Goodbye to Chinese School

After seven years of studying Chinese on Saturday afternoons, Miss B has retired.

This, along with quitting the piano (after 5 years) and quitting Kumon Math (after 2 years), sometimes makes me worry that she is a quitter.

I console myself that at least she agreed to be homeschooled in Chinese. Which is to say she will continue with the curriculum at her own pace. One page a day, Mondays to Fridays.

If she had her way, she would have nothing to do with Chinese in any form.

'Softly, softly' is the best approach for her  吃软不吃硬 personality.

A fortnight ago, I felt so bad having to tell Miss B's very dedicated and hardworking teacher to her face that she will no longer be coming to Chinese class. Despite my best efforts, the tears of guilt and self-reproach spilled over and I had to hasten away to the ladies to make myself presentable. It's ridiculous that at 42, I sometimes feel like the inferior in the parent-teacher relationship, as if I am still a student trying to please my teacher with good grades and exemplary behaviour.

I feel like a parenting failure. Other parents send their kids to Chinese school with no issues while mine drops out at Grade 5.

Miss J is now asking why she can't be homeschooled in Chinese too.

I pretend not to hear, and hope she hangs in there long enough to get fluent and start enjoying her classes.

I can see the benefit of a schooling environment in which you don't get a choice of LOTE but must learn two languages full-time. By the time Miss B next meets her Singaporean cousin (who at 6 is the same age as Miss J), she won't be able to understand a word of Chinese the latter speaks, and will miss out all the fun of Chinese proverbs and colloquialisms. She will be monolingual!!!

She says she doesn't mind learning Italian.

Bilingually Frustrated

Miss B has just had a meltdown tonight over completing her weekly Chinese homework.

She says the homework is getting beyond her, she is falling further and further behind, and she wants to quit attending Chinese School.

My offer to help with the parts of the homework that she's struggling with: 造句 in particulat, was declined as completely inadequate.

She has her mind fixed on only one course of action.

Her distress was so evident that Miss J (who's all of 6) calmly commented, "Mummy, you can see she's very upset. Maybe you shouldn't talk to her now."

Sometimes I wonder who's the mum and who's the child.

As with Miss B's struggle and subsequent abortion of the mastery of the piano, we have reached a bend in the road.

I tried to explain that music and language learning require time, patience and discipline to show results, and that she cannot give up every time she meets a bend in the road.

"There have already been five bends in the road this year!" she retorted fiercely. "And I cannot take it anymore!"

She stormed off to the reading room to seek refuge in her books.

So I proposed a compromise: if I give her the rest of the year off from attending Chinese school, she agrees to homeschool with me five days a week, using the current curriculum but at her own pace.

She has agreed.

Now to explain my decision to hubby and Miss B's Chinese teacher.

It seems to me I have an "Anne of Green Gables" on my hands. Passionate. Temperamental. Unyielding and stubborn. Feather-brained. Has a flair for drama. Bright.

We love spelling

Miss B has been on a competition break since the 2012 Spellmasters.

This year, she announced that she had no plans to take part, despite having made it to the finals for the last two years, and winning the Junior and Senior rounds.

I wisely kept silence, because hers is the kind of personality that if pushed, becomes even more recalcitrant.

Last week, she casually mentioned that there had been a spelling bee at school for the Grade Fives, and she had won. She was to go up against the Grade Sixes this week.

Today, as I was waiting to pick her up, her friend C came up to me. "Bethany won the spelling bee against the Grade Sixes!"

A while later Miss B herself came up, and, with a (rare) broad grin on her face, announced that she is going to represent the school in the Wyndham Spelling Bee at the Year 5/6 level. She then proceeded to give me a blow-by-blow account of the nail-biting rounds and the words she'd had to spell against two Grade Sixes before she won.

I think what was even more important to her than just spelling well was that her friends were there cheering her on and witnessing her giving her all. At Spellmasters, it was always her and a crowd of strangers. Totally different feel.