Freaked Out

Yesterday was Coco's last day at her English enrichment centre.

It sounds strange that the only subject Coco ever gets 'enriched' in is her best subject huh. I guess the belief that 'English is not that easy' is so ingrained in me that it subconsciously affects the way I do things.

She started going for enrichment since P4 as she told me that 'all my friends are there'. Like most working mothers who nurse a guilty conscience of not being there for their kids when they need help, I let her take up English since the enrichment centre was more known for their English teaching.

I can't really vouch for the effectiveness of the centre since I am never there to monitor her progress except during the time when she receives her report book. But that's another story.

William had asked me to keep her at home for the last few days, not just for PSLE, but also for her not to interact with other kids in school. It sounds strange again huh? Well, William believes that some kids treat PSLE as a battle, and that includes psychological battle as well. And there are kids who might tell Coco things to make her feel lousy about herself and wreck her confidence just before PSLE.

I had asked Coco to stay home instead of travelling for a good two hours to and from the enrichment centre but she being the sentimental girl, wanted to attend the last lesson, and probably bid farewell to her friends.

BAD decision.

For some reason, the teacher decided to ask the children about their Prelim T-score individually.

When she heard Coco's T-score, she exclaimed,"Oh my goodness!" and went on to ask the rest of the children their T-scores, which invariably were better than Coco's.

Coco freaked out.

Before knowing what had happened just a couple of hours ago, I was freaked out myself last night as I was trying to revise Situational Writing with her. She was making all sorts of ridiculous grammatical and spelling errors, and at one point, she only got 3 out of 6 for Content Marks. Panic seized me. I asked her exactly what's going on and she told me what had transpired in class.

She felt smallish, lousy and thought she was going to do really, really bad. She started saying her English was lousy. When I quoted her New South Wales results for Writing and English paper in which she got Distinctions, she said,"There are other people who got High Distinctions." and felt depressed about it.

I got a rude shock of my life.

The Coco I know is calm and cool, okay, 'bo-chap' is more like it. I have never seen her really freaked out or panicked. She has always believed that her English is above average even though it is not excellent. But even then, she is a rather confident girl in English. So I couldn't believe what I had experienced, seen and heard last night.

I was on the brink of tearing.

After William heard about it from me, he marched right into her bedroom and started giving her a mini lecture on why she could not compare T-scores across different schools, and assuring her very loudly that her T-score was 'perfectly okay',"I said you are OKAY! You don't go and believe what other people tell you! I say you are OKAY means you are OKAY!"

Before she slept, she asked me,"What will you do if I get 220? What will you do if I get 230?"

I didn't have the perfect answer. I didn't want to be hypocritical and said that I would be happy with it. In my memory, I haven't told Coco a lie. I just said,"I would just accept it."

It was the first time I saw her freak out or panic.

This time, I decided to be the protective mother - I am keeping her at home till the first day of PSLE.