Primary 1 Life Is Harder Than I Thought -- Here's What I Learnt
If your child is going to Primary 1 next year, here's what to expect
By Estelle Low SY -
Some parents seem to glide through P1, but it was no walk in the park for me.
My daughter and I spent nearly the entire year of her Kindergarten 2 life mentally preparing ourselves for her transition to Primary 1.
Primary school hours are much longer than K2.
You’ll have to sleep and wake up much earlier.
You’ll have to learn to buy your own food during recess.
You’ll have to take a school bus.
You’ll have to be a lot more independent.
Don’t expect to see your K2 friends in your new class.
These were my most frequent utterances to her.
Her preschool chipped in too, by including Primary 1 briefings in her K2 curriculum. Yet, nothing quite prepped us for the realities until she actually started primary school.
The first month of P1 life went surprisingly well. I was a typical proud mother – yes, we made it to the seventh year of parenting! Status upgrade! My daughter adopted a positive front, though she had mixed feelings of excitement and fear.
Soon, however, our enthusiasm gave way to weariness, trepidation and even dread.
Here are my biggest struggles and takeaways from my first P1 parenting gig, besides having to wake up at 6am every weekday.
These two words – ting xie (听写) – are enough to trigger trauma in parents. Also known as Chinese spelling, ting xie has evolved to become a lot more comprehensive (and consequently, demanding) than what I recall it to be during my primary school days in the ’90s.
Beyond writing a set of Chinese words as the teacher recites them, my daughter is required to recognise the words by sight and within a specific context (eg. in a sentence), as well as the corresponding hanyu pinyin, the standard romanisation system for Chinese. I’m all for well-rounded test formats like this, but that also means more work for the education IC at home – in my case, me.
Each ting xie list has an average of 20 terms (not words), which is honestly quite intimidating for me and my daughter. We conquer that by breaking it down to learning four or five terms every night. It has worked so far, but the dread of the routine is real. Whenever she laments that ting xie is “boring”, I can’t help but give a knowing smile.
Teachable moments?
“Not everything in life has to be fun.”
“Just because it’s boring doesn’t mean that it’s not worth doing.”
Bottomline: Suck it up.
Seeing how my daughter struggles with hanyu pinyin, I wonder if she would cope better if I had sent her to phonics classes during preschool.
When public holidays and school events like PSLE draw near, my stress level rises. Does she have school on those days? Is there an early release? What should she wear and bring? Does she have Home-Based Learning (HBL)? These are just some of the questions occupying my mind – strangely, not my husband’s. That mental load (behind-the-scenes thinking, planning and worrying that’s often done by mums) definitely exists for me.
Enter Parents Gateway, a mobile app by the Ministry of Education (MOE) to keep parents up to date on school programmes and activities, including school holidays, changes to dismissal timing, and HBL through announcement letters. It’s meant to be the first port of call for parents to find out if they should be sending their kids to school on special days, and whatever else to note.
I know, students are supposed to take notes and relay the messages to their parents, then bear the consequences if they don’t. But in this digitally connected age, the buck doesn’t stop here.
There’s an unspoken expectation for parents to stay up to date by doing an information hunt in the Parents Gateway app – amongst 101 other important apps on their mobile phones. Failing which, they risk being seen as ignorant or negligent.
In this regard, I’m immensely grateful to be part of a WhatsApp group chat* with the parents of my daughter’s classmates. In this group chat of 30-odd participants, we would find out in a jiffy the dates for spelling and ting xie (which are subjected to changes), whether or not our kids have homework, and whether there’s school on days with special events. I was initially hesitant to join this group chat, but it’s been nothing but life-saving and reassuring so far. Beyond the hard facts, it feels comforting to know that I’m not alone in trying to keep up with school changes.
*Group chats like this are generally not supported by schools for various practical reasons. In my case, it started with a parent sharing their mobile number with fellow parents during a P1 orientation briefing session.
Another important acronym besides HBL? SLS. It stands for Student Learning Space, an online learning portal by MOE to “transform the learning experiences of Singaporean students through the purposeful use of technology to enable students to engage in different learning modes, including self-directed and collaborative learning”.
From the get-go, I’d assumed SLS was optional, something that kiasu parents with unlimited resources would lap up. The result: I ignored my daughter's requests to log in to SLS... until her form teacher prodded me during a parent-teacher meeting five months later, reminding me that the weekly assignments via SLS needed to be completed. #Mumguilt max. Learning point: Listen to your child more, especially when it comes to schoolwork.
That shameful realisation made me dedicate a day every week to let my daughter get into SLS and do what she needs to. It's heartening to see how motivated and engaged she is.
However, I’m aware that significant resources are required to make it happen: at least 20 minutes, a laptop and a digitally aware, Chinese-literate as well as a physically available and willing parent to guide the child, especially for lower primary levels. Patience is truly a virtue here.
Often, my daughter needs my help to read out and explain the instructions and questions that are written in Chinese. She also needs help in coming up with the answers, which have to be typed or recorded in Chinese. Streamlined learning? Yes. Independent learning? Not so much. As well-intended as it is, SLS presents different types of barriers, and I imagine most parents have their version of struggles.
I can only be glad that I have some work-from-home flexibility. Being physically present for my daughter has encouraged her to open up and stay positive about school. (Boss, you reading this?)
With staggered recess times and designated seating arrangements as part of the Covid management measures in schools earlier in the year, my innately reserved daughter found it difficult to get through the most social part of school: recess. She would confide in me, often on the verge of tears: “I didn’t talk to anyone during recess. I feel lonely.” According to her, two of her classmates seated around her were BFFs, and seemed to be hanging out together all the time.
My daughter, very much like her passive mother, is not the type to initiate social interactions, preferring to be approached instead. “Look,” I wanted to say, “your mummy was just like you but I turned out fine. I still have five friends that I keep in touch with!”
But I found myself encouraging her to take the first steps (although I know how hard it is for me). She didn’t heed my advice and continued to be bothered by her lack of friends in school. At one point, I got so exasperated that I said: “I’ve already told you what to do. If you don’t want to make the first move, you’ll have to accept whatever comes.”
At another point, I tried to normalise things: “It’s okay if you don’t have close friends in school. Just remember that you have many good friends outside school who care about you.” By “many good friends”, I’m referring to her K2 buddies and a few playdate friends that I’ve set her up with. That sounded comforting to me, but it didn’t seem to quell her fears.
At the height of her social anxiety, I learnt that she “fell out” with a friend in class. Based on her one-sided anecdotes, I concluded that the friend was a Mean Girl whom she was better off without. My emotionally charged advice was: “Leave her alone. You don’t need a friend like that.”
Apparently, that advice didn’t sit well with my daughter, who continued to show signs of stress, such as low mood and difficulty sleeping. At my wits’ end, I emailed her form teacher, who graciously played mediator and set up a private session during school hours for both kids to talk it out. That was all it took for my daughter to feel better about school. Screw mum’s advice.
In a bid to prescribe my solution, I had misread the situation: all she really wanted was to mend the friendship and move on. Perhaps it would have been more helpful if I had laid out the options and supported her in coming to a decision objectively, instead of pushing my agenda.
I just wish she had some of my Mean Girl radar. Maybe we can work on that in Primary 2.
Estelle Low is the editor of The Singapore Women’s Weekly. She loves her kids unconditionally, but hates how parenting is a severely undervalued job. In an ideal world, the unique strengths and contributions of every mother are recognised everywhere, every day. And more fathers pull their weight without having to be told what to do. DM her on Instagram (@estellelow) if you agree.