How to motivate DS to work hard on his own? Wanted to ask him to read this thread so that he will understand how stressful and lack of time he will have next year!


He loves to play computer and watch TV and I've told or more like scolded him to \"wake up\" umpteen times. :nunchuk: :nunchuk:

Hi Daisy.p, I can relate with your stress & anxiety. As working mum I also struggle with fatique and trying to squeeze in time for my children. If not for my maternity leave during this Nov-Dec holidays I would not be able to help DS1. I've had to neglect my newborn baby in order to prioritise DS1's revision. Painful decision but i felt it is necessary. I also felt very overwhelmed trying to motivate my DS. After failing his maths in SA2, he still did not find initiative to do revision on his own.

After reflecting a while, I realized that I need to examine my own beliefs about my children and the system I have in place at home. These are some beliefs I have and how I've tried to translate them into actions with my children:

1. I believe that all children are motivated to do well but not necessarily motivated to do revision. Why because revision can be boring. Children are motivated by enjoyment and fun. Hence as a parent, I need to inject some fun into revision. Not every aspect but some of it. For eg, I would attempt some of the exam/assessment questions myself and turn them into a little competition between my DS & myself and put the timer for 5 mins per question. DS was thrilled that he was competing with his mama. When there is serious revision to be done, I make sure DS knows he has timeslots for play as well. His hard work is rewarded with play. Finally, I track his progress and give him specific feedback on what he has accomplished. When your child knows he has made progress, it is very motivating. If he keeps feeling he is trying and yet failing or not making progress, he will be demotivated. Focus on Progress rather than results.

2. Children are motivated by parental encouragement and concern - why? because they really want to please their parents - our love is their fuel for their emotional well-being. I look for specific strengths that my DS displays during the revision. For example, he may demonstrate good visual skills, good use of vocabulary or good analysis of the questions, etc. I tell him and he feels good about himself and he knows I'm appreciating his strengths. I'm no angel, I assure you - when I scold my kids, I can be very harsh. But I balance it out with lots of hugs and conversation about non-work stuff so that our relationship is spiced with laughter and endearing moments. My belief is if I don't fuel my child's love-tank, his motivation to do anything (including revision for PSLE) will dry up.

3. Children need to be taught explicitly how to revise, set goals, manage their time. I often assumed or wish my children know how to do all these things but these are really skills which need to be taught explicitly. How do I then help him learn these skills? Explicit demonstrations and explanation of what I want him to learn. When I get DS to revise a topic and I want him to learn a specific exam strategy, I show and then tell \"why\" and \"how\" it's done.

4. Enthusiasm and Motivation is contagious. I realize that if I show enthusiasm for what my children are learning, they will \"catch\" it. I need to show persistence in doing some of those difficult exam questions so that they will learn persistence by seeing me model it. If I show interest in their topics, then they will also desire to find out why their mama finds it interesting. I must admit, I started studying P5 syllabus these past weeks out of panic because I realized DS was behind in his understanding of key concepts. At the start of the first 2 weeks, I literally put in hours studying. My children saw that I saw down and pored through pages of their work, and when i started setting them work, they realized that if their Mama was working hard and taking responsibility for learning, they better take their learning seriously. I found that it was important for my children to SEE that I appreciate their school work is not easy to understand and it takes effort to learn.

5. Revision is a Habit to be cultivated and structures need to be put in place for it to become a habit. Children's attention is also short so I need to put in place schedules that allow for learning in bite-size and recharging to take place so that energy is kept up throughout the day. I'm a great believer of putting in structures & infrastructures eg time-tables, proper study areas with adequate stationery & equipment. I have inculcated in my kids specific time for study, play, tv, computer, etc. They know that when they must put in blocks of 45mins of study time before they can take 15min break. Computer time is restricted to 45mins for each block and only allowed twice a week even during holidays. TV time is allowed maximum 1 hour per day during holidays and only 30 min during school days. Even when I'm not in the house, my children know these are the rules. Most importantly, in order for something to be a habit, I must hold my children accountable for their actions and follow through with appropriate punishment or reward for their behaviour.

