Surprising even to myself, my patience level is quite high when it comes to managing my kids. For an impatient man that is quite a feat.
Summer waking me up at 6.45am on a Saturday to request that I play her Little Pony Castle with her? Not a problem.
Yawns
Singing ‘Wheels On The Bus’ for a world record 15 minutes straight on bus trip? Not a problem.
Nailed it
Stopping every 10 metres on a walk from Marina Square to Raffles Place to stop Summer’s monkeying around? Not a problem as well.
Monkey in action
In fact, all the above happened in a 3 hour span on Saturday morning. So I think I can say for a fact that when it comes to handling kids, I lean towards taking a patient approach.
However, I might have found my kryptonite. Whilst I admit there are a few tasks which make me lose my patience once in a while, namely making the kids sleep and feeding them during meal times, this one takes the cake.
And that mythical task, ladies and gentlemen, is the act of guiding Summer to do her school work.
Terming it as school work is probably pushing it a little, given that it is only 2 pages of alphabet writing from her weekly I Can Read class.
Times I guided her on her work: 3
Times she ended up crying: 3
Which is sort of a perfect record not to be proud of.
Honestly I don’t understand why she doesn’t understand the logic of ‘get it over and done with’ and insist on dilly dallying her way through.
‘Papa see my ‘i’ is like a lollipop!’
‘I write my ‘l’ like a worm!’
Seriously, such statements are only funny the first time round, and not when you have to write 30 times of the same alphabet.
As much as I tried to control, I always end up being too harsh on her.
Oh well, now we know which parent is going to jaga the kids’ school work next time.
Hint: it’s not me.
Additional hint: it's the woman 2nd from the left