mama and Papa. We weren't sure if he had been referring to us specifically, i.e. actively communicating with intention or merely vocalising at random. Since the 23rd month I think, his verbal development seemed to take off steadily. He can now identify and address the following people: Opa (A-pa), Oma (Ee-pee, don't ask me to explain this one), Poh Poh, Gong Gong (Doh-doh), Yi-Yi, Uncle Tobi (Bi Bi) and Uncle Chrissy (Ee-chee). He addresses himself as Chu-chu in a barely audible mumble. He not only picks out people accurately in photographs, he has learnt to associate traits with certain people, particularly his Oma and Opa. For example, when Dan asks him in German who will pick him up at Frankfurt Airport in May, he says "A-pa", and when prompted "Who else?" he replies "Ee-pee". And when he wakes up in the middle of the night and notices that Dan is not around, he shouts "PAAA". He also greets us at the door with loud yelps of Pa and Ma when we go get him after work. It's really the best part of our day.

With Oma and Opa

Certain people have become part of his long term memory, or maybe his awareness of people in his everyday life has simply developed. When we drive him to my Mum's in the morning, he would sometimes say "Poh Poh" as we turn into the driveway. He revels in noticing things in every day life that correspond with the pictures in his book. For example, he makes a big deal each time we drive past the Esso petrol station because he recognises the petrol pumps. We have to name the pumps before he's satisfied. The same goes for the moon, the sun (setting and rising), balloons (naturally) and of particular passion, the train. Ju starts making the choo-choo action with his arms when he sees the MRT tracks and gets upset when there is no train in sight. His expressive vocabulary now includes "nana" (banana), "ya" (Chinese "ya zi" for duck), "mei mei" (Chinese "cao mei" for strawberry) and "mi mi" (German "milch" for milk).This week, he started to say "apple".

I tested his phonetic ability with the ABCs, and made an astounding discovery: Ju can pronounce A, B, but not C, D, E, not F, G (sounds like chii), not H, I, J, K, L, he does an excellent M, N, O, P but no Q. He can do an impression of R (sounds like Aaaaarrrr!), no S but he can do T. No U, V, W but an impression of X ("icks"), no Y or Z. His phonetic ability corresponds with the words and sounds he is able to utter.

Play

Ju cooks for Doggy (background)

Ju's raison d'etre is play. I've taken him out of his playgroup as it seemed to be doing more harm than good since they did a lot more teaching than playing. Ju hated being kept 1.5 hours in a small space with 4 other toddlers he had no interest in (the same held for the other toddlers). Now he spends his days walking to the playground for his daily exercise and then playing with his toys at home. He gets some time in the backyard in the afternoon to do his favourite activity -- watering the plants. Then he sometimes gets a bike ride with Grandpa to the beach to feed the turtles. In the evening back home with us, he plays with his kitchenette or reads with us. I'm not too concerned about his social development with the absence of a school environment as I mentioned before, and this month I can say there is nothing to be concerned about. Ju appears to be as people-oriented as the next 2 year old. He shows some interest in other children when they are engaged in a fun activity he would like to partake in (like tricycles and bobby cars) and responds positively when I talk about Gleb and Kyra, the Ukrainian kids next door. Last weekend, I asked Ju if we could give one of his toys to Gleb (14 months). I had placed the toy in a paper bag but he reached in and pulled it out, then pointed at himself. At first I thought Ju meant that the toy was his. But then he pointed at the door and I realised that he wanted to give it to Gleb. So we went next door for a visit. 

Teddy bear gets to eat

Ju is also fully into imaginative play now. He is quick on the uptake and imitates as soon as he is shown the first time. He loves his kitchenette and one day after he met a dog drinking out of a dish of water for the first time, he figured that animals, like humans, ate too. I am barely beginning to appreciate the wonder that it the toddler's imagination. The picture on the left was taken 2 months ago at a cafe. Ju yelled for the bear the moment its owner, a 4 year old girl, sat down at the adjacent table. I suppose he is still gender-indifferent. The girl reluctantly loaned her bear to Ju, who proceeded to pay attentive care to it, sitting it next to him and offering it spoonfuls of pretend-food. It was as endearing as it was painful to pry the bear away from Ju when it was time to leave.

Toilet Training

Last time I talked about potty training, Ju was not doing much in his potty as yet. He is now able to do his pee-pee 4 out of 5 times he's forced to sit there. Ju HATES the potty. His actual need to pee corresponds to the intensity of his resistance to it. The more pee he has to let go, the more he would protest, kick and yell. We now have a routine: pee before bedtime, after his nap and when he wakes (if he isn't still sleeping when we leave the house in the morning). I have to use various strategies of carrot and stick -- more sticks and threats -- to get him to comply, but most of the time, it works. I was and still am wary about traumatising him with premature potty-training, but it appears from observation that Ju resists for the sake of resistance rather than aversion to toilet training. If he is made to do it with enough regularity, his diaper stays quite dry. But he has not developed the inclination to tell us in advance of a pee, since his natural instinct is to do it in the diaper. Poos are almost always done in a fresh diaper. We have taken to spelling the word "Potty" so that he will not hear us discussing our plans and throw a fit to pre-empt us. I admit that it's a little undignified to pounce on a toddler and yank down his diaper whenever we want him to pee, but we've tried telling him nicely that it's time for the potty and all it's gotten us (every time) is a loud rebuke or a chase around the room.We have great moments though, like when Ju does a pee, he starts to clap his hands and say "Yay"! It's hard not to break into a grin and applaud with him.

