and surprised about how homeschooling in Indonesia has been so inspiring now days.
The man behind all this is Seto Mulyadi, and he is a man with passion towards children education. I know him since I was a little girl. He wrote children songs, he is support the anti children abuse association and now he is support home schooling too.
This quote, I really like :
'Children are not grass that they can be cut to the same height. Children are just like flowers, they are different from one another.'
Seto Mulyadi, Asah Pena
And it reminds me that I must not treat and expect my kids to be the "stereo typye" for that age /gender. Because every child is unique.
Speaking of unique, even our family is not the same from others. Being the " expat" in "other" people country sometimes might not be too much fun for the kids. They do not have their grandparents here, so they can't visit or spend the weekend over the grannies place. And they don't have their uncles, aunties, or cousin to play with. They can't attend their cousins birthday parties, can have sleep over with them too.
But I told my eldest , that the way our family is. We can visit and meet her grandparents once or twice a year. But doesn't mean that we are not family anymore. She understands and accepts it nicely :).
I also told her that some family maybe just consist of a mom and the children. Other might be just with their grandparents while the parents are working some where far. Or maybe other children only have their dad around without their mom. But that doesn't make them less than a family.
As for the young one, Maya, for her that is normal. She got Pho pho and kung kung in Jakarta, and the Nonna and Nonno in Italy. That is just so natural for her. I think it has something to do with how , us, as the adults see life , if we see that our life is sad because we do not have our families here, then our children will think like that as well.
We've been friends which mostly are Indonesian , or other "expat" families during our years back in China, and me and my friends kind of support each other. We were pretty close and spent a lot of good time together, because we want our kids to be exposed to other families as well , but since we do not have our own siblings there, we still want our children to have other "adult" figure that they can feel close too, we were like the other "pillars" their children can lay on to.
I think it is healthier for children to have other " grown up " figures that they can related too, like aunts, uncles, older cousins, or grandparents .
And then the other things is about their appearance as well. We never want to emphasized that they are different because they "looked" different or that because their father is"different" or we are "different".
So for them , they are NOT different at all. Which is exactly the way I see my husband and my children .
When someone , who also happened to have children with mixed background or race, told me that they are worry to send their kids to any local school because the other children might make fun of the child because the child came from a mixed race/culture, I was stunned. It never occurred at all in our mind. They want to send the children to the place where they are also other mixed children or white people there.
Children are mean, they said. And since our children are different, they will be the main target at school , so we want a special school for them.
But again, mean children are everywhere , Not just at school. They can opt for homeschooling of course if they want too, but then how about when the children go outside in the neighborhood? play with their cousins? will they be mean too?
Ok... but remember ADULTS are mean as well!! Or...should I said adults are meaner?
We can't protect our children all the time for the rest of their lives, or can we?
Even if I could, I won't choose that , what they called it " cotton wool parenting" or the over protected children.
The children need to deal with the crisis in their life, but not by avoiding them. If so, they will turn out to be a "denying" adult, instead of facing and solving the problem, they will only depends on other to solve their problem ( like their parents?) for the rest of their life? and denying the problem and run away from reality over and over again.
I'd like to be the supporting parents, by the meaning that I would like to see my children to try to solve the problem on their own, or asking me advice for some, they might fail as well, but I won't be the one who will solve the problem , until certain limit ( depend on the children age of course). I want them to know that their parents are there on their side no matter what, and when they "fell" we will be there to "catch" them, but we won't " carry" them all along the way.
I want them to be a responsible adults, who can take the consequences of their own acts. That is how my parents raised me and my siblings.
".....give them the baits and not the fish!"
