Surviving the PSLE – Emotional Guidance for Tweens

Teenagers in a classroom

Besides addressing academic excellence it is equally important to understand the need for the child’s emotional development. Many a times the parent is too focus on academics and they neglect the fact that they too need to pay attention to developing their child’s emotional intelligence. As a result of overlooking development in this area, the child enters society being socially inadept and even have lifelong emotional demons to deal with.

Without having a proper grounding in how to deal with emotional issues a child will grow up without a strong sense of security. This would affect their self esteem and hamper their potential career advancement. This is extremely detrimental for the child’s growth and it would stunt his development.

I strongly disagree with the ancient teaching of kids should be seen and not heard. Applying such an authoritative approach would serve only to plant the seeds of discontent in the child and make him scorn the adult. This dissatisfaction would increases insecurity as the child grows up as they may have had their feelings constantly invalidated. It could cause the development of paranoia or even depression which may need lifelong treatment or therapy.

I personally believe that a child should be given the freedom of expression and to learn through role modelling . They should be taught from young on how to manage their own emotions and be able to determine by themselves what is acceptable and what is not. One should not be without critical thinking skills and just blindly accept what others offer as it may not be in their best interest all the time.

How to nurture an emotionally resilient child?

There is no textbook answer to this question.

I don’t claim to be a guru in understanding childhood psychology but being an educator and having dealt with many different kids with a spectrum of personalities and learning abilities I can say that the following will work with most children.

  1. Spending time to understand the child in depth.

    This could be done by intentionally by participating in a myriad activities together with the child and be able to study his behavior and reactions in different situations. With this knowledge the parent would be better to advice and counsel the child if they are having difficulties or face obstacles as they know clearly their child’s weaknesses and strengths.
  2. Giving the child the opportunity to make mistakes

One of the common errors which I have noticed that many parents do is to solve all the problems for the child without letting the child even lift a finger. They justify this action as showing their love to their child and not wanting them to suffer. The irony of it is that their so called “selfless” act is actually detrimental to the child as they deprive him of the ability to learn how to cope with such situations independently. The child maybe over reliant on the parent to solve and may end up to be extremely arrogant driving away friendships with their bad behaviour. They grow up “fragile” and may collapse when the parent is no longer able to solve problems for them.

Don’t rescue your child from a challenge. Teach them how to face it!


It is preferable that the child be given clear guidance on the side and that he tries to resolve the problems on his own. In this way he does feel that you do care about the issues that he is facing and at the same time is being taught what will be a favourable action to solve the immediate crisis. In the event that they face similar problems in the future they would be able to tackle it head on.

3. Use real-life examples/ cases to instill life values.
You just have to open your eyes to look around and you can easily spot candidates as case examples to show how various emotions have been handled properly or incorrectly. There are plentiful examples of cherished friendships, betrayals, manipulations and exploitation all around us. Highlighting such examples will give your child and idea of how good or how bad a person’s life can turn out to be based on the decisions that they make intentionally or unintentionally.

I feel it is important to let your child see both the good and ugly true nature of humans. They shouldn’t be protected from undesirable scenes which you think may “scare” them. I rather they be aware then be painted a rosy picture and see it crumble when they meet with undesirable characters in society.

My Kids Experience


My kids have had a rather challenging childhood growing up in a single parent household. Readers who have been following this blog for the past 10 years do know that my kids grew up with a practically non- existent father in their life. who chose to abandon the family for selfish and ridiculous reasons when the kids were starting to get more assertive.

They didn’t miss out much without a so called “father figure” around as they were not robbed of opportunities and experiences which most other families are able to offer. The blessings that they have had been more then compensate the perceived loss of a so called ” incomplete family” by society’s standard.

In fact without having to suffer endless and mindless fabricated drama from delusional individuals the kids have grown up relatively scar free. Having deliberately made an effort to ensure that they were emotionally and mentally stable the kids have learnt how to set appropriate boundaries around them. They have first hand experience and knowledge that there are devils in human skin around us and that go around wearing masks. It is up to our vigilance to ensure that we don’t fall prey to these vultures.

I exposed them to various different types of people in society and stated clearly the reasons why I needed to give them this exposure. The kids had the chance to see for themselves the fate of
– young delinquents who live wayward lifestyles
– former delinquents who made good
-former A* students who have fallen from grace
– individuals who perished being in toxic relationship
-individuals who got out of toxic relationship and thrived
-the happy /sad individual

Through analysing all these characters the kids realise that it is important to know to deal with the different emotions which such people experience and learn how to efficiently control their own emotions so they will not be easily manipulated by others. It is one thing to be emphatic towards others however this should never be at the expense of depriving oneself for the benefit of others.

They have learnt that it is essential for one to know and understand the triggers to various emotions and it is OKAY to show such emotions. We are feeling individuals and to not show love, hate, disgust and other emotions would only mean that he is only a cold blooded narcissist. Such a person is unable to develop any real relationship with others as he is only wanting to constantly manipulate others and has no shred of remorse for all the evils done. Unfortunately for them there were many such people around the kids while they were growing up and it did result in some trauma which took quite awhile to resolve.

It had been a trying time but all those individuals have been cut off totally from our lives and we will never be re-inviting them back in. We certainly don’t need such chaos in our lives ever again.