Teeth brushing is turning into less of a civilisation battle at the sink every evening. I gave Ju one of his old water bottles minus the top part with the straw. It's a bright, colourful blue and I let him play with it with the faucet on. It gets me the 15 to 20 seconds I need to brush his teeth. He has also learnt to rinse and spit although sometimes he swallows just to annoy us. I can empathise with his 2 year old point of view: life is such an endless stream of play possibilities, why stop at all to pee and brush his teeth?

Look Ma! Fish!

The Wheels On The Bus

Finally, Ju has joined the ranks of the common folk -- iPhone addiction. We promised ourselves that we would NOT give it to him, having tsk-tsked at every family at every restaurant and food court table we've seen who were absorbed in their individual gadgets. But Youtube really has its uses and Ju gets to watch 10 minutes tops of it each day. I let him watch Wheels On The Bus (a real winner, you can't go wrong with this one) animated, he still enjoys Lisitsa on the piano doing the Butterfly Etude and two others with animated trains and balloons. The guy can scroll down my phone and start the videos he wants on his own! He's really from the generation of clicks and scrolls. I've taken to removing my phone from its cover (it's a distinctive one with white polka dots on black) when I want to use it for a while without Ju whining and moaning for the Wheels On The Bus. It's more effective than telling him the battery's flat (he understands the concept of charging batteries) since I myself would like to use it.

Last month, we took Ju to the underwater aquarium. It was a real an eye opener for him. I would have enjoyed it half as much as he if we didn't have to squeeze through it with a million other visitors. And if we hadn't forgotten to bring his shoes. Still, it was all worth getting to see him point and giggle with wonder at the scores of stuff zipping around in all manners of shapes and colours. Toddlerhood at its best. Soon he will be two -- my baby is becoming a boy!

The 19th Month Update & Year-in-review

I've somehow lapsed a little on the updates, and there's a good reason -- okay, it's not that good a reason, but nevertheless -- Working Parenting. If 2012 has taught be anything, it's how to prioritise and backburn. Hey, no matter which sort of world you inhabit: elitist, autocratic, wartorn, there is one thing that makes all men and women equal: time. We all only have 24 hours to get our shit done each day, be it parenting, working, ruling the country or ruining it. This second year has been much about Keeping Up With Ju, and he's not even two.

Juju The Explorer

Ju has gone from a relatively quiet (in terms of verbosity) and active infant to a relatively loud and hyperactive toddler. There is not an ounce of stillness or equanimity in this boy. It is as if in his mind's eye, his life is an endless business of exploration from 7am to bedtime at 8pm. He only stops moving when he is strapped into his carseat or in his stroller. And even then, nothing outside the window escapes his curious attention. His eye for the smallest detail like a grain of rice amid the warzone of toys on the floor baffles us all. Like all humans unsaddled by the weight of norms and logic, he makes his own rules and ignores all common sense, especially when it comes to splashing in puddles.

Juju The Comedian

At 6 months, little sparks of what looked like his sense of humour forecasted what might come. At 19 months, I find myself puzzling over which genetic input from both our families contributed to his wicked humour. Last night, as I was removing my contact lenses (and hence engaged at the sink), Ju decided to play a trick on me from where he lay on my bed. He started crying out in alarm -- Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! -- and from my vantage point, he looked like he was about to topple face down over the side of the bed as half his body was over the edge. With two fingers in my right eye, I yelled at him to get back on the bed. "Ahhhhhh!", he shouted. I rushed over to the bed and as I tried to prevent him from slipping over, he started laughing like a hyena. The funniest thing was he repeated his prank and screamed with laughter whenever I rushed over to "rescue" him. He knows exactly how to get your attention by doing precisely what he knows you don't want him to do, and he delights in the remonstrations and scoldings that follow. It's hard to stay irritated at him after you realise from the sparkle in his eye that he is having you on. My parents are usually his willing victims.

Juju The Temper

Before Ju was born, I had some misgivings about him inheriting some of my traits that I'm not too proud of....my fears were not without basis and I am afraid that the contribution from our parents' genes is a lot more than 20%. The wrath of Ju rears its head daily, but Ju has as short a memory as his temper, so tantrums blow over as quickly as they come -- most of the time. I don't know if it's a normal part of the Terrible Twos, since the screaming-when-he-doesn't-get-what-he-wants only began since the 15th month. He is open to distraction or negotiation but if he is stopped during an activity he enjoys (like sweeping up fallen leaves on the balcony) or rejected (like being told he cannot have the yoghurt despite it being very obviously in the fridge where he showed you) he will howl bitterly. In case you're wondering, for me, no means no. Luckily, his tear-streaked face and hiccupping sobs elicit nothing more than amusement in me and none of the heartrending pity my father feels. That's why Grandpa is the most bullied member of the family.

