Accepting what she is

Today's Coco's PSLE Listening Comprehension. She left home at 6.15am fearing that she might be 'locked out' of the hall if she did not reach school by 7.15am!

She's one 'amazing' creature. One normal days, she wakes up at 6am, and drags herself up from bed at 6.10am, takes 20 minutes to get dressed and tie her hair, and takes another 10 minutes to have her breakfast which consists of just an egg and a glass of milk or milo. And then she hurries off to school at 6.40am or 6.45am. On very important days like this, she jumps out of bed, gets everything done and sprints off to school within 15 to 20 minutes!

She didn't go to school yesterday, citing 'feeling dreadful' as a reason in the morning. So I allowed her to sleep in and had her do her PSLE Science Booklet which was due last week *gasp*

PSLE preparations have not been fantastic, really. Everything still feel as last-minute as if I have not taken no-pay leave for it! Even the Listening Comprehension books - I only bought one for each language only yesterday and she quickly did 5 practices for Chinese and 2 for English.

Why so last-minute huh - Coco requires a lot of reminders over and over again for just about everything. We have done many compositions, but you can be sure that there are very few bombastic phrases in her mind despite writing many already. It's like we haven't done any at all! So we revisited the compositions, and revisited again, like they are something new all over again!

It's not just for compositions. She does the same thing -forgetting things - for every subject. William teaches her Maths and Science. It exasperates him no end that for something that all his students pick up within the first to three times he teaches them, Coco still comes back to ask him for the eighth or umpteenth time! He got so frustrated he said,"Everything is new to you! You don't see that the format is the same, the question is the same, the method is the same - it's just that the story and the numbers are not the same!"

Sometimes you think,"Forget ah? Okay lor, just go through it over and over again lor!" but in reality, there are alot of grounds to be covered for PSLE and there is simply no time to revisit facts, concepts or even stories over and over again.

At the back of our mind, we have prepared a list of schools for Coco to go to whatever score she would get at PSLE. I think we really need to be pragmatic and realistic as parents. Coming to terms with expectations and the child's ability is one big challenge parents need to overcome and I can say in all certainty that it's indeed not easy. I cried over it, stressed over it and accepted it.

I want to be that parent who will smile and put my arm around her when she shows me her PSLE result slip, believing and trusting that she has indeed done her best, no matter what kind of result it is.