If you could, would you decide on a 3rd child?

[tony]

skunk:

As for me and my children, I will bring them up tough, from the moment they understand anything, i will tell them that Life is a daily struggle, it's a daily torture, where only the fittest survive. If they cannot take it, i will tell them to jump down and die, don't waste the resources of the tribe. But i'm confident they will triumph over all difficulties, just like our proud ancestors of the past.

Are u a winner? Or a loser?

I do agree with the gist of what you said, Skunk. These are powerful statements and a basic tenet of why humans are so successful today. I do think though that the statement about telling them to jump is too harsh. With the success of our ability to survive, we can afford to be less rigid than the days of the caveman.

The race for physical survival has turned into the race for economic survival. That's the postmodern jungle for you. The world is a very large place and there is a place for all. I assume you mean that being a winner means surviving. Everyone will ultimately find their place in the world, but it is effort that determines that place. Ultimately too, perhaps we're forgetting that there is a human happiness index. Throw this out of the survival equation and we're doomed.

Don't mean to rant :oops:, but this is a very interesting topic.

[tony]

mathsparks:

I'm glad I stopped at 2. Our kiasu education system (less than 20% makes it to local Unis..pls correct me if I'm wrong) is VERY stressful on kids and their parents.


If you can afford it or are prepared to sacrifice yr retirement funds, send yr child overseas and he doesn't have to struggle to get into local U..This is the plan of my sis who has only 1 child.

If you can't, then hard and hope that yr child is intelligent, independent and hardworking enough to get a place in the local U; else with the way home prices are heading, the poor fella can't even afford a decent roof over his head. Plus, with the welcoming and huge influx of foreign talent (I've no issue with the need of foreigners), our poor child would just have to be contented having a job (regardless PMETs or not). This is the worry of most of my peers.

So, I'm glad I don't put another child and myself through this immense pressure to succeed. Yes, they're cute and fun when they're young, but once they start upper primary....

Mathsparks, what can I say. From a financial perspective, having kids is a negative net present value proposition. There are days when I look at the minutiae of our daily lives, how the kids are doing in school, worry about how we're going to put them through (hopefully) good schools, and I wring my hands in despair.

But perhaps if we extend the focus to when we carry our first grandchildren and see that our children have become parents themselves and people with integrity ... Perhaps that is the rich emotional payback that we are striving so hard for now.

[skunk]

tony:

I do think though that the statement about telling them to jump is too harsh.

Ironically, the tougher u bring them up, the less possibility they will need to jump.

The tougher u bring them up, ironically, the better their life is likely to be, rather than get worse. Don't worry about whatever nonsense \"human happiness index\", the moment a human embraces obstacles and difficulties and the entire experience of human suffering, he will gain true happiness, even amongst the daily grind we all have to go through.

The moment we view Life through the cloudy hologram of a dollar bill, we might as well kill ourselves, since Life itself involves toiling for decades, only to die and not able to bring the fruits of our labour with us. \"Negative net value proposition\" or whatever nonsense LOL

[momoshop]

mathsparks:

I'm glad I stopped at 2. Our kiasu education system (less than 20% makes it to local Unis..pls correct me if I'm wrong) is VERY stressful on kids and their parents.


If you can afford it or are prepared to sacrifice yr retirement funds, send yr child overseas and he doesn't have to struggle to get into local U..This is the plan of my sis who has only 1 child.

If you can't, then hard and hope that yr child is intelligent, independent and hardworking enough to get a place in the local U; else with the way home prices are heading, the poor fella can't even afford a decent roof over his head. Plus, with the welcoming and huge influx of foreign talent (I've no issue with the need of foreigners), our poor child would just have to be contented having a job (regardless PMETs or not). This is the worry of most of my peers.

So, I'm glad I don't put another child and myself through this immense pressure to succeed. Yes, they're cute and fun when they're young, but once they start upper primary....

While I do emphathise and agree that it is indeed stressful to bring up a child, and it is so in any society (not just in SG - ask the Americans and the Japanese, each society has their own norms of success and a pressure cooker in their own way, and which parent do not want their child to succeed?!) but I feel that it is precisely this kind of mentality that brings about pampered kids who may not be tough enough to survive, as Skunk mentioned.

Many of my friends told me that they will only want to have 1 child, even though they are financially stable and of middle income with private housing and cars etc, so they can save and afford the best for the kid. They feel that it is better to groom a successful one than to struggle and not be perfect with many children. That seems rather flawed in my opinion.

My stand is simple, nothing,NOTHING in this world beats kinship. No matter how much wealth you provide and leave for your child, siblings are the ones that stand by each other no matter wat, and siblings teach the kids values. So many parents in SG scramble to send kids to childcare to socialise etc etc, what about socialising at home with their siblings? That is the best place to start!

