Happiness Journal 13/10/25

Getting my son to read aloud in Mandarin is the last thing I want to do after a long and exhausting workday, but I try my best to keep at it, even if it’s an agonising process watching him read. I think sloths move faster than his reading.

I was getting him to read some story about a bear when he quipped, “This character has the 提手旁 (hand radical). I learnt it from 老师 (teacher).”

I then scanned through the words. Lo and behold, he was right! There are words like 掉 and 抓; I even saw 挣扎 which is a phrase above his cognitive level lol.

Instantaneously, my fatigue vanished like dark thoughts being sucked into a vortex. Not sure if he will become a proficient reader in Chinese in the future, but I am heartened that he has retained a little bit of what he has learnt in school.