Lessons I learned today

Aron at the day of orientation 

This morning, we went to my 5-year old daughter’s school for her supposed to be first-day-of-class. Upon arriving early at 8:00 AM, we were instead directed to the school’s auditorium. I just found out then that today was the school’s orientation for new students. Poor me, I was clueless. Blame it to my poor Chinese language skills. I was only informed there will be fittings for their school uniform but nothing about an orientation program. Again, probably some miscommunications happened in between.

Anyways, the parents, together with their kindergarten and first grader kids congregated inside the auditorium. Student IDs were handed out (with my daughter's Chinese name by the way is pronounced as Anya, isn't this cute) and different activities/games were on display. The first activity was to walk while balancing on a narrow wood. My baby walked on it in a breeze and occasionally holding my hands as not to fall down. I’m so proud of her bravery.


The second activity was a simple task of arranging the shapes according to the illustration puzzle (e.g. put the square in a square area, etc.). But embarrassing it may sound, we have not played this game in a long time. We only had her legos to form a house or a tower. I was kind of expecting that she won’t know how to figure this out and indeed she didn’t, save for the last two shapes. I was kind of sad that my daughter had a hard time while most of the kids did it easily.

The third activity was to connect the dots to form an animal picture. Again, I failed to teach her such activity but I thought she would know because it’s so easy. Yes she knew how to make a line but failed to connect the dots in a sequence. Now I was really worried and sadder and resolved to teach her when we get back home.

The fourth activity was a little game about jumping with one or both legs in a designed mat. Well, this one I knew she would not know since we haven’t played such game before. But she tried anyway. Again, we should play this game sometime.


Observing first hand her performances today, then I thought I was a kind of lackluster, irresponsible mom, failing to teach my poor little girl with some basic skills. Such was the price for being separated from her for almost four years in pursuit of my own career. I felt so bad and terribly sad for me and my baby. It's high time for me to make up for all the lost times. My daughter kind of felt the pressure too and she told me she’s tired and don’t wonna play anymore. In my mind, I made a promise to make it up to my baby, to teach her all that she needs to know and to let her enjoy such activities at the same time. Today, indeed I learned my valuable lessons.