Club SAHM

[jedamum]

slmkhoo:

I think you are wise. My husband and I always remind ourselves (and our kids!) that we cannot invest our lives so heavily in our kids that we parents lose our own identity and forfeit our own aspirations.

heeheee...
my aspiration is to be a sahm so i can stay at home....so how?
my husband's aspiration is to strike toto and stay at home with me.
we invest our lives so heavily around each other too.....very jialat to think many decades down the road when one of us need to be gone first. :gloomy:

[ngl2010]

jedamum:

slmkhoo:

I think you are wise. My husband and I always remind ourselves (and our kids!) that we cannot invest our lives so heavily in our kids that we parents lose our own identity and forfeit our own aspirations.

heeheee...
my aspiration is to be a sahm so i can stay at home....so how?
my husband's aspiration is to strike toto and stay at home with me.
we invest our lives so heavily around each other too.....very jialat to think many decades down the road when one of us need to be gone first. :gloomy:

Me too. I can't think of the days when he is gone :sad:

But i don't want him to stay at home with me the whole day when he retires leh... He definitely will make me annoyed...

[wonderm]

BeContented:

Teaching is a skill and a committment.

DH can teach very well.......he knows how to explain concepts clearly and will try different ways of explaining if one explanation doesn't work. I even have friends trying to get him to teach their kids.

But just as teaching is a skill......laziness and knowing how to reject nicely repeatedly without incurring the wrath of another party is also a skill :rotflmao: :rotflmao:
So.....DH hardly coach.....only do prime-time appearance when really 'critical' and when everyone shouting for SOS. :mad: Anyway we have tuition also

Your DH is some kind of 武林高手？

[wonderm]

sleepy:

So tuition or no tuition?

Either way, someone else will always have something to say. However, I feel that other parents should not judge those who do send their kids to tuition.

Parents have different reasons to send their kids to tuition. Some parents sent kids to tuition to stretch them. Some send kids to tuition to help them cope better. Even tuition centers have different league. From the top end like learning lab to more affordable ones like RC at void decks. And also some parents prefer to actively coach by themselves.

As long that arrangement is working out well for them & they are seeing positive result, it doesn't matter which option is chosen. Everyone's circumstances and every child's learning habit & pattern is different.

:goodpost:

For us, the kids attend enrichment centres for enrichment. For 1-to-1 coaching, we do it ourselves so we can manage the level of supervision and help given to them. Looking back, we left them mostly on their own in lower primary, the most supervision and coaching from us was during P5/P6 period, and slowly reduced (let go) after they entered Sec school.

[metz]

slmkhoo:

As long as he had done sufficient revision before he read his story books, I would have no problem with it. We should judge effort by other criteria as well, not just by time spent. After all, we don't like bosses who judge employees only by the hours they sit at their desks. My younger daughter did PSLE in Singapore in 2011, and she said her classmates were shocked that she still read story books right up to and through the exam period, but I told her that as long as she felt that she had put in enough work, it was OK. She did pretty well in the end, so I don't think it was a bad thing to let her have that kind of relaxation.

That is what I hope my kids can achieve in future too. :celebrate:

The only revisions they did were the ones from school. Nonetheless, it was a good lesson for them. At least my girl understands school isn't
just for play and she is taking a more serious attitude towards school.

[metz]

jedamum:

slmkhoo:

I think you are wise. My husband and I always remind ourselves (and our kids!) that we cannot invest our lives so heavily in our kids that we parents lose our own identity and forfeit our own aspirations.

heeheee...
my aspiration is to be a sahm so i can stay at home....so how?
my husband's aspiration is to strike toto and stay at home with me.
we invest our lives so heavily around each other too.....very jialat to think many decades down the road when one of us need to be gone

A JC friend posed me this question about my ambition when we were 18. My answer must have startled him, haha. Told him it was my dream to have a family with 2 kids and be a housewife. My husband must love me enough to allow me to make choices about working. So yes, I am really glad that I am living my dream now

[jedamum]

wonderm:

For 1-to-1 coaching, we do it ourselves so we can manage the level of supervision and help given to them. Looking back, we left them mostly on their own in lower primary, the most supervision and coaching from us was during P5/P6 period, and slowly reduced (let go) after they entered Sec school.

I thought i can do 1-to-1 for Chinese, but that was an extremely tedious period. It is difficult to teach language which requires very good foundation on the part of the one who teaches and able to know what is within syllabus, as Chinese scope is wide.
I am opposite from you. I micromanage in lower primary. Very intensely. by early/mid P4, I slowly let go as partly the kid now has a mind of his own, more responsible and most importantly... i can't catch up with the syllabus.

[jedamum]

metz:

A JC friend posed me this question about my ambition when we were 18. My answer must have startled him, haha. Told him it was my dream to have a family with 2 kids and be a housewife. My husband must love me enough to allow me to make choices about working. So yes, I am really glad that I am living my dream now

my ambition was to have my own space(living in a family of six, having to share almost everything, queue up for bathrooms and getting hand me downs all the time...) . now sahm....a lot of own space and i call the shots. lol. sahm living with ILs is a different ballgame hor.... ..that one...can frustrate oneself to no end....

[janet88]

ammonite:

janet_lee88:

The other reason for not sending son for tuition was largely because of MONEY.

:hugs: That must have hurt your husband even more. Indeed a painful thought.

But our first kid is often part experiment. My second child is definitely better prepared simply because I have a better idea what to expect.

Yes, it was painful...bcos like some mummies here, we felt it was primary school...why is there a need for tutors? Many of us went through primary school without tutors...but I needed CL tuition :oops:

To re-organize family expenses to include tuition was :frustrated: but we had to. Hubby just couldn't coach son for his daily Math homework. After 1-2 months, son started to pick up and could do his homework.
My first kid is, sad to say, an experiment. Whatever mistakes we made with him, we hope it doesn't repeat again.

Understanding Math doesn't mean can teach math...no offence to anyone ok...hubby understands Math (algebra NOT models) but those prob sums were indeed killers.

[ammonite]

ScaredyMum:

I really :salute: you all for being able to make it happen despite the ever increasing cost of living, tuition fees etc etc...

I have been wishing to quit my job and be a SAHM for 6 years now, but never have the courage to do so. No matter how I calculate and calculate, it just seem impossible to live on a single income, with the high tuition fees, housing installments etc and I am not even talking about expensive holidays and other indulgences.

:hugs: Don't compare. There are many individual differences in circumstances that you won't know online. Single income can range from $4k to $50k a month. Commitments can be a flat bought at a high or a condo unit bought at a low. Number of dependents, allowances for parents, long term medical bills etc. All different. There are SAHM with maids and a car, and others bao ka liao. Even among these two groups, there are the well buffered and the poorly buffered.

Just do what you think is best for your family, you cannot do anymore than that.