One day, we are going to leave our children. It is for sure. Do you want to leave them with all the materials things that will seemingly assure them of comfort, or will you leave them with a family of siblings, with the same blood that flows through their bodies?

We do not know the future, we do not even know the world in which our children can grow up in 20 years from now. So how can we know how much materials things we can provide for them? And material things do get de-valued and wasted away, by the way.

But we do know that feelings, kinship and the ties that bind have always survived through times. These are the only things that last through the years. You can fight and hate your sibling, but you will never deny that you spent 10 over years at least together with shared memories of love and hate together. If the parents teach the kids well and ensure an environment of allowing them to form strong bonds, then to me, that is more valuable than anything else we can leave them in tangible terms.

Yes, it is a fact from young then, that in a family with more than 1 kid that THERE IS LIMITED RESOURCES, so make the best of it! Even if I have limited resources, I always wanted to tell my sons, \"Mummy may not have a lot of money, but mummy has given you the best thing in life that money cannot buy. Love and kinship with your sibling, who will be there for you in the latter half of your life, when mummy and Papa are not around.\"

I do hope parents wake up to the idea thay providing the best environment for the kids, the best schools, the best everything is the best for the kids. I just feel that sometimes we are too selfish and too afraid of hardship ourselves, that we breed this kind of mentality in our young too. Even if parents do not have a lot of resources, the kid can be successful in their own way.

Ultimately I leave everyone with this question: What, what, really makes us think that in 20 years time - university degree will guraantee success? So why are parents so frantically investing in education fund etc etc for university education? Our world is changing at such a dramatic rate today, I will rather invest in skills and values that will allow them to cope, not just the tangibles of education/ materials possessions.

And one of the tenets of those skills is the ability to face up to challenges and not be sugar coated. Parents who plan too much for their kids, are not doing their kids a favor. Our latest blog entry points to that so well already.

[tony]

Tut tut, Skunk, all this talk about death! :shock:


I certainly see where you're coming from. Perhaps therein lies the difference between a man and a woman's perspective. The hard-as-nails vs the soft-around-the edges approach. Betwixt the two, perhaps the twain shall meet.

As a disclaimer, I don't advocate that happiness comes in a sugar coated pill.

Momoshop, just read your post. You have a blog? Should be an interesting read!

[skunk]

tony:

Tut tut, Skunk, all this talk about death! :shock:

hehe

[momoshop]

tony:

Momoshop, just read your post. You have a blog? Should be an interesting read!

I was referring to the latest entry of 孩子，請你搬走吧！in our forum

[mathsparks]

Deleted.

[mathsparks]

Deleted.

[skunk]

mathsparks:

Hi Skunk,
I'm neither a winner nor a loser. Just someone trying to share my experience after seeing how my daughter struggled thru her sec years. I just can't bear to bring another child to this world to suffer. She's turn out tougher of course. So, should I jump and die? Perhaps both she and I should jump and die if she had succumbed to the pressure?

You seem very confident of yr child rearing skills. Are your children in sec years yet or are you enjoying the toddler years.

Would you tell yr child to jump and die if he starts to play truant, smokes, drinks and lies despite your best upbringing. Would you breed without control like our ancestors? Or would you limit the no. What then is the max no. of children you will have? Why the limit?

Pls, this is an open forum for parents to share experience. There's no need to be so extreme in yr views.

There is no place in the world for a view where we should not bring a child into this world because \"it's so stressful\". I'm determined to put down such a dangerous view wherever it surfaces. If humanity learns to be weak and refuses to propogate because it's \"afraid to bring children into a difficult world\", we won't be the masters of the earth today.

I myself i was a very difficult child, I smoked (i still do), i played truant, i took drugs, i did everything that was bad. Had my parents decided not to bring another 3 of my younger siblings into this world, i would have lost 3 best friends. Another 3 wives would lose their husbands, and needless to say, they would never have seen wonderful children.

What's the big deal with having a difficult teenaged life? Or a difficult childhood, or marriage, or adulthood, or old age? Life is full of difficulties and is downright shitty at times. But i refuse to give up and i believe nobody should. My view is very extreme, because it's no longer a personal choice, but a societal one. In choosing to bow to adversity, a person lets down his own descendants, entire clan and community.

Btw, I plan to have 6 children, should The Almighty allow me to. My dad had 4, and despite very delinquent teenaged years, he told me he was glad he was tough enough to survive through it all I want to do better than him and i will, because i've already willed myself to.

Should my child play truant, i will homeschool her. Should she smoke, i will quit, or join her LOL If she drinks, i will share a beer with her, if she tells lies, i will tell her not to lie to me, because there's no need to lie to her best-friend-dad, who will go through everything with her, through thick and thin, sickness and health.

If u care for my advice, just swallow the pain of Life, when u feel Pain, u know u r truly alive