Our Poor Kids

I am amazed at the way parents nowadays mollycoddly their kids. Teacher cut the kids hair. Run to MOE or worse report to the police! And it is so common to hear parents yelling at their kids not to run, not to jump and not to climb at the playground! For heaven sake, its the playground. What else are the children expected to do? And after all that, they wonder why their kids only want to watch tv and play games on their phone, computer and game console!

Just the other day, I read this post where this guy was whinning about MOE and the police refusing to take actions after his Primary 6 son was bullied in school. Frankly, I have no pity for the parent. I think MOE and the police have better things to do than go after school bullies. Sure, I feel sad for the kid being bullied but isn't that what school is about? To teach us not only about serious stuff like history, maths and languages but also about growing up and getting along with others and building characters?

As an old uncle, I know people hate it when I said, "long time ago when policeman worn short", but it is a fact that in our days, our parents will just leave us to take the knocks and pick ourselves up. Where in the world do they find time to go to school to complain, make police report? I still have a scar on my hand from my primary school when me and a classmate were using our metal rulers as sword. Did my mother kick a big fuss? No, put a plaster over it and that's it. And how can I forget the fights in school? Although I was not involve in any (in primary school anyway), everytime there was a challenge, the whole school except the teachers will know about it and all of us would turned up at the location to witness the fight. The winner gets to goad about it, the loser simply pick himself up to fight another day. I never see any police coming in to investigate not even when one time one boy got hurt so bad by a stone that he had to be sent to hospital to stitch up his head.

Ok maybe that was 40 years ago. But I adopted the same lais·sez faire attitude towards my kids when they were in school. Better that they learn from the school of life than to find out the hard way many years out that they have been inadequately prepared for life.

If our kids cannot handle a little bit of bullying, how are they going to fare when they go on to secondary school, tertiary, NS or work? The guy who wrote that letter, I not too sure whether he is a Singaporean and has served NS before, but if his son goes to NS and get picked on for being a wimp, is he going to the Chief of Defence Force for justice? Me think instead of running to the authorities, he should train his son to stand up to the bully and sock it back to him!