Day +1506 : "Wake up, Joseph!"

I am fine today.

Joseph don't like to go to school. My wife had a hard time to wake him up in the morning.

My wife normally wake up at 5:30am every morning and took about half an hour to get herself ready to go school. After that, she has to wake up Joseph which is a very challenging task. She sat beside Joseph and keep on saying, "Wake up, Joseph!" patiently for about 15 minutes to wake him up completely. But the story didn't end here; instead of appreciating what my wife did, Joseph became angry with my wife, even up to the point cursing her, "Dead Mama(死妈妈)" :-(

Although her kindness was not appreciated, my wife didn't get angry. She repeated this every morning. Almost every morning, disgruntled Joseph cried and made all sort of noises after waking up.

He became a different person when he came back from school in the afternoon - cheerful and smiling.

"I don't like school," is the answer when we asked him the reason he behaved so differently.

One day, I asked my wife stop calling Joseph to wake up repeatedly. I told her to just call him once and that is all. He has to be ready at 6:30am; else my wife, who fetch him to school everyday, will not wait for him.

This is to pass back the responsibility to wake up and to get ready for school back to Joseph. And we were so glad that this approach worked :-) He didn't curse my wife and cry anymore and he managed to be ready by 6:30am every morning.

Loving parents tend to take too much responsibility away from their children, making them dependent on parents too much. This creates very "responsible" parents but irresponsible children.

My wife and I are learning to "return" the responsibility to our children. Joseph case encouraged us to work harder along this line :-)

See you next post :-)