New Phase in Bringing Up Children

Dear All

Bert and I are now straggling between the "baby" stage and "Teen" stage - better known as "Tweens" as in between.

Besides supervising the academic aspect of our girls, we now have to closely monitor and guide them in their social aspect. We realised that this is a very delicate stage as they may appear to be more matured, but in terms of mental capacity in decision-making, they are very naive and "innocent".

As we live in a secular world, friends our children makes with will have very different values from us and very different beliefs and more importantly, very different moral standards. It's very hard to shield our children. It's because they know where we come from, there's this constant battle of what the kids like to do and knowing that we as parents frown on it. So, what do kids do? They sneak behind your backs.

That's where constant monitoring comes in followed with stern disciplining and yet keeping the doors open for communications. The next problem is, the doors of communcation is seen as a closed door by the kids. So how do we as parents balance between being a disciplinarian and being a confidante? It's a tough act indeed. That's one of the reasons why we would not be joining you all for LC tomorrow. We need to get our house in order, Plus with the looming PSLE, the stress level here is pretty high. I know the girls were looking forward to the LC meeting and were disappointed that we are not going to attend. We realised that they are still so young and immature in their thinking still, so we have to take back a lot of privileges from them until they have earned our trust again. This tough stance is a tough call for us, and we know that we are taking the risks that our children would not turn to us nor be truthful to us. But we think we need to have more control and as what Bert had said, we need to see them more. That means, not leaving any one kid alone to attend to the needs of the other, nor letting a kid come back by public bus by herself. It's not that they are not big enough to do so, nor are they not capable to do so, it's just to "shield" them as much as possible from the so-called "evils of the world" until they are matured enough to make the right decisions in life. We don't know how to gauge the time or the age, but we need lots of prayers to guide us and our children. I guess most parents with teen-aged or "tweens" would go through this stage in life. It's just that it's so new to us, and so scary to us, and such stuff are not taught in school.

When I think back, I really wonder how my mum did it. I don't remember being a problem to my mum. Maybe I was a problem to some extend, but I don't remember she ever mentioning it. Perhaps my problem was mainly my studies. ;)

Anyway, God never promised us a life like a bed of roses, but He did promise Graces on the way and that He's always with us. If He gave us such wonderful gifts of our children, we can be assured that He'll guide us to be good stewards to His gifts, for afterall, children do not belong to us for they belong to God.

Love Theresa