Hahahaha, sashimi, I had a sudden image of Darth Vader with That Hiss! Almost laughed myself off the chair. :lol: :lol:

sashimi:

Discipline is not just about stopping the bad; it is also about cultivating the good.

Wow, KSP is full of nuggets of wisdom. This is very well-said indeed!
I think for many parents the word discipline has a negative connotation and we often forget about 'cultivating the good'. Thanks for the reminder

Hi winth!

I use my half-baked knowledge from ages ago to teach my kids to play.
I start with the Bastien books - [1] Piano Party and [2] Theory and Ear Training Party. I don't use the entire series from A to D though, just Books A and B. My 4yo has just completed the B books so we will begin on the below soon if I have the energy!

For DS1, after the above I moved on to John Thompson's Easiest Piano Courses Part 1 and 2, along with Lina Ng's My First/Second/Third Theory Books. Took about 1.5 yrs (K1 to mid-K2) at a very leisurely pace. These are very simple actually, more to prepare for Grade 1 work.

After these, for theory, DS1 started on the Lina Ng graded series (Theory Made Easy). This week we will begin the Grade 2 book.
For playing, let me see... we use [1] John Thompson's Modern Course for the Piano, [2] Hanon (The Virtuoso Pianist) for finger work, [3] the ABRSM sight-reading series and [4] scales, and lastly [5] Czerny Opus 599.

sashimi:

I believe that at some point, you must stop reasoning and simply order the child to follow your instructions. Accept no reasoning.

I agree whole-heartedly with sashimi's philosophy!
My kids are very vocal, very articulate, and if given a chance, can argue their way through any situation with impeccable logic. We tell them that IF the situation warrants a discussion, we are open to hearing their views (but they still have to obey us haha). Otherwise, it's usually we-say-you-do because, really, they are too young to know any better.

My almost 7yo DS1 understands this and is very good at reading the expression on my face, so very little arguments from him. For my 4yo DD, I explain to her that it's important for her to be able to listen and obey us, because if she gets into a habit of wanting to argue about every instruction, one day she will be in trouble if there's an emergency and we need her to obey what we say instantly. E.g. \"step off the road NOW\" is not an instruction that should be greeted with an automatic pout and an \"why should I?\" argument - there is no time!

Probably not very P.C., but I'm old-fashioned and feel that when my kids are young, I want to be able to tell them: do it because I say so!!

A rather extreme example...
I just remembered something that happened to us some time last year. The kids and I were in the U.S. and were in bed at about noon (due to a late night), when the hotel's fire alarm sounded. You can imagine what a horror it was for me to be woken up by THAT blaring. I judged that I had less than three minutes to wake all three kids up (DS1 stirred but DD and DS2 could and can literally sleep through a fire) AND get everyone to [1] wear their shoes; [2] grab their coats as it was late Dec with a minus 20 degrees outside, and [3] follow any other instructions from either me or the firefighters - in my mind I was wondering if we would need to break the windows and be rescued in a very dramatic fashion!

Anyway, I was extremely thankful that when I yelled \"EMERGENCY! EVERYONE LISTEN TO ME!\" they obeyed everything I said instantly, without any whining or argument, because who has time to explain anything then!

rains:

Let me see ... HC was a top school 20 years ago. It was already on par with RI then. I'm not sure if 5 years could make such a vast difference, but my husband got in by 266 points at psle.

Yes, that's what I remember from 20+ years ago; one couldn't get in with 250+ points! Chinese High has always been on par with RI. In fact in those days there were many who thought it was better as it was a SAP school. The boys whom I know from there all had very good PSLE scores; they chose CHS over RI because it offered CL1. Today, many of them are accomplished doctors, scientists, university professors etc.

vlim:

... just wondering it need how much to study in oversea good university like Yale and Harvard... need to start saving my money in my piggy bank... :snuggles:

vlim, are you thinking about undergraduate or grad school for your child?
If you are thinking about Yale, to give you some perspective, during my time in the 90s, the annual tuition for the J.D. (law) program at Yale was about US$24-27K. The M.D. (medicine) program was about US$27-29K. I think the tuition goes up about 4-5% every year, so by now it shoud be about 46-48K, if my math is right. However, do take note that law and med schools in the U.S. typically require bachelor degrees/undergraduate work. So if you're thinking of the undergraduate courses and not law/medicine, the tuition would cost you less from your piggy bank.
---
I just found out from a cousin who's there that it's about $47K this academic year for undergraduates - $36K for tuition and $11K for room and board.