Ju also hates having someone brush his teeth, he would gladly chew on his toothbrush (albeit ineffectively) but fights to the death if we attempt to brush his teeth with it. Last night, in a fury as I was wrestling with him and his toothbrush, he slapped me in the face. I was stunned for half a second, but in another half, his face changed and his eyes registered that he had assaulted his mother. He actually reached his hand out and stroked my cheek. I didn't get angry but I used a strong, accusatory tone to berate him for the slap, to which he responded with what looked like 19 month old remorse and another stroke of my cheek. You have to hand it to the little guy, he's barely a toddler and he's already learnt how to mend fences.

Juju The Athlete
Ju can now climb up a slide unaided, clamber up steps unaided and sometimes toting a ball, and jogs quite efficiently. The heaviest weight he can move is a 5kg bag of rice, the heaviest he has lifted and carried with him is a 2kg tin of milk. He himself weighs as much as my friends' kindergarten-age children and the next time I am asked what I feed Ju, I shall say steroids and protein shakes. It's also ironic that as big and as physically adept as he is, he's a real wuss when it comes to the tiniest things like sand between his toes! He hated going into the sand pit or the beach and staunchly refused to go near it. At the sandpit, he would stand stiffly next to the pit staring mournfully at the other kids playing with their toys, their bare toes shuffling in the sand. 2 weeks ago, Dan and I decided to rehabilitate his sand phobia. We've never cheered and encouraged anyone as much as we did Ju at the sandpit and I am happy to state that Ju is now almost a new toddler when it comes to sand. Ju also enjoys bike rides, feeding the turtles at the pond and threatening the neighbourhood cat. He is indifferent to dogs on a leash but panicked when my friend's playful Labrador chased him around the flat.

Juju the Creative

Ju makes a toy out of everything but refuses to play according to what is expected for the toy. He loves drawing with his water-soluble crayons but watches me out of the corner of his eye for any chance to draw on any surface but the paper. I am starting his potty training slowly, getting him to sit in the potty at regular intervals like before bed. He isn't completely sure of what he's supposed to do when he's on it, since I don't force him to remove his diaper, but I'm also reluctant to be too pushy, having read too many reports of potty training trauma. He sometimes uses the potty as his hat and I don't know if I should laugh or scold him for wearing a portable toilet on his head. Incidentally, the supermarket is running out of options for pull-up diapers in his size. 

*   *   *   *   *

All in, 2012 has made for a wonderfully eventful year. Ju now has a fully toothy smile, a receptive vocabulary in 3 languages and less hair than I would like since Dan forced the crew cut on him. I have forgotten what it is like to have a Girls' Night Out and we have resigned ourselves to sharing our bed with Ju until he decides to speak. Everything has changed since Ju came into our lives and nothing could be better than it is now. I don't crave for my youth or my waistline back, and I am even willing to juggle this parenting gig with my work demands. Being away from Ju the whole day, and sometimes for days if I have to travel only makes me cherish the time I have with him (an average of 1.5 hours per week day) even more. Every minute with Ju is a minute of the most profound feeling of content and satisfaction. It's almost Nirvana.

Survival Of The Weakest

Singapore will not find itself climbing out of its fertility rut for a while. I'll tell you one of the reasons for this: our species has become too weak.

By "species", I am referring to the Kiasu Singaporean. We Singaporeans need no introduction or explication of the infamous term, but for those in doubt, click on the link. 

Before I proceed, let me qualify that I am not saying that there are not many reasons for the global phenomena of falling birthrates. I am only pointing out that there is one glaring symptom among Singaporeans of a certain creed...that acts like an antibiotic that has become ineffective to fighting a virus. 

In an NHK broadcast on September 28 which reported on Prime Minister Lee's speech in his National Day Rally on the lack of babies being born on our high-functioning island, the reporter interviewed one 33 year old Charmaine Ho, her occupation:  "reporter for a fashion magazine". The reporter described CHarmaine as someone who "wants her career but also to give her children the best possible education". Balancing those goals won't be easy, it went on because Ms Ho is adamant that she wants to have kids but she doesn't like how "competitive Simaporean society has become".

Ms Ho said to the camera, "Having kids...is very expensive, we don't mean it in a monetary way, we mean...the kind of sacrifices you have to make [...] Maybe you have 1000 kids trying to get into the same university where there's only like...100. You're fighting with the whole nation."

Watch the clip here.

Let me pause for a moment to take in the news. Wow, this is the first time I've heard someone equating competition with a few million people with a reason NOT to have children. It's a wonder Singapore's population hasn't gone under decades ago like the sinking city of Venice.  