As my maternity leave is coming to an end and work starts in Jan, I'm mindful that I need to be even more disciplined about imparting revision skills with DS. I believe it's shared responsibility because of at this age, he still needs me to help him do his revision. I believe I'm investing in important lifeskills that will take him through his educational years in the future too.

My son also had 3 days worth of supplementary classes last year and in the end flunked his maths for SA2!! He did reasonably well at SA1 so I wasn’t too worried so I ended up feeling so depressed for 3 days when he brought home his results. I really regretted and I had assumed that all these extra classes were enough so I didn’t monitor his learning closely. On top of that, he was having Maths enrichment during weekends.


This past 5 weeks I’ve been DS1’s personal tutor because no tutor was able to commit to come to my home to tutor him even at a cost of $70 per hour!! All said that my location is too far. Most live either at East or West and I stay in the Central area. Can you believe that? Although it was very painful for me to learn the P5 Maths syllabus and having to tutor my son personally, I was able to discover where his gaps are and he’s told me that he’s clearer now about the concepts.

Even if parents decide to have home Tutors do the work, I have found that some teachers don’t do a good job of explaining concepts and see where your child is really struggling.Having studied alongside with my children these past weeks, I have begun to appreciate that you need a very good teacher who can help a child understand concepts and deal with challenging problems at P5 & P6 levels, especially for Maths & Science. I’ve sent my kids to so-called "famous" enrichment centres for the last 2 years and yet the methods have caused more confusion and they were not able to apply properly.

My plan is to write a letter to the school and ask the school that my son will not be staying back for supplementary classes & to give me any supplementary notes/work that needs to be done. Actually the schools can’t force the children to stay. I did it for my DD2 in the 2 months before SA2 and the teachers didn’t stop me. But DS1 was afraid of the teachers hounding him for not attending supplementary class so I didn’t do it for him. Next year I will insist and I’ve decided that I would rather have control over my children’s time once the official school hours are over rather than the school taking control since they’ve not been able to do a good job of teaching.

Thanks libran269.


I will pm you my current agent. I’ve used 3 agencies before and this current one actually specializes in transfer maids and good thing is there are so many maids to choose from - Indon, Phil, Myanmar. So many agencies complain they lack supply, yet this agent has many maids coming to them to help them find employers, primarily because she charges them only 1 mth fee and treats them well.

Yes, my baby sleeps with the maid. I need a lot of sleep so I let my maid look after in the night. But to be fair to her, I allow her to have afternoon nap together with baby. When maids look after babies, you must really look after maids well so that they will feel motivated to treat your baby well. Babies can’t tell you if they have been mistreated. So far things have been good. My 2nd helper has been happy looking after baby and he looks happy with him, smiling and staring at her alot.

It was the case for DS3 as well and that maid was with him for 5 years! After that I was worried whether he would have adjustment problem but I got him to sleep in my room for a few weeks after my maid left and then I got him to sleep with the older siblings. Withdrawal syndrome was minimised.

When I had my 3rd child, I had my first maid who looked after my 5 year old, 4 year and baby. The older kids went to half day childcare while maid looked after 3rd child. My maid was able to juggle housework and 3 children while we went to work and eventually worked with us for 5 years. What made it work was: I trained my maid to be organized, whip up meals in short amount of time for 6months before baby came. She turned out be quite a fast worker too and could cook well and organize her time for housework so things really worked out.


After this maid left, I had new helpers and although my new helpers were experienced, they are not good with juggling with childcare & housework & cooking, unlike my first helper, even though my kids are older and more independent.

I recently had my 4th child and I brought in a 2nd maid because firstly, my first helper is afraid to deal with infants and there’s quite a lot to handle already for her current workload. I also had a confinement nanny for the 1st month and my 2nd helper came in only at the 2nd month.

Bottomline: Having 1 toddler & 1 baby - it’s possible for one maid to handle provided you have a current maid who is well-organized, well-trained to manage young kids when you’re not around. Generally, I also "give & take" when it came to housework. Children’s safety was higher priority than cleanliness of house so I don’t get angry with my maid for not being able to finish housework when she was juggling with 3 kids. As long as kids were safe, well-fed, happy, that’s good enough for me.

