Interesting Article

My brother send me this link to a very interesting article about one person's view of Chinese Parents and how they raise their children. Basically, they expect more from their children and therefore, that determines how they parent.

I don't know that I could be as strict at some parents are, but I feel like I'm more strict than a lot of parents I know. There is a fine line between having high expectations and expecting too much from our children.

For example, I expect that Lil M can tidy her room before bed each night. This means that she puts up her toys. Now, does she get them in the bins where I want them? Not necessarily. Instead, she puts them on the 2nd bed in her room. Have I made a big deal of this? Heck no. Why? Because she is getting the concept down of getting all the toys off the floor and making the room better. Once this is mastered, then I'll worry about the bins. :) To her, I think the other bed is just one big bin! LOL. (oops, MK, I didn't mean for that to come out!! hahaha) She does also learn about putting her toys away at school.

We've had a fairly slow start to the beginning of the year at home. T moved out, and Lil M and I are just taking a bit of time to ourselves. I'm still trying to decide how and when I will re-do her room. She's got a TON of toys from Christmas and even though we went through them before the holiday, I've clearly got to do it again! I'm not complaining. But I do notice that when she has that many out she doesn't play with some of the others. So, I try to rotate.

Oh, and one new toy I got her is a word building magnet game. She seems to like it. She adds letters to it and it makes 3 letter words. It has one option of giving her a word to find the letters for. It's great, actually. She's taken to coming to me with new Chinese words, too, and so I think we're ready to start looking at that more. She starts Kindergarten next August, so I want to get her ready for that. :)

Peace.