Two Weeks After School Started

While doing his homework last night, my CNN satelite news reporter a.k.a. my boy suddenly paused and said he had some bad news to tell me.

Ian: Mommy, I have a bad news. (pause while waiting for me to respond)
Mommy: What's that?
Ian: XX, YY, ZZ and some others got rotan strokes on their palms today.
Mommy: Huh? Were you one of them?
Ian: No, I got my Ejaan all correct but those who get one wrong will get one stroke, two wrong two strokes.....Teacher says it will be like that from now on.. must get all correct..
Mommy: mumbling.. my dreamy boy.. soon your turn will come..
Mommy: Was it painful and did anyone of cry?
Ian: I don't think so.. XX says not painful at all and YY says a little bit of pain..
Mommy: Anyone cried?
Ian: We are in std 2 already and we don't cry.
Mommy: ......

This year, his class gets a very strict and efficient BM teacher, unlike last year's one who hardly marked their work and only rushed to cover the topics when exam was near.  This one teaches at lightning speed.

Being in the smart class, the teachers expect a lot from the 8 year olds.  I was told that only good teachers or must I say strict and fierce ones, were assigned to these 2 classes.  My boy's science teacher is the assistant headmistress.  Since the first day school started, he has been bringing home 3-6 homeworks everyday with at least 2 pages each.  The first week of school he brought back homework to build sentences in both BM and Chinese not to mention "Ting Xie" in Chinese, Moral and Science and "Ejaan" in BM every other day.

One thing about my boy that drives me up the wall is that he likes dilly dallying while doing his homework.  One night on the first week of school, as usual, in between doing his homework, he would make room for "many short breaks" doing unnecessary things like making an aeroplane out of his ruler and rubber, bla bla bla...  When I went to check his homework, I realised he had copied them all wrong and that's the time he threw his monsterly temper tantrum as it was way past 10.30pm and he was getting exhausted from the long day. 

His bad behaviour really pissed me off and I was blown up.  I threatened him and he was given two options. First: If he didn't redo it now, then there'll no TV tomorrow which was a Saturday.  Saturday is the only day where he gets to do whatever he wants to do.. PSP, TV, computer games, comics... In his own words, his day.. Second: He can do it tomorrow but his privilege will be scrapped and I marched back to my room after throwing him those words.  So bad huh.. this mommy when she turns into a monster.. but this boy of mine must really teach him a lesson..

He chose the first option which was to finish his work on the night itself.  An hour later, he came knocking on my door and politely told me homework was done.  This boy, really "gik sei ngor" sometimes.