2nd Princess

It has been a few months since my last post. I had delievered to my second princess on the 3rd of June 2009. I'm thankful to God that I had her delievered safe and sound. And I'm glad that this time round I didn't suffer in great pain! It's just took 5 to 10 minutes to deliever her and with 2 times of contraction. Hopefully, with the 3rd or more to come will be like this.

With the 3rd?? Yup, my hubby wants 3 to 4 children. To me, if I have 2, it is more than enough cause there are lots of issue that I have been thinking of. And of course, the most important issue will be the financial and time.

Well, financial is important in terms of giving her the comfort and safe environment. It is also important in terms of educating her and exposing her to all kinds of talent. I wouldn't want my child to be a genius but at least, I have done my part of responsible in giving and exposing her to certain types of development.

And for sure, I'm worried too about the time that I have to spend with them. I'm a working mother and I only spend a few hours with them in a day. With 2 children now, my hubby and I really work hard and think hard on how to take care of them, how to educate them, what should we do to make them feel love and so on. After the birth of our second daughter, we found that our elder daughter is kinda jealous and she is not getting used to the new environment as we have a new member in our family. We tried lots of method to make her feel comfortable with the new environment. In the end, we have decided to send our youngest daughter to nanny for full day and the elder daughter goes for half day. This is to allow us to spend quality time just with our elder daughter. I spend time with her in the morning and it is my hubby's turn during the night time. As for my youngest daughter, I really spending quality with her during the night time even during wee hours when feeding her. Luckily, my elder daughter do understand this and she won't disturb me when I was with her sister.

Things are getting better after a month. SyuenSyuen started to adapt the new style of life and she can accept our new family member. She starts to carry her meimei around with my help, kissing her whenever she feels wanted to and now, she is a good helper to me in taking care of her meimei. She knows how to comfort her when she is crying, she knows how to wipe her meimei's mouth, she knows how to swing her meimei in the sarong and so on. It is always so so sweet to see her taking care of her meimei and her meimei will smile at her. I like that feeling and hopefully this kind of feeling is getting stronger and stronger.

Patience is the key.

Teaching other people's children is tough, teaching your own children is even tougher. I tried many ways teaching my daughter from speaking to reading, recognizing, morality, attitude and so on. First of all, I teach my daughter to talk but it is hard for my daughter to learn. My daughter is better in listening rather than speaking. She understands what we told her. She can follow instruction very well.

Mood is quite a factor in teaching toddler to talk. If she is in the good mood, she can speak very well, with the right sentence structure and grammar. If she is in a not-so-good mood, she will just say "no..no..no..".

These days I have been teaching her to recognize things on the road. She can catch up with one wording word like the car, road, tree, flower, grass and I'm quite happy with that. So, I started to try two wording words. First, I tried the "lamp post" but she kept on saying "lamp". After several attempts, I said "no..no..no.. is lamp post laa..". This time she finally make up the word, she said "lamp post laa..". Hahaha...this really makes her father laughing at her..ooh no...perhaps my hubby is laughing at me!

A good environment is also very important in terms of building one's character and attitude. I have been teaching for many years and I personally find that children even adults are easily influenced by the people around them, needless to say TODDLER. Toddler is naive. They have no sense of right or wrong. They don't understand what is beating, why you beat her. So, they are even easier influenced by people around them. Just like my daughter, she follows what she saw her cousins were doing. I remember clearly that she followed them jumping down from the sofa. It's dangerous but she has no sense of that. If she really fell down and broke her teeth then, I guess she will understand that it is wrong to do so. But, prevention is better than curing. This is what I did. I neither scold nor beat her and her cousins. First, this is because they are not my children, I have no rights to scold them. Second, scolding and beating is not very effiency in educating her. So, I talk to her nicely. If one day, she repeats, I will punish her ( not physical punishment ) but something that are more direct to the point. For example, no sofa for her for a day or two or cleaning up the sofa as she had made it dirty. Honestly speaking, from that day onwards, I never bring her to her cousin's house. Perhaps, I'm over-protected but this is the best and the most effiency way from letting her learning all the bad manner.

A relaxing and enjoyable environment is also very important when you try to teach your children. Make the whole teaching process very interesting with singing, playing, exercising and so on. Doing art work is what really attract them.

Toddler's span of attention is really short. Make each lesson as short as 5 minutes. Time can be extended as toddler gets older. You could have a short break within each lesson or maybe have a bite. Above all these, you as the educator must be patient. Don't get angry easily, don't give up easily. Try again and again, today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow...one day, your children will get it right. All the best to all the mothers, fathers and educators!