Day +297 : Nobody is better than you, but still, you are not the best

I am fine today.

I spend more time to look after the two boy’s study now than any other time. Teaching them to study is a very challenging task as they don’t like to study at all despite continuous persuasion and encouragement. The most important and interesting thing to them is to play. As such, my life would be much easier if I could make them feel that studying is equal interesting as playing. But I don’t know how to do this.

Daniel is very weak in Bahasa Melayu (Malaysia national language) subject. Since his Bahasa Melayu teacher is a Malay and he did not explain the subject in Chinese or English, Daniel failed completely to comprehend what the teacher taught in class.

I started to teach him the subject a few weeks ago and in one occasion I asked about his opinion about my ‘performance’ as his teacher.

“Daniel, am I better than your Bahasa Melayu teacher?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“What about comparing me with your tuition teacher last time? Who is better?” I asked again.

“If you score 100%, my tuition teacher would score 75%,” he said.

“Comparing to Mama (my wife), who is better?”

“You are a little bit better.”

“Since nobody can teach you better than me, so I am your best teacher!” I commented proudly.

“No, no,” he disagreed, “the world is so big; there must be someone who can teach better than you.”

“...”, his answer rendered me speechless :-(

See you next post :-)