From newly-weds to parents of three girls
I have not updated this blog for so long, and so many changes have happened since.
I married my beautiful wife more than 10 years ago and we now have 3 beautiful daughters.
The journey I’ve had with my wife is nothing short of amazing. From newly-weds, we ended up finding out we were expecting our first daughter. My wish of being a stay-at-home father was coming true. I could now work and take care of my first girl at the same time.
Somewhere along the line, we also birthed another brainchild of mine – my Math coaching center called Learning Out Of The Box where my team and I now coach primary school students in preparation for their Math exams as well as PSLE Math.
Part of the reason why I opened this center was to fulfill a need that I saw many Singaporean parents faced. We struggle with keeping up with Math syllabus changes and teaching our children at home. I wanted to help parents like these – parents who didn’t like Math and primary school children who didn’t like Math. I wanted to turn the Math haters into Math lovers! Just like how I made my own first child love Math.
Since then, my wife and I have welcomed two more additions to our family. Our family is now a happy five-member team and I’m a proud father of all my daughters’ achievements.
One thing I have learned as a parent is that, no matter what result our children bring home from their exams, we have to recognise the effort that they put in. Many factors cause our children’s grades to drop or fluctuate. At the end of the day, it’s not so much about being top in the class, but being proud of them for putting in the effort and trying their best. We want our children to be good citizens with good values, not just children with good grades.
And this is what my coaches and I teach at Learning Out Of The Box too. There is so much pressure in achieving good grades that we forget to ask our children important questions like their likes and dislikes.
Once, I was approached by a mother who was so upset with her child’s bad grades in Math. She wanted her child to score better marks in his Math exams. But I noticed her son was very hesitant to enter the classroom.
After getting to know him better and giving him time to adjust to the lessons, I finally sat down and asked him what he liked to do. He said he liked to play football. I paid attention to this and would use football as an example to teach him key Math concepts. He started enjoying the class. Eventually, he opened up to say that he was scared of Math because his previous tutor would scold him for the slightest mistake.
