…Actually I had wanted to write the title as it was meant to be. But I decided against it because it may be a little racially insensitive.

Anyway, what is this No Way Parenting? I am actually not advocating it, but I thought about how W put it to me the other day, I thought it was pretty funny.

It was actually my birthday and W called me from UK to wish me. We had quite a long chat (It is rather funny because W is actually JT’s friend from university but we seem to get along very well that we have sort of become more like friends than she is with JT.). In the course of our conversation, she told me about her boys’ reading journey and her own experience handling or guiding their education. She told me that with R (her eldest, now 9) she did it the ang moh way, until one fine day (this was when R was nearly 5 and J, her second, was 2.5), her mother told her to stop it. In W’s words, “the ang moh way, basically was NO way lor!” I laughed really hard at this statement. The No here is not a rejection of the westerners’ conventional wisdom of parenting. Rather, it was referring to how relaxed it is. No means just nothing happening at all!

And so, thanks to grandma’s timely intervention and the Ladybird keyword reading series, the boys were on their way to better reading. According to W, because J started together with R, J’s reading is more advanced than his brother’s.

This also got me thinking about Joshie Josh’s education a little. I had not wanted to be pushy about it, but I think a certain amount of pushing is necessary, especially when it comes to boys. I noticed too that if we had not nurtured a love for books and reading in Joshie Josh, and left him to his own devices, he would be running around all day, riding his bike, kicking his ball, and playing with his cars and trains.

I have no qualms about putting Joshie Josh through a rigourous education and I believe with early nurturing and the instilling of good habits (including our own) we would be able to help him cope and even succeed with the local education system.

And just to register this:  I am definitely not for the No way….