Yes, it's not news that we are and have been a nation of complainers (which advanced, insecure, non-G8 member country isn't?). We're also notoriously protective of our offspring and we suffer from a pathological obligation to ENSURE that their childhoods culminate in illustrious professional careers in medicine, law, or at the very least, a position in the upper echelons of the civil and administrative service. Better yet if they can get their hands on a tax-payer-funded Ivy League college education, since those degrees are worth a lot more than others. 

I get it, parents want the best for their kids. I have one, so I feel your angst, Ms Ho. But somehow, the kind of parents that echo Ms Ho's sentiment is the sort that goes beyond the boundaries of typical parental concern. Singaporean parents want a guarantee that their kids will do well, and by "well", I mean head and shoulders above the rest, even if it means they have to get there kicking, shoving and pushing others aside for their kids. And this is precisely what Ms Ho does not want to do, or at least is loathe to do. But she will do it, if she eventually succumbs to the biological and evolutionary urge to procreate. 

What I think is this: the spirit of competition is not dead. But it has evolved into an ugly, narrowminded, class war between those who have and those who have more. It's the new middle class against everyone else: the less well-off, who seek to compete with their children for the same things, and the more well-off, whose privileges it seeks to replicate and gain.

Those who have some, aspire to have more, and they will do everything it takes to ensure that their children come out ahead of the rest, no matter the cost to the children. Those who have more, will use all their resources to keep it that way for their children. Failure is never an option for those who feel that what they have achieved could be snatched away at a moment's notice. Their children's success or lack of it reflect their own worst fears and insecurities. We are a generation that has come to fear competition, maybe because those of us who have reaped the fruits of our own struggles, cannot bear to lose the privileges of the new middle class. Our children are a reflection of ourselves, even though this is a seriously warped view. Their failure becomes our failure, and their success becomes our imaginary trophies and the chimera that we are safe and secure in all that we have achieved.

As a result, the strongest don't come out of this system to re-populate the nation (and workforce), the weak that have the social capital of middle-class parents and networks do. But this isn't new, is it? It happened to Venice, and it will happen to Singapore if the class warfare in our education continues unabated. Immigration might actually be a good thing, if it brings in people of another ilk, with a taste for competition as it really is in the jungle. But is our system robust and open enough to accomodate all kinds of talent? From the economy to the government, from schools to the home, there is still only a very narrowly-defined idea of a productive, able and valued member of society. So I will wait and see if we go the way of Venice, or perhaps we will be something else altogether.  

Morality Is Not Solely A Human Condition

Self-recognition
 Ju was completely oblivious the last time I performed the mirror test on him with a dab of pink lipstick on his forehead. Fail! And get this, no matter how interested your child may be in his reflection, he may gesture at it, smile and laugh at it or reach out and touch it as if he were actually interacting with his reflection, he DOES NOT UNDERSTAND that it is himself in the mirror so long as he fails the mirror test. Trust me, I was fooled by Ju too.

It is difficult to get inside the head of a toddler without scientific inquiry and experimentation. Sure, Piaget did it by observing his kids, but Piaget was a psychologist who kept meticulous records which I doubt any common parent would care to replicate before  she declares proudly to others that her kid is so and so. It is the same with Ju's self awareness. That is why I do the experiment every month or two just to be sure. Apes are the only other species that recognises their reflection. 

Empathy

It is still too early to start on the experiments on morality, specifically what is fair and what is right or wrong since Ju cannot yet speak. But at 16 months, Ju is surprisingly empathetic. Some time ago, I decided to see if Ju could feel empathy. He could, by then, tell us with gestures that he was hurt (even though these days, I think he feigns pain to get some sympathy and attention). We would naturally go to his "rescue" and blow or stroke on the "wound" or hug him. So as I played with him one day, I pretended to hurt myself and I made a whole charade of wincing and grimacing and moaning in pain. The first time, he was taken aback and stopped to stare. Then as I said, "Oww! It hurts!" (in Mandarin) a few times, he reached out his hand to stroke my face. I was really surprised but he did it again the next time. He is more skeptical when Daniel tries it with him and needs a lot more convincing. It's either Daniel is not as good an actor or Ju doesn't believe that boys can feel pain. I don't have a means to test his understanding of gender yet, so I can't rule out either explanation.

The other clear evidence that Ju can feel empathy is when we read his picture books. In two books, there is a picture of someone hurt next to an ambulance. In "Busy Town", a flap book, we open the flap on the ambulance to see a little boy inside, with his arm in a cast and a paramedic tending to him. In the second, "Mein Puzzlebuch Tatutata", Grandma is lying on a stretcher with her leg in a cast. Of course when we read the book with Ju, we would describe the pictures to him, like "Look at Granny's leg, she's hurt. She needs to go to the hospital." Here's the interesting part, Ju gets visibly concerned and starts pointing to his leg, or to his arm (if it's the boy with the injured arm) and looking distressed. Now, EVERY time he sees the pictures, even before either Dan or I says a word, he gets really upset. He would wear a distressed look and point vigorously at the injured body part, then go "unhhh, unhhhh!" and point to his corresponding body part. He would not stop until we validate his concerns. We would say, "Brother's arm is in a cast, it's alright, he's going to the hospital now. Give Brother a kiss." And Ju would kiss the picture! He is also more fascinated by these scenes and would pay more attention and time to these compared to the others.

