Failing as a Tiger Mother

If you are not aware of the whole tiger mom thing you can read up on the issue here: Wiki Site: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

By now amongst mothers the title 'Tiger Mom' is well understood and used and in India there are definitely a lot of tiger moms (or tiger parents) around. In places where some of friends live like Singapore and Brunei there are also enough Indian and Chinese people around to have a decent amount of tiger moms and tiger mom culture.

Me? I am clearly failing in this department. A few days after school finished for the christmas holidays and just before we left ourselves we received an e-mail from Rick's teachers with his homework for the holidays (?!?!) as well as some links to websites we could use to do some further 'homework type activities' with our kids during the holidays.......I was very happy this e-mail came into my work account in which the out of office reply clearly stated I would see none of these messages before the 1st day back at school. We did none of the homework and visited none of the sites.

Then we received this week the following message from school:

Dear Parents,

This is to inform you that the school annual day performance will be held on 7^th March, 2014. We are starting preparation and practice from this week onward and children will be assigned roles and positions in their dances. Hence we request you to kindly please avoid any leave from school for your child, till the Annual day function. This will help reduce any anxiety or unpleasantness to your child.

Also if you think your child will be unavailable on the day of 7^th March, kindly please let us know in advance, to avoid any confusion and stress to your child.

As you have seen in case of our sports day, which was a great success due to the sincere practice and effort put in by each child. We request you to please cooperate and help us in this regard.

Looking forward to a great practice session with all the children.

Thanks and regards

The issue is that Rick is going on a business trip next week, yes you read that right, he is joining Eelco on his business trip to Brunei so he can spend a few more days with Jannes & Ana (after the success of the xmas holidays) and have some extra time and an adventure with Dad. He also may be able to attend the Dutch school in Panaga (Brunei) a few days. We also have Oma coming to visit and need to do a US passport renewal with him in Chennai before March 7th......so Rick will miss quite some! You may claim that the Dutch school attendance in Brunei is a tiger mom thing to do but it has a truly Dutch curriculum so for a 4.5 year old there will be mainly play time and songs etc.

Janko has offered to see if Rick is allowed to attend the Chinese school in Brunei for a few days or Eelco could drop Rick on his way to Brunei in Singapore such that Rick could attend one of the pre-schools for multiple intelligences we saw there but really - am not enticed at all. The only one in this who thought of this adventure with Rick's development in mind is his Dutch teacher here in Bangalore who already contacted her friend at the Dutch school in Brunei to see if she can give Eelco and Rick some teaching material to take back to Bangalore for Rick - at the 5-6 year old level, reading & stuff -;)

Regularly I wonder how all this stuff that Rick is exposed to through school and living here is impacting him. I got some very very weird looks when on a cold and gloomy morning in The Hague recently, Rick and I stood in front of the window of the Ayurvedic shop and Rick was explaining all the Hindu gods on display in the window and was explaining reincarnation......

Then on around new year I overheard Rick talk to Jannes about the difference between Indians and Indians, using words like 'natives' and 'that is where I live or used to live'. Fortunately only a few hours later in the Singapore zoo Rick and Jannes made me a lot less worried when we arrived at the Kangaroo's and they shouted out: "Look it is the Easter bunny!" And "Look there are the eggs" when the Kangaroo moved to a more upright position. 

Time to go and see a real tiger mom!