Are we there yet?? and some mixed feelings about School

Dear Reader,

Yukyin is at week 39 and baby is still not in the mood to show its face... We really start to feel the weight of all those seconds, minutes, hours or days passing one after the other. Everything is ready, we just need to get baby out of Yukyin's tummy. We keep praying for Yukyin's delivery. That's for my first piece of non so happy news, here is the second one...

Last week, we got the first teacher/parents meeting at Myrtille's kindergarten and I won't hide the fact that we are not so happy about that. She is 3 but she is already so far behind... She is not an easy girl and she does not cross your sight when saying "good morning", she likes to play several different educational toys in a short time while the other may just play one or two at max, she likes dancing around in gym class when her teacher asked her to only stand on a predefined area, she has no patience and wants things right away, she does not know how to draw a face (a circle, with two eyes, a nose, two ears and a mouth)... So, yes she is 3 and she is considered "BEHIND"... If it continues, we will need to use other methods says the teacher...

I think I am just going to blow it out: "SO WHAT?".... Myrtille is 3, if she goes to kindergarten, it's obviously that I would like my kid to learn things at school and not having me teaching her at home. I know that I need to play my part as a parent, but is it K-1? She does not even know how to hold a pen correctly! how can you just ask her to draw a face? ... "look at the others, they can all do that"... so what? Just pushing things into a kid's mind is just wrong, there is no more discoveries, no more fun in the learning experience, that's just sad. The first few years are really the years made for the kids to be given boundless fun with the different tools they have under hands. Instead of that, they just try to format kids into a mold. That's SO wrong. Kids just become robots. I do appreciate the religious teaching they offer, but capping a kid at that age is just so sad.

In a flash of an instant, we gave a thought at leaving the public schooling in order to get something more western culturally speaking, but we just can't afford it.

Now that my anger has passed, we'll continue to work on what we thing is really a problem, Myrtille's impatient side and bad manners. Other than that, I just realize how much we are not in phase with school. I thought they were doing things at child's pace... but no, they are doing things at Hong Kong's pace.

I'll work my bottom off in order to get her through that early-learning phase that kindergarten completely missed. I just pray that God will change that city someday.

An angry Val