So Ju is almost 17 months old and he doesn't yet share or cooperate, not surpringly, since he still isn't self-aware. But he can feel empathy for others' pain. He shows concern and is visibly upset by the sight of someone in a cast (I haven't got any other books with pictures of crying kids). He may be reacting to the words and concept of "pain" and "hurt" since he has experienced these himself. Empathy is clearly a developmental milestone that every child hits (save in serial killers or children with disorders like autism) but it cannot be taught, I believe it either is there or it isn't. You could nurture it, of course, and some children have more of it than others.

Monkeys Are Moral Too

They really are, and we shouldn't be surprised, since we share more than 99% of our DNA with them. To think otherwise is sheer arrogance. Whether you belong to the essentialist camp (morality is given to us by God, for those of us who lack creativity; or it is intrinsic to human nature) or the social scientific one (morality is nurtured through socialisation and education), you can't deny that morality aids survival of the species in that it facilitates cooperation and social order - two key factors for survival of the group.

Frans de Waal, renowned primatologist, shows several experiments where monkeys clearly show empathy, cooperation and even a sense of fairness. At 13:00, the most amazing experiment of all reveals that Capuchian monkeys actually reject income inequality!

The (Dismal) State of Play

For those of us who have been fans of the acclaimed BBC series, Child Of Our Time, which debuted in 2001, you would be relieved to know that they continued filming the 25 families after 2007. In 2008, when the children turned 8, the series was modified and only a few themed episodes were produced each year. Series 7 has just aired on Starhub cable's BIO channel and I watched the first two episodes last night at 9pm. It was akin to a family reunion with the much-loved kids like the twins, Charlie and Jamie!

I am reposting this Telegraph article written by series producer, Dr Tessa Livingstone, here. It was written in 2008 but echoes eerily for Singaporean society, which is one of the world's worst-faring states in terms of fertility. I can't speak for the quality of our children's lives in Singapore, since no valid research has been undertaken to investigate this, like the Child of Our Time response to UNICEF's report. Or at least nothing has been made public or discussed openly here. Yet there is no more crucial time than now to seriously ponder the real effects of our globalised world on our children's every day lives and how it is impacting their physical and emotional devopment.

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Child Of Our Time: Whatever happened to our children's playtime?

The BBC's latest 'Child of Our Time' investigation confirms worrying reports that Britain's young are overworked and underplayed, reveals Dr Tessa Livingstone.

From The Telegraph

By Dr Tessa Livingstone

10:54PM BST 31 May 2008

Last year, a Unicef report on the wellbeing of children shocked the nation. Even though Britain is the fifth-wealthiest country in the world, out of 21 developed countries our children had the lowest level of wellbeing – a statistic that horrified lawmakers and parents alike. It was the first in a spate of damning descriptions about the state of Britain's children.

A few days later, I started a new project. I have run the BBC series Child of Our Time for eight years, following the lives of 25 children born in 2000 from all over the UK and from all walks of life. But this year it was special. The team filmed the children continuously for 48 hours, during one school day and one home day, recording every movement, every emotion and every word.

We then worked with academics to discover what our 21st-century children do with their time and whether the quality of their lives is good enough – or, as Unicef would have it, a cause of real concern. 

We studied play, the use of technology, and the impact of the "me generation", as well as communication between children, parents, teachers and friends. The results were astonishing.

Our most surprising findings were about play. Play is vital; it makes children happy, as we discovered when we counted the number of laughs. The more children play, the more they laugh, especially when they are outside. In fact, our greatest players laughed up to 20 times as much as the children who played less.

And play does not just give children joy, it is also "work". Young children need to explore the world; they are enthusiastic learners, they need challenges and excitement, and even a frisson of danger. As one child said in response to a survey on the children's website CBBC: "Adults can be very stupid at times. Kids should be allowed to experiment and try things. Otherwise when they grow up they'll make very stupid mistakes from not getting enough experience in childhood." 

Precisely! The great players from our series included an imaginative girl called Rhianna, who messed around happily for almost eight hours, much of the time with her friend in the garden. Playing sociably in a bigger space is even better. 

Lucky Jamie spent his weekend in a caravan park with his family and ran wild for most of the day, coming back to base for meals. Others had less opportunity or desire to play. Tyrese spent only 25 minutes on free play and, when shoo'ed out of the house to go to the park with his elder sister, he looked lonely and bored. 

Indeed, parks are an indication of the greatest change in play. One Child of Our Time parent recalled: "You'd go off for miles and it was all right as long as you were back for tea." Nowadays, two-thirds of children aged eight to 10 have never been to a shop or park by themselves, while a third have never played outside without an adult. The distance children can roam has been reduced by 90 per cent in just 20 years.

Robert Winston, professor of science and society at Imperial College London and presenter of Child of Our Time, took himself four miles to school when he was only seven and has a robust view: "Certainly there is a risk about traffic, but we are over-concerned about risk." 

