Ryan’s ambition, Formula 1 and the parents teacher meet

@ 47 months 3 weeks 5 days

Daddy has always been a F1 aficionado for as long as I can remember. Ryan must have inherited the thrill for fast cars from Daddy. Just the other day he told us he wants to become a doctor so he could earn lots of money to buy a Ferrari. It’s funny when I eventually found out he also said the same to his teacher at school, just a different version. At school, he told his teacher this.. ” My mommy said I must go school to learn so I can buy a Ferrari”. Huh.. did I say that? I remember telling him doctors can earn a lot of money though .. mmm.. but then I also did say the same about singers, lawyers and yadda yadda.

Just now I asked him again.

Mommy: What do you want to become when you grow up?
Ryan: A doctor first then an astronaut (no.. I definitely did not mention a thing about our so called Malaysia’s first astronaut)
Mommy: No.. you can only choose one profession.
Ryan: A doctor!! (he screamed in delight)
Mommy: OK.. that’s good. What kind of doctor you want to become? There’s doctor who treats children, animals, ….
Ryan: I want to become a doctor who treats the aliens and monsters from outer space, and the sea creatures under water.
Mommy: How about a doctor who treats human?
Ryan: I don’t want.
Mommy: Huh??? O-o-o…

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Back to Formula 1. Daddy has gotten 2 grandstand tickets for this year’s Malaysia F1 Grand Prix, 2 – 4 April. We didn’t miss the two races in Singapore but this time round I was quite hesitant to leave the kids at home, esp little B.

I told Daddy I’ll give it a miss but after much consideration and with my MIL’s blessing, I agreed to go for the race day and will give qualifying a pass. Knowing Ryan is also a fan of racing cars, we toyed with the idea of bringing him along. I remember how he would nag us to bring him along when he saw the lights and benches being setup during race period. As much as we wanted to, kids age 7 and below are prohibited from the race due to the noise level. Of course we could sign some indemnity and purchase the earphone et al, but it’s really not worth the risk.

Since we have one spare ticket, Daddy decided to bring Ryan along for the qualifying race. We skipped the Friday practise session. It’s not the first time the Daddy and son went out alone (the first time was when Daddy brought Ryan to the KL Tower back in February so I wasn’t too worried if Daddy could handle. Having said so, little did I expect 4 hours later, I saw father and son came home all drenched. Daddy’s side of story was, apparently Ryan had insisted to go home and Daddy had to carry the 16kg boy to the parking lot 20 minutes away, all under heavy rain. I really don’t understand. Why can’t they wait for the rain to stop? Luckily Ryan had a raincoat on but heroic Daddy refused to wear one. ….. When I questioned Daddy, the ever good daddy said ‘BB wants to go home and how to carry BB with raincoat on, it’s slippery’. *chuckled* Silly nya excuse dia. :P

Visit to KL Tower, Feb 2010

 

Ryan likes tall nice building. His fav building is the Telekom building along Federal Highway. Somehow he finds that fascinating.

 

Notice the same smile? Thanks to Aunty Jane for the Ultraman tee.

 
Same smile part 2

 


Ryan with the RM100 earphone. Super ex!

 


Ryan with the Ninja raincoat. No wonder daddy refused to put on one.

 


Day 2 Race Day. My total 7 hours break away from the kiddos.

 


We saw this babe on our way home. So suaku but can’t resist to take pic as I wanted to show it to Ryan. Thanks to the bumper to bumper jam, we managed a good pic. It’s his favourite Ferrari, the F430. Of course his latest craze is now F458
 

While the boys were out, I went to Ryan’s school alone for the teacher parent meet.

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I reached Ryan’s school at 1pm for the parents teacher meet. I spent about 30 – 45 minutes with his teacher discussing about Ryan’s overall progress. Frankly I have no doubt about the school’s excellence in character building but so much cannot be said when it comes to academic. I did not reserve my bluntness and told the teacher frankly how the school failed my expectation. It’s frustrating to hear from Ryan all they did in school was play bubbles, sing songs, art and craft, stories, as compared to other kids his age are learning who are already catching up on writing, counting, phonics etc.

I’m not trying to be overly competitive.. okay, maybe a little kiasu but I’m just being a realistic mommy. I’m not hoping to groom my kids into a genius with extraordinary achievements but I do have a set of realistic expectations that I think all preschool/kindergarten must achieve in terms of behavioural and academic. As much as I’m pleased with the behavioural improvement in Ryan since he attended this school (he’s more independent, more considerate when it comes to sharing), there must be a strike of balance on both enrichment. Unfortunately I’m not seeing that in Ryan’s current school. The most ironic thing was when I brought my concern up with the teacher, she totally agreed with me that the school’s focus is not academic. For examle. Ryan was already learning to write chinese ‘pi hua’ but in Ryan’s current school, they felt age 4 is too young to even hold a pencil. They will only learn proper writing at age 5.  She supported her point with a piece of research article that emphasises children of age 6 and below should not practise writing. Children age 6 – 7 should not write (hold a pencil) for more than 5 minutes. All due to the hand’s bone structure. I was dumbfounded and simply, I just kept my silence.

Anyway, Ryan’s overall feedback was good. He was above average and notably an all rounder. Teacher also commented there were occassions he imitated the Ultraman pose. When I heard that I bite my tongue trying hard not to laugh. Ryan does that at home all the time so I’m not surprised he did the same in school. Before wrapping up, I told the teacher my concern on Ryan being overly competitive when it comes to play (the cannot lose attitude). Well, since the school received so much rave on character building, I guess I’ll give them the task to help me out on that. Teacher assured me she will look into that and help change Ryan’s mindset on winning and losing. We’ll see how it goes in the coming months but likely we’ll send Ryan to a different pre school next year if we want him to have a better foundation for P1.