Smart but lazy?
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insider:
Most times, it is not the lawyers themselves who draft those letters. It's their paralegals. The lawyers just sign.
Hahaha...you surely have met sloppy local lawyers. I definitely cannot accept sloppy lawyers coz I am paying good money to them. So far, the local laywers except one of them whom I used are good (occasional grammar errors still can be spotted but not glaring ones and so are still acceptable to me). No experience with the expat lawyers and so can't compare notes with you...rosemummy:
I work a lot with lawyers, corporate lawyers to be precise. And you can easily tell the difference in the quality of work between a US lawyer and a Singapore lawyer. I have Singapore lawyers using a previous agreement for another client as a template, and didn't even remember to change the client's name. Typo and grammatical errors are common, even after several drafts. The US lawyers, even after working for more than 2 weeks without sleep, are churning out documents with no typo or grammatical errors. They cost quite a lot more, but I always feel happier paying them.
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insider:
The discussion veers now towards whether or not a child can overcome his/her own carelessness without intervention? I dunno any research answers that I can share.
Taking this discussion into caning the child if he makes careless mistakes and we imagine the child taking back his marked paper from his teacher. Upon seeing his careless mistakes, he would have felt ‘remorseful’ like anything (“How come I can make this kind of mistake??? How come???”) and then he has to tie his mistakes with the punishment. The kind of complex psychological pain I feel is too much for a child to bear at that maybe still ‘blur blur’ age. So, even given a ‘perfect’ score, this ‘perfectness’ is an artificial one and not a genuine one in a way. ‘Perfectness’ (not in terms of 100% full marks but the best of a child’s effort based on his capability) can be achieved naturally coz kids with an OK IQ and an average conscientiousness will eventually know how to find ways to perfect their own scores (and other things in their life later).
I tend to believe that children have enormous strength / potentials in them, though the strength / potentials maybe of different levels. Building in young children a solid self esteem and guiding them with firm love, understanding, and emotional support, eventually the motivation to be the best that they can be (by minimizing own careless mistakes) will be coming from deep within them instead of by external forces in terms of punishments/rewards/etc (which will not be meaningful and life fulfilling in my opinion).
I myself never fixed my own carelessness until I wrote an exam for 600 people and the marks were totalled wrongly. I paid far more dearly for that error than 2 strokes of cane that leave a mark which leaves in 2 days. The Husband did fix his carelessness by the time he hit PSLE. Is there a 50% chance it could go either way? I dunno... so I decided to help my son fix his problem so that he wouldn't have to go through what I went through.
Nothing stops you or other parents from waiting it out.
I also agree that children need love, emotional support, encouragement. However, why cannot one have high expectations and still provide all these? Are they mutually exclusive?
As to the question of self-esteem, I have all my life deliberately steered away from self-esteem. There is plenty of research on self-esteem and some of it shows that high self-esteem can lead to negative outcomes. Many megalomaniacs (Hitler, NKF's Durai etc... ) have super high self-esteem. Here again, I realise that I proffer an opinion that is not commonly accepted because everyone thinks that high self-esteem is highly desirable in itself. There is danger in over rating self-esteem, I think.
I preferred to work on self-efficacy... the belief in being able to handle this and that task or overcome this and that challenge. The best way to build self -efficacy is to have one's child experience success at a task.
Little Boy was never a confident boy. This was my fault. I had not realised that the dynamics between The Daughter, 7 years older than Little Boy, had undermined his sense of self-efficacy. Little Boy lost to his sister for 7 years before I cottoned on to what was happening. No matter how hard you try to stop them competing, siblings will compete. Little Boy was always expecting to lose. He had developed a loser's mentality, and very low self-esteem and he had not much self-efficacy at most tasks. This crossed over to school work.
\"Mom, I am not one of those who can do well in Math\"
After he fixed his carelessness, he went and topped the class in Math for the first time. He couldn't believe it. His classmates couldn't believe it to the extent that the whole class broke into applause for him. He has since developed higher self-efficacy is much less shy and more out-going. He also gets a lot of fulfillment from the newfound respect he gained from Teachers and friends.
Higher self-efficacy leads to greater task persistence. Greater task persistence leads to higher life success. Life success positively relates to well-being and fulfillment. All three assertions have research support. Where have I hurt my son? Only on the butt... all other potential outcomes are positive and arises from his new found sense of higher self-efficacy.