The anxiety about stranger danger and accidents trickles down from society at large to parent – and on to child. As another parent told us: "Whether we like it or not, there is a climate of fear for children and you can't sponge that out of your head if you've got a child." Seven-year-old Parys reflected the same nervousness when asked if he would go to the shop for milk: "I won't have anyone to keep me guarded," he replied. 

So what do the experts think? Play expert Tim Gill is worried. He believes that today's children are captive, no longer allowed the chance to meet the people and explore the territory around them. "A few years ago, I was involved in a campaign to make a street more child-friendly," he says. "So the residents had a party and closed off the street, and the kids and all the people were out talking together. 

"At the end of the day an older lady, a resident, came up to me and said, 'What a lovely event! But I have just one question. Where did you get the children from?' She had no idea that there were so many kids living on the street. It's not that there aren't any children but that those children are spending their lives indoors." 

So what are our kids doing if they aren't visible in their neighbourhood? The answer is obvious. They mitigate the boredom of being confined to home by sitting in front of a screen. British children watch more television than any others in Europe, and two-thirds have TV sets in their bedrooms. Sadly, more children today are injured by TVs falling on them than from free play. 

One of our children spent the best part of nine hours looking at one screen or another; a second clocked up seven hours playing video games. Television and the internet enable children who are stuck at home to experience adventures vicariously. Still, parents worried about new technology should take comfort; their kids are having fun, and evidence from many sources tells us that most children benefit. 

The problem, then, is not that children shouldn't be watching screens but that they are watching so much, there isn't room for anything else. 

Tanya Byron, a clinical psychologist and author of the recent Government report on children's use of computer games and the internet, told me that children have more chance of meeting paedophiles online than in the park or on the streets, and offered some good advice. 

"If your children were in the real world," she says, "going to a youth group or a scout group, you would check it out and make sure they got there safely. But in the online world we check nothing. We should tell them they can't go places, we should put filters in place like locks on doors, and make sure sites are moderated, just as when we send them to a pool, there are lifeguards." 

But while new technology is vilified by many – and not always justly – there is one thing about British children's lives that most people ignore. Our lives are shaped by the way we communicate with each other. A good conversation, however short, can make us happy; a bad one, sad. So how do we chat with our children? 

We asked a random selection of people in different British towns a simple question: "What do you talk about with your children?" The answers? "Everything, we talk about everything"; "All sorts"; "I talk to my children all the time." 

The reality, though, is very different. Two-thirds of the parent-child conversations from Child of Our Time were purely functional and only three of our families had long and discursive chats with their children during filming. This is in line with other finding: one survey, for instance, found that only a quarter of children say they talk with a parent more than once a week about something that matters. 

British children, it seems, are still seen but not heard. Edward Waller, Unicef's representative in London, told me that while southern Europeans are credited with an innate love of children, northern Europeans are chillier. To counteract this, many of our near-neighbours have legislation: parents take long maternity and paternity leave and work less in Scandinavian countries, for instance. Yet British adults have the longest working hours in Europe, are more stressed, and therefore have less time to talk with their children. 

Teresa Cremin, professor of education at the Open University, thinks it is a problem. "If all we're saying is 'Do this, do that', 'Hurry out of here, it's time for tea', and so on, then we do have to be concerned that it's not a dialogue, it's a one-way monologic piece to put pressure on children. I think there is a huge value in shared social interaction with youngsters – parents can extend a child's understanding of an issue and help youngsters to think and understand." 

But if children do not communicate with adults very well, they do at least talk among themselves. The child-child conversations we recorded were energetic, inclusive and often very funny. Young children play with language as if it is a game, so perhaps it's not surprising that children's strongest relationships are often with their peers. This matters. Several researchers have told me that too much can fracture parent-child relationships and, in the long term, contribute to a "gang" mentality and a society broken along age lines. 

None of which helps children, who are already under the most tremendous pressure. Our children are the most tested in the world, facing around 100 exams by the time they are 18. Pressure to succeed has generated a stress epidemic where one in 10 children risks developing a mental health problem. 

This has not gone unnoticed. The Open University is surveying attitudes to childhood in the UK, and their latest results show that three-quarters of us think there are too many pressures on children today and worry that they grow up too quickly. 

Jay Belsky, professor of psychology at Birkbeck University, is also concerned. "We've lost sight of the fact that one can have fun and not worry about future consequences but stay in the moment. We don't value the moment, especially in childhood – we think more about whether an experience will pay off down the road in economic terms. Nowadays we're not even thinking in emotional or relationship terms." 

It has become impossible to ignore the Unicef research or feel comfortable at the bottom of the developed countries league table of childhood happiness. Most people who work for children and families in Britain know this. Can anything be done, or have we left it too late? 

For my follow-up BBC programme, A Revolution in Childhood, I asked an expert panel, what do they feel are the most important changes the UK must put into practice to make our children happier? Here are their answers. 

