Thanks for your response.
I wasn't upset with my husband until he made our son scream and cry by forcing the little to do his homework. I didn't argue with him in front of the kid. He whispered those words "I haven't finished my words with him." to my ears when I took the child away. I said nothing at all and showed no temper at all. But I admit the way I went into complete silent was not a good thing to the child either. And I realised the way I intervened this morning may pass a confused / negative message to the child, i.e. "daddy wants to get the homework done; I cried, then mommy came to pull the homework away and gave me a hug." I knew it wasn't good but at that very moment I just couldn't stand the fact that my husband was forcing a child of 3 to do his homework when the little one showed clearly that he didn't want to do it. I know one day soon, maybe from K2 on, I have to be more strict with the homework thing. My point is: he was only starting school for 4 weeks and probably got not much idea about homework. Why so strict? Looking at my child scream at the top of his lung I knew he was on the verge of exploding (under extreme stress) I couldn't help removing him from the scene.
We didn't argue in front of the child. I had a talk with my husband over the phone after my child off to school and he accused me of being "loose" to my child.
I agree with that to a certain extent, when the child reaches to a certain age he has to take responsibility of his homework. I don't argue about it, but not when a child is only 3... I am not saying doing homework is not important, it is important, but I was thinking can't we take a small step each day and gradually get the child to understand the importance of doing his homework? Why be so pushing and drastic?
Thanka2 & Cara, as your kids are older, can you share experience if you need to 'force' them to do their homework? Or do they realise it is their 'job' and they must get them done? As I said, I don't want to force children to learn, what I will do is that I will set them a time as "home work" time and I will ask them to sit there and get their homework done. I want to make it into a habit. Then again, I will do it gently... Am I being too ideal here?!
Ah! I wrote a response and then it got deleted! Ugh!
Anyway, the synopsis is:
-Approach is everything. "Forcing" your child to do homework is totally different than requiring your child to do homework.
-We have always done homework WITH our son. We sit down at a certain time every day and we do homework with him. It's interaction--just like if we were playing a game or blocks with him. We have NEVER given him the option to NOT do homework. He doesn't even have the concept in his mind that it would ever be his choice whether or not to do it. And homework is no different than playing and "being a kid" because it's all about interaction--children don't have the same concept of "work" and "play" as we do. If you make it a game, everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING, can be play.
-Homework is the same as anything else scheduled in his day. The same as meals, baths, bedtime. He doesn't have a choice and he never has had a choice. He THRIVES on this type of predictability because it gives him confidence and a sense of security.
-Now that my son is older he might whine for 20 seconds (i.e. "Awwww...do I REALLY have to do it?") but he gets over that pretty quick. I was actually so surprised this week when he just went and got his books, sat down on the sofa and started doing his homework. He's grown to be more and more self-managing and he takes pride in the fact that he can do it by himself and doesn't need Mama and Dadda's help as much. But, for the past two years every single day one of the adults in our home sat down and did the homework WITH him. We never just handed the sheet to him and said, "Here, color this." And then tried to convince him to do it. We sat down and said, "This is coloring time. Which color do you like? Okay, let's use that one." We sat there and gave him encouragement, "Oh, I really like how you're doing that. It's looking pretty good. You missed a spot. Etc."
-I understand your concern about children growing up too soon. However, that is in comparison to how it is done in other countries. If you want your son to be in the HK public school system this coloring sheet may have been the least complex activity he does for the rest of his school days! You always have the option of not putting him in kindergarten. In HK it's not compulsory and he could enter primary school when he's 5-years-old. My only feeling about that as a primary school teacher is that the children who do not go to kindergarten really struggle in primary school. Why? Because they are not ready to "go with the flow" and "bend to the rules" which is a necessary survival skill. Actually, that coloring sheet is far less about your son's coloring ability and probably more about them learning about the structure of how things are done. It's developing a certain set of habits in your child. Without this socialization and habit development your son will really struggle. The HK public school system does not usually look favorably upon children who feel they are an "exception" to the rule. If the rest of your son's class is expected to color a paper, unless your son has some disability (and even then, it will only be modified) he will be expected to fall in line and do the same. In a city of large classrooms of students and increasing competition for good school spots, students who don't "go with the flow" will struggle. My school is very accepting of students but I know that there are students here who were literally expelled (kicked out) of their previous primary school. Why? Because they were bad kids? Because they weren't smart? NO! Actually, they're usually really great, intelligent kids but they didn't work well within the structure of the school. So, this whole homework thing is a structure issue. If you want your child to be part of the institution (school) he has to start now learning how to play by the rules. Doing homework is one of the rules. And no one is an exception.
-It's actually to late to say, "But, he's only 3-years-old, it's not fair to expect him to do actual homework"--once you start school in HK you're a students and students do homework--no matter what age they are. As long as it's age-appropriate material then there really is no way to argue against it. The only viable option you have is to withdraw your son and let him be at home until he's in primary school. It's really unlikely anything is going to change as far as the way things are done in HK in the next 2-3 years before he enters primary school so basically you're just postponing the inevitable. The earlier he learns to "go with the flow" and accepts this is how it is done, the better chances he'll have assimilating into the local system.
-It's really a harsh reality here in HK. Your son's workload will gradually increase over the year. Now he's doing coloring. Soon he'll be doing pre-writing exercises (connecting dots). Then he'll be learning his numbers. He'll be writing in Chinese soon as well...simple characters like "ten" but he'll have to write them 5-10 times. It's a gradual procession but if you can't manage to help him do a coloring page that is colorful and fun it's going to be tough going when he has to do stuff that's kind of boring and maybe doesn't make sense to him. You just need to figure out a way to inspire him meanwhile not giving him any other options. It has to be a dictatorship, not a democracy when it comes to these things.
