babies

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

家教

This evening, Keston woke up from his nap all flustered as my parents' maid was in my house. He's normally quite friendly with her, but he gets pretty disoriented when he wakes up and doesn't quite like anything out of the norm. So he was crying away and I had to calm him down by asking him if he wanna go Gai gai. I'd actually thought of bringing him to BPP to shop/walk. But cos he woke up so late-- nearly 6pm, I thought we'd just roam around downstairs.

Who knows, he kept pulling me towards the guard house aka main entrance and saying "Kai Kai". I had no idea he knew gai gai means to go OUT!! We seldom use the word gai gai, especially not when we were really going out. Anyway, to distract him...I thought I'd detract him to the playground. He had a blast at the playground, although he's still not willing to play with other kids especially those around his age. There were 2 older kids (looked to be around p1 age)--a girl and a boy, hanging around and they were the only ones he didn't mind standing next to. Not on purpose lah, just that when he wants to play with something and they're standing nearby, he will still go. Whereas if there was another kid standing near the slide, he wouldn't go near at all.

The sky was turning dark and all the kids had left the playground, but Keston refused to go home. The squash court was nearby and he must have seen the aforementioned 2 kids going in with their beach ball...or maybe he heard the 'Pong Pong Pong' sound so he dragged me to the squash court. I glanced in and saw the 2 kids and another older boy throwing and kicking the beachball around the court. The door was closed, so I sat down on a bench at the side while Keston stood at the door (closed) watching them play, occasionally turning to me smiling and going "Kick ball", and then just watching intently.

Awhile later, I heard 1 of the kids saying "Why is that boy watching us?" I didn't take any notice as we were outside of the court and K was harmlessly doing nothing. A couple of seconds later, the girl came out and said loudly "Excuse me!" Thinking she was harmless, I replied nicely "Yes?" And her reply astounded me.
"Can you tell him (Keston) to stop disturbing us?"
And then she stomped back into the court before I could say anything.

Keston was clueless and did not know what happened, but continued smilingly watching the ball bounce around. I was stunned. Firstly, Keston did not do a single thing to them. He did not even make a sound. How had he disturbed them? Secondly, I could not believe that a young child will talk to an adult like that!

While these thoughts were fleeting in my mind, the girl came out once more and repeated her command "CAN YOU STOP DISTURBING US?" I couldn't even believe that it had happened the first time, and it was happening a second time. Within the same minute! I was so mad, I think I said something like "EXCUSE ME? HOW IS HE DISTURBING YOU? WHAT IS HE DOING TO YOU? CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW HE HAS DISTURBED YOU?"
She looked abit (just a tad bit) flustered and she staggered back muttering "Ok Ok Ok". Not an apologetic OK, but more like a oh-whatever OK.

I'm not even a confrontational person normally, but this incident got me so pissed off that you can actually see steam coming out of my ears. Only after I went home, then I realised I should have asked to speak to her mother or ask her what school she goes to...or I dunno, anything! What are kids becoming these days? Could it be true that parents are so caught up in the rat race that there is no such thing as 家教 anymore?

2 comments:

Mrs Sze said...

What you're experiencing happened to my husband also.

He was told off by a small kid to stand elsewhere because they want to play badminton in the playground! Instead of them going elsewhere to play badminton, they actually tell we, adults, to go away because we're occupying the space??!!! Btw, it's the maids who were accompanying these kiddos to the playground. So we know why "这么没家教".

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