I find it odd that so many people think that there are techniques that are inherently good or bad. For me, I refrain from judging techniques because these are just professional tools in a toolbox. It's like saying to a fellow carpenter, the saw is a poor instrument. The hammer is better. You don't get results by judging tools (emotional support VS rewards/punishment) in themselves. You get results by matching tools to situation. There are moments to correct a child. There are moments to let him go. There are moments to put him on your knee and patch him up and say \"You didn't get that grade but I still love you, and I will love you even if you are the dumbest little kid in the world.\"
I have done that too, because that too another research-based motivation technique.
That's why it's so hard to parent. It isn't what you use, but how you use it in conjunction with all the other tools that matter.
Some tools are dangerous when not properly used. RIVP (using the cane) is one of them. I almost regret sharing because it truly is something that you wanna stay away from if you don't know how to control it well. -
Sloppiness and perfection. Guess what, I have 2 kids, each representing these 2 opposites.
DD is careless and sloppy. Her work can be untidy and riddled with mistakes that she should not be making. She just gave me a 2 page essay without any punctuations. Her excuse? Aiyah, understood right? And, this is only a draft what.
DS on the other hand seeks perfection to the point that he will erase and re-write and erase and re-write just because the letters are not aligned. These days he is better after we kept assuring him that it is ok not to have perfectly aligned letters and some mistakes are acceptable.
How I wish I can take this 2 attributes of their, mesh it together, mix it well and return to them the combined attributes. Haizz, if only.
With my kids, it is the attitude that I am addressing, not the academic results. I recognise that there is strength in DD’s attitude. With this attitude of hers, she is not afraid to try new stuff and she will walk away unscath even if she fails. DS on the other hand, will not embark on new stuff unless he is certain of success. With that, we know that whatever DS churns out it will be of a certain quality.
The challenge now is in helping them find that middle ground.
DD is very much like me. I am an intuitive, prone to carelessness and mighty lacking in details. And because I recognise that trait, I am trying my best to guide DD to avoid the pitfalls that comes with that trait. I have no idea where DS got his perfectionist trait from. Maybe my father. -
insider:
Aaaah yes... I stand properly corrected by you then.
The above quoted is what I am worrying for most parents who are likely to cane with anger with hurtful words spouting out from their mouth at the fit of anger. Many times parents want their kids to be this and that (such as to remain calm) but most of the times, these parents cannot model this and that themselves and then the kids suffer unnecessarily. It's not really difficult to parent kid, it is more difficult to 'fix' ourselves...
I have shared something (RIVP with cane) very dangerous to use. I have a PhD in Human Motivation (and long years of practical experience... though perhaps not with kids) and even then I thought long and hard before I used it. And we talked about it as a family.
RIVP in itself takes some mastery. RIVP (with cane) is even more dangerous when someone is poorly skilled. You can damage a child just like a carpenter unskilled with saw can waste a block of wood.
If you are not confident, stay away from RIVP (especially with cane)... and do not use it OFTEN... do not also use it with toddlers nor Lower Primary... to be very safe.
Also, do note that 99% of the time, I am a very affectionate parent. I do not nag... I don't yell or scold... and my fuse is very long. I have loads of surplus in my children's emotional bank accounts to balance off the 3 times in their childhood where I inflict intense and memorable pain to protect them from even worse pain later.
If you have a short fuse... bad temper... are prone to yelling, then stay away from RIVP. You can damage the child/employee, and consign yourself to a lonely old age because your kids hate you too much to come back and visit.
I should have known better than to write the post in the first place, EVEN IF it worked for me. -
Well, actually Chenonceau, it is great that you shared your experience in handling your kids. There will be many who may agree or disagree, some more strongly then others but nobody can say whatever methods they used is the absolute correct one.
I love to read what pple like yourself, insider, and a few others have contributed. 1stly because you guys have children who are much older then my kids and would have gone through with them much more then I have. And you guys would also have been able to see if the methods you have used yielded the results that you have wanted. 2ndly, your arguments for and against are done so eloquently and level headedly it sets one thinking and reflecting. 3rd, I learn a lot of new terms that I can throw around.
I have many friends and even my own sister who keep telling me things like, you know you should just do this, or that, it worked for my kid. Or something like give them only 2 choices and make sure that these 2 choices are choices that you want. So whichever they pick you are ok with it and the kid still gets a sense of being in control. Sounds good and logical until you meet my DD she will throw your 2 choices out the window and give you 2 of her own choices. My Dad puts it most aptly, he said, 'dealing with that DD of yours is really a battle of the wits. You gotta stay 2 even 3 steps ahead of her.' Then he chuckled gleefully and said, 'What your child dish out to you, their child will return to them 10 folds.'
