I am beginning to get emails from readers and the parents who visited my book website. Reading these emails just confirm the belief that parents want to be 'first hand' involved in their children's studies. One reader asked me whether my 'hand holding' would lead to a 'dependency mentality' in my child and this was my reply.
I was very worried that my 'hand holding' would lead to a 'dependency mentality' in my girl. It was a struggle for me to decide how much I should help her and how much I should let her do on her own. If it was not her final year (P6) I would have done things differently, I would still have time to teach her to be more independent. Since it was her final 10 months, we divided the pie, I would do all the 'dirty' work she just had to concentrate on pure learning and absorbing. Yes I was hand holding her, and this hand holding made her studied so much harder and faster than before, it did not make her life easier. One thing for sure she knew that behind a 'genius' (that was what some of her friends labeled her near end of P6) there were a huge amount of 'untold' hard work. She did not get her good grades the easy way and she definitely learned that hard work would paid off.
When my girl went to Sec 1, I knew I must stop my 'hand holding'. I did not turn off my help immediately, I still helped her in new subjects like history, geography, literature... but definitely not at that level of hand holding as before. Because she had seen the work/tasks that I had done while I was hand holding, she was able to pick up these tasks herself. She created her own schedules (examination preparation schedules, holiday study schedules..) and I would look and approved them. I would give her upper secondary school text books and she would mark out the topics and chapters she needed to read and practice. She is doing very well in her secondary school. I no longer need to hand hold her, I just 'nag' and push her to better herself each day.
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