Now that I have 2 maids for the last few weeks, I could share with you what has worked so far if you choose to have 2 maids. Define very clear roles for both helpers. Do not have overlapping responsibilities so that you can hold each of them accountable. I also chose to have maids of different nationalities ie one Indon & the other Filipino so that they have to speak in English to each other. I don’t want a situation of maids "ganging" up on their Employer!! I chose the 2nd helper carefully in terms of personality so that neither one would dominate the other. So far things have worked out well between my 2 helpers and I’ve got good night sleep and I can continue to do my usual activities with my older children.

Financially, it’s definitely very heavy but my plan is to have 2 maids for 2 years until baby can go to childcare when he turns 2. So you might also consider what’s the cost for 2 years or however long you wish to have this extra help and whether that’s something you can afford.

I used to get frequent sore throats all year round until a few years ago, when I started to be more attentive about taking supplements & herbal remedies. Since then, my kids and I have been able to prevent mild sore throats from flaring up into serious ones.


The moment I’ve the slightest sore throat, I’ll take "Wellness Formula" & by Source Naturals with Zinc Lozenges also by wellness. Zinc is a great mineral for sore throats. Go to iherb.com to check out these 2 products - there’re a lot of testimonials about Wellness Formula. There’s also kids’ liquid version as well.

Now my whole family and friends have been able to recover quickly because of these 2 products. They’re most effective when you take them at the first signs of sore throat. Twice when I woke up with severe pain, I took a heavy dose of Wellness Formula and I was amazed that within one day, the sore throat was gone. Previously I would need antibiotics to recover.

Spending this morning reading the past few posts has given me a lot of food for thought. DH & I are very passionate about imparting the value of choices & consequences. What’s important too is giving age-appropriate choices - that’s the tension. What will be decisions that our children can make on their own free will at a particular age? Having 4 children now (I just delivered baby no 4! and now in confinement), I ask myself, how do I decide what decisions/choices would I allow my children to make at their particular age? Thinking back on my first 3 kids, I realized that giving freedom of choice without awareness/education is like throwing your child to the black hole.


When my kids were in pre-school/toddler, it’s alot of teaching about this connection between choice & consequence from concrete daily egs like touch fire, you get burnt. Disobey certain house rules, you experience punishment. Obey certain rules, you get rewarded. If kids didn’t have this foundation where parents model consistency in executing the link between choice & consequence, it becomes difficult in the primary school years. The idea of choice is really a complex one, - it’s hard enough even for adults to understand truly what it means to exercise one’s personal will and to live with the expected & unintended consequences of one’s actions - hence, we need to also realize that that when we give important decisions to our kids to make, this power of choosing has both intended & unintended consequences. There will be certain decisions that are as predictable as "place your hand on hot stove, you experience pain" and there will be decisions where you do A, and you may predict you get B and then something else which is beyond your knowing. How do we teach our children to be comfortable with ambiguity and taking risks in the face of the unknown? That’s the challenge of parenting.

As a parent, I have a theory of happiness and success and my children "catches" that theory by watching how I lead my life and the choices I make. And then I catch myself, that this theory that worked for me may not necessarily work for my children because they are unique individuals. DS1 & D2 are now more at the "conversation" age and I ask myself, how do I have conversations that help them become more aware of Values that guide their choices and yet help them to understand the idea of living with ambiguity, change, intended & unintended consequences. Yet, the "controller" side of me will hand out a checklist of choices that explicitly teaches my kids about choices I do not ever want them to make for eg smoking, taking drugs, watching pornography, etc. I tell them that there are choices they could make that could end up with them living the consequences for the rest of their life. Not to frighten them, but just stating them as a matter-a-fact. I remembered my mother’s voice - No smoking, No drinking, No gambling. House rules. Till this day, I’ve not touched a single cigarette, drank a bit but never gotten drunk, played mahjong, got alittle addicted found it detrimental to my sanity, gave it up many years ago. Mother’s rules. Made sense.

Thanks everyone for your well-wishes. I’ve just been discharged on Sat but Baby still in NICU to ensure his lungs are ok and he can feed well before he can come home, hopefully on Tue. Meanwhile, I’ve been very busy pumping milk every 3 hours and trying to relax and slow down in the midst of my noisy household that has 3 kids running around.