Prof Robert Winston: "We must be careful about our aspirations for children. Happiness, contentment and wisdom are not achieved by fame, and that's a real issue for our society, where we put our children through hoops. It's something the government needs to think about." 

Prof Teresa Cremin, professor of education at Canterbury Christ Church University and president elect of the United Kingdom Literacy Association: "There needs to be a radical change to the assessment system, particularly in primary schools, since it generates overly high expectations. We should shift it to a less narrow frameset and fewer early exams. That would make a difference." 

Tim Gill, one of the UK's leading thinkers, writers and consultants on childhood, and adviser to the Conservative Party on its childhood review: "Children live in overly captive environments, but if we improve the real world offers that we make to children and put some real energy in, open up front doors, give them things to do, then the issue of spending time in front of screens will dissolve. And they'll be happier." 

Less pressure, more play. Really, how difficult can it be?

Project Baby: 15th Month Update

Ju's development hit a few more high spots this month. He is 15 months old and now vocalises the "A" vowels (ma, ba, pa, na, da) consistently but still prefers yelling, grunting, shrieking and spewing as his favourite modes of communication. That and of course, pointing. He's on schedule according to the standard developmental milestones of infants and children and from anecdotal evidence on playgrounds, he appears to be larger than the average 15 month old (he is often mistaken to be older than his age).  The milestone of the past 4 weeks has been his interest in books. He is just lapping them up! He now zooms in on his favourite books and brings them to me so that we can read together. It's more like me asking him where's this or that object or animal and he would point. If he doesn't know a particular word, like "toothpaste" (in all or any of the 3 languages), he would squeal impatiently as if to say "where the heck is that? where? what?" and he would quiet down when I point to the right picture. It's hilarious.
  
Routines, routines, routines

His reading habit came about rather naturally, i.e. we didn't have to force him to sit and look at books. Some of my friends have expressed dismay that their sons would never sit for longer than 10 seconds for a book. In fact, research out there seems to confirm that boys' brains at this age are wiring them to behave completely differently to girls. Testosterone, it seems, is the culprit. I've tried to "temper" Ju, if I may call it that, by setting up a routine for him every day since kids his age like structure. Soon, I hope, when his developing morality kicks in, he will like rules. So our bed time routine is pretty standard: once Ju indicates his interest in bed (he would climb onto our bed which is joined conveniently to his cot) around 7.30pm, I would tell him that it's time to brush his teeth. He would willingly clamber down and follow me to the bathroom where I would get his toothbrush and toothpaste ready, all the time repeating the same words in Mandarin: here's your toothbrush and here's the toothpaste. I would hand him the brush and sing the same song "This is the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth...." in tune to Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round. He loves this, and recently, started tapping his feet to the song as he brushed! Yes, he does try to brush, though I have to help him with the front teeth and back, but doing this daily has conditioned Ju to it to the extent that he doesn't hate it like he used to. Singing and pretending to let him brush my teeth as well helps. With the edible toothpaste, he doesn't have to rinse, so he takes water after he's done and then we're off to the next part of the routine: reading. He would pick out a book and I'll do a Chinese adhoc translation and improvisation according to what catches his attention. At this stage, it isn't so important to read the words on the page as much as it is to engage him in the images and sounds of words. I would say books played a huge role in building his vocabulary. 

Unfortunately, we haven't cured the habit of aiding him to fall asleep. I will admit here that Daniel and I made a conscious decision to be Ju's sleep-aids and we more than enjoy this part of the night. Yes, we actually love lying in bed next to our only son, watching him snuggle his pillow, hug his stuffed dog and offer it to us for hugs as well as he gets himself ready for bed. Which parent wouldn't? He sleeps through most of the time now, without need for milk in the night, and we've resigned ourselves to co-sleeping. You could attribute it partly to our guilt for spending a total of 2 hours per workday with him and partly to our belief in giving him as much security as he needs in the first 3 years of his life. I've read the criticisms of co-sleeping and I know about the research on cultivating independence. However, after many discussions, we've decided that having no memory of acute anxiety from being left to cry alone to sleep as children, we're quite happy to share our room with him until he can speak. In fact my mother told me that I used to sleep next to my grandmother every night for the first three years of my life until I went back home to live with my parents. I don't remember much separation anxiety, and eventually, I did sleep in my own room without much fuss. This could be extreme self-rationalization, but I think every parent is justified in his/her own parenting style and decision as long as they can live with the consequences.

Physical Development

Gross motor: Ju can now walk up stairs with help. He also attempts to climb up the steps on the slide at the playground. He also likes sliding although he seems to be more interested in climbing up the slide. He can now climb onto the sofa, bed, and recently chairs. He seems to understand that standing atop a chair results in shouts of alarm from adults and he takes great relish in doing this for the attention. I know because he eyes us very obviously as he climbs and if no one is about, he would shout out to inform us of his feat. As a response, my father nailed two wooden slats to the sides of the dining chairs so that Ju can no longer climb onto them. He can also push open and close doors, but not work knobs or handles. He can do simple chores like bring his diaper or an item of rubbish to the bin for disposal.  He can also stand or sit when asked to. He can't sit himself down on a stool properly (butt first) and instead does it with the stool in front of him (as if getting onto a bike). He loves handling a mini mop or broom and "cleaning up". He is ahead of schedule in terms of his ability push and pull large objects. He has been moving chairs, stools, laundry baskets and his motorised scooter around the house for the last 2 months. He doesn't quite run yet (more for 18 months and after) but he can manage a brisk and sometimes teetering jog.