My personal thoughts

I support the holistic development of a child. It is important to cultivate one in all areas instead of solely focusing on academics. It is important to be an all rounder and be able to handle ones emotional efficiently so that one will not be shortchanged by the greed and selfishness of others.

What will you do as a parent to develop your child’s emotional resilience?

*( With this post I mark the end to this series of post in ” The Transition from Primary to Secondary”. This series had taken longer then expected as I now only write in my

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Posts in the series
Introduction Post
-Surviving the PSLE (Part 1) – Streaming
Surviving the PSLE (Part 2) – The Science Exam
Surviving the PSLE (Part 3A) – The English Exam
-Surviving the PSLE (Part 3B) The English Exam
Surviving the PSLE(Part 4) -The Mobile Phone

Surviving the PSLE – (Part 4) -The Mobile Phone

Electronic Gadgets

Allowing tweens mobile phone devices in school/ home has been a heavily debated topic for the past few years. There are two camps to this debate. One side feels that they are too young to be able to properly control the usage of this electronic equipment while the other say they are old enough to be responsible. Many experts too have weighed in on this issue and their opinions are also divided.

Many parents main concern is that their kid would abuse the use of the mobile phone and neglect their studies or be exposed to unsavory characters online which may prey on them if they are on their mobile phone. These parents believe that their child is not prudent enough at this age to make their own judgement on what is right or wrong.

What is the right age then?

There is no “model answer” for this question however there are many things that one has to consider before a mobile phone can be issued to your child.
Here is a list of question to ask yourself .

  1. Has your child exhibited that he is able to take care of his/her own belongs properly?
  2. Is your child pro-active in informing you about his/her daily routine especially if there are any sudden changes in it?
  3. Is he/she aware about cyber bullying, sexting, pornography and gambling online ?
  4. Does your child understand that there are many online child predators and how to guard against falling victim ?
  5. Will he/she know about online privacy and to keep his/her detail confidential while being online on various social media platforms?
  6. Do they know who to seek for trustworthy information if he/she runs into questions while being online?
  7. Is your child able to respect and follow rules that you set for mobile phone usage?
  8. Does your child know how to keep his phone virus free and in a good condition?

Do your children have mobile phones?

Yes they do. In fact all of them have been having their own mobile phones since they were in primary school. The youngest had her mobile phone given to her when she was in Primary One. She travel from school to home by herself independently via public transport and had to be contactable.

The main reason why the kids were given mobile phones was to ensure that we can always reach each other . Being a single mom I have to make sure the kids can get me and each other easily.

What I did with the kids

Back then I made sure the kids understood all the different functions of the mobile phone. They also learnt how to safe guard themselves while being online before they could have their hands on a mobile. They had to prove that they DESERVE a mobile phone before it was given.

Initially I install net nanny type of software in the boys phones when I gave it to them. It backfired big time. The boys were able to hack in and unlock all the restrictions on YouTube and internet that I have placed!! In the end I gave up and removed all the phone monitoring software that I had installed prior. I found that the more I wanted to restrict their usage the more they wanted to challenge my authority. They were constantly testing my bottom line by their actions. They were constantly stress and annoy me with their hacking skills. Removing restrictions actually turned out for the better. When the kids new that I didn’t want to battle them on this they were able to self-regulate and control their own usage without having me interfere in their daily usage. We are still working on preventing excessive usage/ reliance on the phone though!

Having a mobile phone is more of a need than a want nowadays. This is especially so with the mandatory use of Safe Entry requirements for entering all buildings. Scanning of the QR code is a must and definitely less dangerous then flashing your identify card around.

If have notice when you are out the public phone is non- existent now. To be able to contact anyone one would truly need his/ her own mobile device. Luckily a mobile phone is not too expensive nowadays and there are many reasonable packages which one can choose from.
Currently the kids are on add -on lines on a SIM- ONLY package . They have a 30 GB package data with Caller- ID. This works out to @$25/kid a month. By choosing such a package our monthly household mobile bill is an affordable $100/month.

Now that both boys are in secondary school, a lot of school information is disseminated through google classroom or google meeting. They too need to participate in online Whatsapp chat groups and even zoom calls on a regular basis therefore the need for a sufficient data package for use.

Tiger girl who is still in Primary school is not so reliant on the mobile phone. She chooses to bring her mobile phone out only when needed. Necessary information is disseminated through the Parent’s Gateway and it is easy to use the phone in the general office if needed.

Will the kids abuse the use of the Mobile phone in school?

The secondary schools that the boys attend have very strict mobile phone usage policies while they are on the premise. For Doggie boy’s school they have a medicine cabinet within the classroom which has individual slots for each student. Every morning the mobile phones are collected by their form teacher and lock within the glass cabinet before lessons start. 5 minutes before school ends the same process is repeated in the reverse process.

In Monkey boy’s school there are individual lockers for each student where they will have to keep their mobile phone in during class time.They will only have access to their phone during recess and when lessons end for the day. At the end of the day it is still dependent on your comfort level if you decide to issue your child a mobile phone.

In the last installment of this series I will be touching on Emotional Guidance for Tweens/ Teenagers.

Posts in the series
Introduction Post
-Surviving the PSLE (Part 1) – Streaming
Surviving the PSLE (Part 2) – The Science Exam
Surviving the PSLE (Part 3A) – The English Exam
-Surviving the PSLE (Part 3B) The English Exam