I managed to buy my Ameda electric dual pump from Mumsfairy.com and other stuff and I must say that their service is excellent and prices are cheaper than retail. Free delivery also for the amount I spent. They rushed out the delivery for me when I told them I needed the pump urgently so that was very nice of them.

For most of my other stuff like strollers, car-seats, I’ve been buying from online forums like motherhood, mummysg, ebay, etc many 2nd hand but in good condition. There’re also lots of bargains for new stuff too that some mummies got as gifts but never used and you get a great discount. Some of these stuff come from "rich" people with 1 kid who can’t seem to "control" their children like getting them to sit in car seat and they give up after 6mths or can’t get their kid to sit in stroller so they also give up. So people like us with 4 kids and need to save every $ benefit from their lack of discipline lor. lol.

Hi Everybody! I just delivered ds4 on 12 oct 4am!! Emergency c-section. Baby 36 wks but small so in nicu for a few days to help lungs mature. I’m doing ok but doc wants me to stay in hospital to stabilize my blood pressure.


Tigger88 - nxt will b u! For piles problems I’ve bn taking daflon which is available over counter @ guardian. V good to brg down inflammation + lots of water & cranberry juice.

Hi Everybody,


I’m counting down to Baby No 4!! Can’t wait for baby to come out. Having piles problems and juggling with exam prep for DS1 (in P5) & DD2 (in P4). Thankfully DS3 is in K2 so no exam.

4 kids in 11 years!! Just wondering how I got myself here. haha. Anyway all the kids are very excited about having another kid in the family. It’s really noisy in the house.

I’m blessed that I run my own training business so I can take the next 3 months off before starting work again in Jan.

It’s almost 6 years since DS3 was born so feeling a bit rusty about the whole baby thing. I guess I’ll just take each day as it comes. Hope to be able to have better success breastfeeding No 4 this time.

Will keep you all posted when I deliver!!

Hi Gaffy,


I’ve 3 kids and have tried half-day CC, Full-day CC, and preschool. For my 2 older ones, they started half-day CC when they turned 2 years old and then I switched them to full-day CC when they were K1-K2.

For DS3, he went to half-day CC for one year and then switch to preschool for 3 years.

For my 2 older ones, they went to Montessori-based CC.I had to switch DS1 when he was in K2 because I discovered he was still struggling to read after 3 years of doing phonics!! I realized it’s not so much the system of teaching but the Principal & teachers do not take my feedback seriously - kept thinking I’m over-reacting. I finally bite the bullet and switched to another CC - one that was willing to work with me to help my children. So at the next CC, my priority was finding a CC with a good reading system and Principals & teachers who are willing to listen to parents & work with you. This was Faith Montessori at Bukit Timah. Initally I was full of doubts about how I might find a CC that would take my kids at K1 & K2!! But I realized if I had chosen this path, then the path will open up for me and I just need to be persistent in my search.

My DS3 went to Faith Montessori for 1 year but kept falling sick because of his severe rhinitis and doctor said he needs to be in a non-aircon environment. I made the painful decision once again to switch DS3 to a non-aircon pre-school so that his immunity will not be compromised severely. He’s been with Arts Kidz at Tiong Bahru for 3 years and hardly falls sick there and academically he has blossomed very well. For the first 3-4 months, he hardly spoke a word in school and was so shy but he’s grown so mature & confident since then.

From my experience with my 3 kids, I found that my decision-making was guided by the developmental needs of my children. The 2 older kids needed more help in terms of reading and academics and Faith Montessori was flexible enough to meet my needs. For eg, for K1-K2 kids, children don’t need to nap and they also have a time-slot for more traditional classroom teaching so that the kids can transit to Primary school more easily instead of the "free-flow" classroom in a Montessori environment - I like that blended approach. They also had a good English & Chinese reading system in place.

For DS3, I was guided by his Health needs and so my Criteria shifted to non-aircon environment being the top priority while academic became secondary. If a child is sick often, he can’t absorb much learning. I’m glad i made this decision because DS3 has become so much stronger and healthier because the home & school environment was conducive for his immunity.

In short, consider what are your primary criteria and what are your secondary criteria and each child will have their own unique needs and let their needs guide your decision.