Fine motor: He can build a wobbly tower of 3 to 4 cubes or blocks. He's not interested in legos or building things as much as tossing them about. He can also use a spoon and fork clumsily and holds his water bottle or sippy cup to drink. I haven't tried scribbling with him yet, as I haven't found the right crayons or pencils. He can turn the pages of a book now and even carries a little nylon bag when I ask him to. I use the words "Help Mummy do this and that..." a lot to get him used to doing things by himself and also to get him acquainted with words.

Cognitive and Language Development

He still doesn't say any real "word" aside from his vowel vocalisations. We're not too perturbed about this since he is extremely communicative without language. He points non stop at things when we're out, his obsession is currently still dustbins big and small. The finger is still his most efficient tool to getting what he wants. He also looks in the appropriate direction when asked for the location of something, e.g. he searches in the sky when asked "where is the moon?" and points at it if he finds it. His understanding of concepts is developing as he uses specific gestures when he hears words like "pain" and "fall" or phrases like "that's dangerous". He would immediately smack his head to indicate that he understood. Problem is, he associates this gesture with any pain he is feeling and so when he hurt his tooth biting down on a xylophone stick, he kept hitting his head, as if to tell me, "Mummy, my tooth hurts." He is performing at 18-24 month olds in terms of pointing to pictures in books when asked specific words as well as pointing to a body part correctly. So far he understands nose, mouth, ears, eyes, hair, head, teeth in German, Chinese and English. He is learning "tongue"  and I suspect he knows "pee pee" but I haven't had a chance to test this one out yet.

Psychosocial Development

The greatest surprise of the month was when our friends Loping and Andreas stayed with us for two nights with their son Dion, who is 3 months senior to Ju. They were roughly at the same psychosocial milestones, meaning they ignored each other most of the time unless one happened to overstep his territorial boundaries, in this case, poor Dion who got the full force of Ju's rarely seen wrath. Ju became a complete terror overnight (literally) when he woke that morning to discover another small boy in his house. As the day wore on and it became clear that the new people were not going anywhere, Ju started to whine and sulk as my attention got diverted to the guests and cooking dinner. His claiming of possessions really came out as Dion took to his toys, especially Ju's red bobby car. Luckily Ju hadn't developed much interest in it so he wasn't so enraged. He instead went after Dion when the latter hijacked his more treasured tennis ball. 

As with most 15-18 month olds, Ju does not respond to scolding or physical punishment. Yesterday when I smacked his hand after he did what I told him not to (toss the object), he stared at me intently and tossed it again. Then he held his hand out so that I could slap it. I gave up the smacking. In terms of defiance, Ju certainly has lots of it. This is an expression of his growing sense of autonomy and is normal, I read. His favourite display of autonomy/defiance is climbing onto the coffee table when he knows he would get a sharp reprimand. A verbal threat to smack him with my hand raised usually convinces him to come back down. However, since a child his age can't yet respond to persuasion or reprimands, it's getting hard to get him to do things, much less refrain from doing things. It took me 5 whole minutes to "persuade" Ju to pick up the legos he had tossed. He only did so when I told him that "Mummy would help him pick them up as well". He can also differentiate between what are himself and others. When asked where Daddy's nose is, he punches at Daniel's nose.

He had a playdate last weekend with 3 other kids. Two were over 2 years old and another was his age. None of the kids played with each other and all did their own thing although they were interested in the same things, namely the brooms and mop. He is wary of strangers and a strange place, especially other people's homes, but he loses his wariness after a few minutes, depending on whether there are distractions like toys and animals. Cats, dogs and fish work well to take the edge off a new and unfamiliar place. Toys are a no-brainer. The other big development this month was temper tantrums. This is more characteristic of 18 months and older, but Ju let it rip on several occasions. His fit would include tears and bitter wailing, throwing his head back and clinging to me. I would respond as calmly as I could, namely do nothing and just hold him. If he didn't calm down, I would distract him with something else. I still haven't figured out the tantrums yet because he doesn't have them that often. But on the few occasions that he did, they were quite alarming in their ferocity.  Just as Ju throws himself wholeheartedly into his frustrations, he also learned to show affection. When asked for a kiss, he would offer his cheek or his nose/lips. He reaches out his hand whenever there is a farewell, especially if he's in the car and there's a window between him and the person waving farewell. The funniest surprise was when I asked him to give Dion a goodbye kiss, and he willingly obliged, even with no existing emotional attachment to him. Which makes me wonder if he associates kisses with the actual emotion of affection.

Ju blows Dion a kiss.