Parenting on Purpose

It was an overseas school trip with a difference. The children, all 21 of them, awoke eagerly as they made their way to the campsite, some 80 kilometres away. There were no complaints despite the long road trip; nor were there any hesitations as the young ones  trudged up the final 300 steps to their destination. And the teachers maintained half a smile on their faces, even as they carried their heavy backpacks, and negotiated all 300 of the winding, undulating steps. This was the beginning of an exciting 3-day, 2-night Treehouse Adventure in the rainforests of Gunung Pulai in Johor, Malaysia. And the group was no ordinary school; it comprised 10 families from the Homeschool Singapore Facebook Group, with teacher-parents guiding their children, of ages 3 all the way to 16. Our lovely treehouse abode for the 3-Day, 2 Night Adventure. Ascending the 300 Steps. Photo Credit: Eve Sam The premise of the adventure was simple; for families to get back to the basics and enjoy ...

This feature article was first written in July 2013 for Essential Parenting, an online parenting magazine by the Ministry of Social and Family Development. It has been reproduced here following the closure of the magazine. The changing face of society: Dinners are no longer the same... It is a rather common picture nowadays at restaurants all across Singapore. An entire family of four would be seated either waiting for the food or eating. The father would be surfing the Internet or checking email on his   i Phone or Android; the mother talking to friends or searching for the latest fashion information on her smartphone; the teenage daughter listening to music on her   i Pod or communicating with her friends via WhatsApp; and the little toddler watching cartoons or playing games on his   i Pad. One could argue that the family has the best communication technology there is on the market. However, how connected are each of the family members with regards to the day...

The blue dragonfly glided gracefully above the water surface. Hovering just at the edge of the water, its translucent wings shimmered brilliantly in the glorious sunlight. All was peaceful and calm. For that brief moment at least. Then without prior warning the tranquility of the moment was broken, and a shot resounded in the air; only to be followed by a thud in the water. As for the dragonfly, it was nowhere to be found; the little insect had been  stunned by the shooting of the pellet gun. This was an opportunity not missed by a young boy, who promptly whisked the dragonfly away in a net. All this happened about a month ago. Our family was enjoying a much-needed holiday in Japan, and was visiting Murayama Koen, a lovely park in Kyoto. A group of young boys caught our attention. They were around elementary school age, and were apparently playing in the park after school. They bowled us over with their enthusiasm and technique of catching dragonflies. When we first observed t...

i has taken the world by storm. Today there are few people who do not know what an i Pad, an i Phone or an i Pod is. And that does not preclude children under the age of eight. According to a recent US study, about half of children aged eight and below have access to a mobile device such as a smartphone, a video i Pod, an i Pad or other tablet. The October 2011 study of 1,384 parents by San Francisco-based Common Sense Media explained the findings, saying that the figures reflect the trend among adults, given that parents continually model such behaviour for their children. This trend is not exclusive to online media. According to the survey, the television is still the main entertainer for a child. Results showed that children under the age of two tended to watch an average of 53 minutes a day of TV or DVDs, and about one-third of American children that age have TVs in their bedrooms. When Sue and I first read the survey findings, it brought a certain feeling of dis-ease to us. In ...