I just saw in the papers that NY will have a new principal next year. Mdm Heng will be the new P at NYGH.

Just a quick comment on the issue of sleep.

If your kids are aspiring to be doctors, for goodness sake don't get them used to sleeping 12 hours a day :lol: .
Reason: they would suffer terribly when they have to survive on a mere few hours of sleep in future, particularly during the final year of med school, and when they are house officers. Housemen have to work l-o-n-g hours with very little sleep, especially when on call. Chronic sleep deprivation is a way of life for these junior doctors in training, poor things...

vlim:

ha ha... poor thing...

I am not ex gep but my boy is currently in p4 gep ... while i would try not to give my boy the unnecessary pressure which you had experience.... Your relatives who ask you to coach their children for the screening tests definetly do not know what is the meaning of being 'gifted' ...

Hiya vlim
Your son is a lucky boy with a level-headed parent. Unlike some of my relatives... :roll: . You're right, they really don't understand what being gifted means, and clearly they don't get the whole rationale of the gifted program. Actually, I don't think they care all that much, since they view the GEP as just a stepping stone to better and greater things!

Hi schellen and sashimi!

Wow, husband and wife team, very cool

sashimi:

zen_mum, I'm from the 3rd batch. You?

I was from the 2nd batch. So was DH. There were only 2 GEP schools then if I remember correctly. Talk about guinea pigs...

sashimi:

GEP is not for everyone. It certainly wasn't for me. I *know* I am smart, and I have valuable talents - unfortunately for me, they simply weren't the kind (academic, sciences, maths, blah blah) that the GEP (then anyway) valued. I suffered, simply because of that. Today many of my ex-classmates are doing great in life, they earn more than me, they fly higher than me. Some of them were even counseled by me back in school! (One thing though, almost all the high flyers went science, the arts pple have mostly ended up as teachers - but nothing new for Sg).

Ha, my DH has always said that he suffered tremendously then and till today insists the powers-that-be made a terrible mistake in the selection (usually when relatives ask him to coach their kids through the GEP screening tests ).

I have a number of classmates/juniors who pursued arts degree; most of them are teachers today who are greatly passionate about their job. Many more went into the various sciences though, hmm, probably because they were brilliant in math/science in the first place.
DH wanted to go to a liberal arts college, but was coerced to go to med school instead because most of his family are physicians. His insufferable parents were ready to disown him if he did not comply with their wishes.
As for me, I was not good at anything... Bad at math and science. Not very good with languages. The only thing I could do was argue very well! Not many choices left for a career...

My younger cousins who have gone through GEP tells me that their classmates have gone into hotel management, banking, food sciences, human resources, etc. And many are teachers. I love that

sashimi:

The GEP has probably changed a lot since the 1980s, so I make not judgments on the programme now.

You're right, it has changed a lot since our early guinea pig years. The focus in the curriculum is very different today, as I gather from my young relatives.

So, sashimi, I take it you're not \"celebrating 25 years of GEP\" hahahahaha.

Are there any parents here who were former GEPers? I was trying to go through all 17 pages of this thread to see if there are any sharings from GEPers... gave up eventually.


Anyway, I just want to add something to this thread, from the view of an irritated ex-GEPer. DH and I were the early guinea pigs of the GEP. Nobody EVER let us forget this fact. The older I got, the more I felt the burden of having been in the program. The GEP label seems to have hung over almost everything we did in earlier years. It was either \"of course you got into med/law school/achieved x-y-z, you were from GEP!\", or \"how come you could not accomplish [fill in the blank], you were from GEP!\". Even today we are still 'suffering' the aftermath... We have had relatives asking us to coach their kids for the screening tests. We have to constantly endure remarks from the !^$&# relatives such as \"so your kids sure get into GEP lah, they would be truly dumb if they can't make it!\" :stupid:

Argh, just writing a few examples is making me :x ...