I have always maintained that I will be this chill, cool parent when my children enter primary school. Sensei won’t freak out about his son’s academic prowess. More experienced parents keep pooh-poohing my conviction and give me a smug look that suggests “Just you wait and see!”

Now I have an anecdote to back up my Zen-ness. So, for the first time ever, I logged on to their preschool’s educational app. I noted that my son was learning the /fr/ sound as they were reading “Frank and the Fruit” in class. I proceeded to make the sounds for them and got him to blend /f/ and /r/ together.

“How do you make the /o/ sound?” he asked. I complied by making it for him.

“How do you make the /g/ sound?” he asked again. I dutifully complied.

“f…r…o…g…frog!” he spelt the word. And here I was, thinking that he wanted to know the sounds of random letters! I didn’t even know that he knows how to spell “frog”! He can 举一反三 (extend his thinking).

It’s okay if my boy doesn’t top his class or even get stellar results in school. He is good enough on his own.