Paradox and Inspiration 164: Why I Still Want to Have My Ears Pierced

My seven-yr-old daughter waited anxiously for her turn while her elder sister did her ear-piercing at the jewelry shop. And when her sister's streams of tears turned into bawling and wailing, the salesgirl told me that I should have let the girls come at a different time as the younger one would naturally back out upon witnessing her sister's dramatic reactions. When asked if she still wanted to have her ears pierced, she said yes without a moment of hesitation, surprising me. But what took me by an even greater surprise after the whole episode was over was her answer to why she still chose to go ahead despite that her sister complained that it hurt a lot - "I wanted to know how Jiejie (sister) felt."

On pondering how the younger one has always shadowed the sister, maybe it's not that hard to understand after all. She has always wanted to wear the same clothes and shoes as the sister, have the same hair style, buy the same school bag and stationery, and even attend the same enrichment classes (whiich she confessed she didn't like but just refused to give up). The power of sibling identification.

Paradox and Inspiration 163: When You Think Too Much Praises is Harmful, Too Little Too Can Be Detrimental

I was reading this controversial article which argued that praises were bad for children, and what this guy shared in his posting to the article had me thinking for a while. As a child he was gravely deprived of compliments because his parents almost never praised him. When he saw how his friends' parents praised them and his own parents would only criticised him, he concluded that either his parents didn't really like him or he was just not good enough for them. And when others praised him, he assumed that his parents must see something which others couldn't and he constantly worried that others would eventually see the "bad him" and reject him after discovering that he was just a fraud. This guy grew up thinking he was terrible and sabotaged friendships out of fear that his real self would be found out. I never knew that the lack of praises could have such severe repercussions on a child's development. The praise culture originates in the West (and has its influence on Asians in the recent decade), while the criticism culture tends to makes more sense in the East, so, would that guy's life turn out better if he had been brought up in the Asian culture?

Paradox and Inspiration 162: What's So Contemptible?

I have been scratching my head over a guy's contribution of his 4-sentence long comment to my blog post about honey labels. In that brief paragraph he basically stated that he studied law and what he understood about E.C law for honey standards. That was perfectly fine. It was what he said in his second post that really baffled me. "How embarrassing..." he said, "I didn't realise the comment was linked to my Facebook...I do not spend odious amounts of spare time commenting on honey blogs."

Well, according to Oxford dictionary, odious is defined as "extremely unpleasant; repulsive".

His perspective posed an incredible challenge to my intellect. Is such a strong reaction and defense really called for?

Paradox and Inspiration 161: Better to be Busy Than Not?

I smile as I read "The Busy Trap" article dated 30 June 2012 in nytimes.com. Surely, not only the Americans have fallen into the trap. It is a phenomenon of the modern society where the keen pursuit of wealth to create a better life marks the very focus of everyday living. “Very busy!” as a response to “How are you?” is a way of telling others that everything is well and fine, that one is no loafer, is gainfully employed and much valued in the job and have no time for any form of idleness. I laugh at how the author describes busyness as an hedge against emptiness and how people are always sounding so insanely busy and dead tired, because I was no different in the past and now have been trying to do the opposite. Somehow, now I like to sound as free and relaxed as I could no matter how occupied I am. Why feign indolence? I’m not sure exactly why. Perhaps I have become a bit irritable from constantly hearing how busy people are, that time is against them and they have absolutely no time for this and that, how they are going bonkers and how stressed they are at work. I just want to appear to be out of line and atypical. I don’t remember meeting anyone who is not frantic with work or their kids, so maybe I could just be that breath of fresh air. What difference would it make if I add myself to the perpetually busy crowd? So what if I go around announcing to my friends that I am hysterically busy? Idelness doesn't equate with slothfulness, does it? Maybe someone who appears as more free than them or a freak who is busy keeping up with some trivial sounding hobby like drawing or reading would confound them and inspire them to drop their pace a bit?

Paradox and Inspiration 160: Little Chloe, Giant Spirit

My P1 niece, Chloe did her parents extremely proud recently. She was paired with the naughtiest boy in class for a class assignment. Knowing that she would have a hard time getting the boy to work on the assignment, she made a chart with many boxes after school and asked her father for some nice stickers. The next day, she showed her partner the chart and the stickers and promised that she would give tick a box whenever he behaved well and the more ticks he collected, the more stickers he would get. The boy was so thrilled and motivated to fill up the boxes with ticks to get the stickers that he did his best to cooperate with her in the assignment. Their work was assessed by the teacher and Chloe and the boy were named the best-performing team!

What great problem-solving ability and exemplary attitude toward life from a seven year-old girl! Chloe could have just gone to look for the teacher and beg if she could partner with someone else, complain to the teacher that the boy wouldn't cooperate with her, cry and whine to her parents or even threaten the boy that she would inform the teacher if he didn't behave. How often do we adults throw in the towels so easily when we are run into difficulties, even before we could take a step back and think how we could rise to the occasion, how ready are we to grouse and protest that life isn't fair, and how quickly can we brace ourselves during challenging moments and create a win-win situation for everyone?

Paradox and Inspiration 159: A Glimpse of My Child's World

My daughter Jerrie, 10, gave me a fright of my life. Never had I expected a reaction such as that from her. Her sense of emphathy and interpretation of adults behaviour were quite out of sync with my expectations.

During our holiday in Taiwan last December, the whole tour group happened to be enthusiastically bargaining with a young tea salesman over the price of his premium green tea leaves (about S$100 for a small pack of 150g tea). I must say our tour mates were quite skilled in bringing the discount from 20% to 50% in an extremely hilarious way (at least that was how I saw it), haggling over the price as if we had known the sales man for ages). But Jerrie unexpectedly broke out in tears upon seeing this and after some probing, I found out that she felt that the tour group people (including me) were really very mean and nasty to the salesman. She felt very sorry for the salesman and said so many people should not have cornered and attacked just one man and if he had given so much discount, how was he going to profit in his sales.

It was an incident that got me wondering much about my child and her perspectives.

Paradox and Inspiration 158: The Enigma of Tolerance

Tolerance is fervently preached in a multiracial, multireligious country like Singapore so that everyone can embrace this thing called diversity. But can anyone understand how this can actually be achieved in the process?

But how possible is it for someone to appreciate a belief or practice that you have to tolerate because there are conflicts in the different value and belief systems. If appreciation of others' cultures is not a relevant outcome here, what is? Long suffereing, grudges, or pretence? And, in striving towards being a tolerant individual in the society, should one try to be tolerant or intolerant of intolerance?

Paradox and Inspiration 157: The Power of Camera

If you have young kids or hang around with them often enough, you must have noticed this already - that kids are almost too ready and happy to pose and smile when you asked for them for photo shots. The camera seems to be able to trigger some very instantaneous reaction in them, but yet interestingly they don't seem to be very concerned about the result of those shots. Most of them would never asked to look at the pictures you have snapped for them and even if you do show them the pictures, they don't seem to be that interested either.

On pondering further, does this phenomenon apply also to adults?