In yet another judgey internet moment, mother Soon Lee Yong (who helped set up popular parenting forum KiasuParents.com, to hunt for a primary school for her firstborn son) faced a peculiar situation whereby she trended on social media because of one thing:
She didn’t buy a Nintendo DS for her son.
This is the story below as told by TodayOnline.
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Source: Today
Although her son was expecting to get a T-score of 250, the full-time mother-of-two had come expecting three As and a B with a lower score of 230 because she had “spotted some questions that came out (in the PSLE) that he normally couldn’t do, and still didn’t get right”.
So when she received her son’s SMS – all As, 229 – after she was done queuing at the school’s bookstore to buy books for her daughter entering Primary Four next year, her first reaction was “Four As. Better than expected!”
But her attention soon turned to the lower than expected T-score. “229… I was hoping that he would do better because I prepared for him, but he didn’t do well,” she said. “Because of the intense work before PSLE, you tend to get lost. So I kind of guessed that he would under perform a bit.”
So when Mdm Soon’s son SMSed her “Are you angry?” as he walked sheepishly down the stairs to face her, she told him: “(You) can forget about getting your Nintendo DS.”
She had agreed to buy him the toy if he scored 250. She hopes that this disappointment would be a lesson for him given how he did not study as hard as he knew he should.
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I won’t bother pasting the comments here, but you can imagine the horror of netizens when they realised she wasn’t going to buy a Nintendo DS for her son.
Actually, I applaud her for sticking to her word.
As a mother myself, it takes dedication to really prepare your kids for school and hello, she helped to start a website to look for a school for her son ok?
There are parents busy playing with their phones or whatever trivial activities they’re spending their time on, instead of actively thinking about the school their kids go to until they’re K2.
Don’t even talk about parents who outsource their child-rearing to someone else to pursue a singleton lifestyle or worst still, those who abuse their kids.
This mum, spent her time creating opportunities for her kids, helped them with studies and even realistically lowered her expectations to moderate her response to her son’s results.
I agree with her choice in not getting him the Nintendo DS, because it’s a reward for getting 250 points.
If she had caved in to “popular sentiment”, what kind of lesson would her son learn?
That rewards will be given anyway if a target isn’t hit? Why work so hard since the prize is confirmed?
It’s easy for the internet to give parental advice, but actions speak louder than words.
You have to be a parent, struggling between standing firm or being a pushover, to know what I mean.