I have yet to resort to caning either of my kids. Spanking, yes, but cannot even remember when was the last time I spanked either one for them for misbehaviour.
The dynamics of the relationship between a child and his parents, family and his environment is so complex we cannot presume to know what this parent has done or not done before deciding on embarking on certain actions. Just because a child is caned does not mean he will be 'damaged'. And I like to believe that most parents are sane people with enough self control not to wield a cane irresponsibly, so much so that the option of a cane has to be so absolutely, and resolutely disallowed. -
Chenonceau:
That's what I meant when I say our education system somehow breeds workers who thinks getting things right half the time is good enough. There isn't much motivation to do better if you can get above 80% since you'll be comfortably assured of a distinction. The truth is, in life, we don't often have such margin for error. Yes, carelessness can be disastrous in many humble job as well. Just look at the many who died or became disabled as a result of carelessness on the road.Someone who worked at our national cheque clearing centre got into a huff when she heard that there would be no group bonus if the centre cleared more than 1%(?) of cheques wrongly. She said that in school the pass mark is 50% and so the error tolerance should be at 50%. I wonder what Singaporeans would say if 1 out of 2 cheques we wrote got banked into the wrong account.
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Funz... :hugs:
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Funz:
Most times, it is not the lawyers themselves who draft those letters. It's their paralegals. The lawyers just sign. :P[/quote]Yes, but I'm actually talking about agreement prepared by them, and for which they confirm that it's in order for my signature (when it's actually not in order). For my area of work, there's hardly any letter involved, apart from legal opinions. For that, they're very careful.
Hahaha...you surely have met sloppy local lawyers. I definitely cannot accept sloppy lawyers coz I am paying good money to them. So far, the local laywers except one of them whom I used are good (occasional grammar errors still can be spotted but not glaring ones and so are still acceptable to me). No experience with the expat lawyers and so can't compare notes with you...insider:
[quote=\"rosemummy\"]
I work a lot with lawyers, corporate lawyers to be precise. And you can easily tell the difference in the quality of work between a US lawyer and a Singapore lawyer. I have Singapore lawyers using a previous agreement for another client as a template, and didn't even remember to change the client's name. Typo and grammatical errors are common, even after several drafts. The US lawyers, even after working for more than 2 weeks without sleep, are churning out documents with no typo or grammatical errors. They cost quite a lot more, but I always feel happier paying them.
Actually, on further thought, apart from the education system, the other reason why US lawyers produce better quality work could be due to RVIP in the form of a potential lawsuit. Haha. -
I think there’s a big difference between perfection and not being careless. Not being careless simply means not making mistakes on what you’re capable of doing. To me, perfection would mean the best way to get something done, such that it can’t be done any better.
We don’t need perfection for everything. We certainly can’t achieve that on this side of eternity. For example, food need not be perfect in taste and every other aspect, but it should not be prepared carelessly and cause food poisoning. A ride need not be perfect in terms of route and comfort, but the driver should not be careless and cause harm to someone as a result. -
Funz:
Errrhemmm, silent lurker here :oops:Well, actually Chenonceau, it is great that you shared your experience in handling your kids. There will be many who may agree or disagree, some more strongly then others but nobody can say whatever methods they used is the absolute correct one.
I love to read what pple like yourself, insider, and a few others have contributed. 1stly because you guys have children who are much older then my kids and would have gone through with them much more then I have. And you guys would also have been able to see if the methods you have used yielded the results that you have wanted. 2ndly, your arguments for and against are done so eloquently and level headedly it sets one thinking and reflecting. 3rd, I learn a lot of new terms that I can throw around.
The dynamics of the relationship between a child and his parents, family and his environment is so complex we cannot presume to know what this parent has done or not done before deciding on embarking on certain actions. Just because a child is caned does not mean he will be 'damaged'. And I like to believe that most parents are sane people with enough self control not to wield a cane irresponsibly, so much so that the option of a cane has to be so absolutely, and resolutely disallowed.
Have been following all these super interesting posts faithfully. There's so much food for thought, so much to be picked up from all the experienced mummies here etc...
My DS is only a toddler
This is great sharing, Funz.
I agree with your sentiments exactly :hi5:
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