Growing Pains

Ever since Alycia started attending Standard 1, she has been severely sleep deprieved.  Each morning, she gets up at 6am sharp, leaves the house when the skies are still dark and on most days arrive home by 2pm.  Twice a week when she has Han Yu Pin Yin class and Calligraphy class, she comes home at 4pm.  After a quick snack, off she’ll go for swimming at 5pm or attend Mandarin tuition. If she’s given homework by her school teacher, she would have to hurriedly complete it before she eats dinner.

By the time she finishes her dinner, she is dead tired and would knock off by 8:30-9pm.  Thank God Alycia is quite a disciplined child and very independent. I leave almost everything to her and she can take care of herself (shower, dress up, dries her hair with a hair dryer, clips her nail herself, prepares herself for school every morning with minimal supervision from me, completes homework without nagging from me, etc, etc). She knows that she has to sleep early so that she can wake up without feeling groggy the next morning and will obediently go to bed by 9pm, plus read a story book without being told at times.


One afternoon last week, she was so burnt out that the moment she stepped into the house, she walked to the couch and then dozed off. After an hour of nap, she woke up and only had her lunch at 3ish pm! Life is indeed tough for school kids these days.

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Author: Shireen

I am a WFHM of 3 lovely girls - Alycia, Sherilyn and Cassandra. I am a health, fitness and clean freak. I am a freelance content writer and occasionally help out my other half in his food catering business. I also do product reviews and accept sponsored posts on my blogs. I hope you'll enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy sharing my day-to-day adventures and mostly boring ranting :P Welcome to my blog! :)

23 thoughts on “Growing Pains”

  1. poor Alycia… it is not an easy school life… but I am sure she will adapt to this new life soon…

    eh.. have to go mandarin tuition in std 1??? so soon? and perhaps can rearrange swimming time to weekend??

  2. Ian has his Han Yu Pin Yin class at his school every Saturday. I am reluctant to sign him up for more xtra classes as he has to stay up until 10.30pm and continue the next morning to complete his homework at least twice a week. The amount of homework he gets are reasonable but the time he takes to complete his chinese writing are overwhelming. Just imagine having to sit with him and watch him write stroke by stroke for a good 2 hours! (with me rubbing off and him whining away in between).

    How I wish Ian could be as disciplined and obedient as Alycia.

  3. poor Alycia… think most Chinese schoolgoers are like this.. coz during my time, it happen the same too!! :p but I am not as discipline as Aly that I don’t automatic.. :p

  4. I have to agree, life is not easy for them and I don’t understand how my son’s classmate can go for tuition, piano lesson, swimming lesson and badminton lesson besides having to finish their homework.

  5. poor thing la. if possible, send her to her room at 8am instead. if she sleeps at 9pm, she only has 9 hrs of sleep. i once watched astro about HKG and othe asian kids are sleep deprieved and sleep 1-2 hrs lesser than western countries kids due to our homework,etc.. for alycia, try to give her at least 10 hrs of sleep and see what happens.

  6. aiyo, kesian. sigh… indeed tougher now. with so many side tuition classes & activities we enroll them into. last time we go skool also not like tis wan! everything is getting more competitive now

  7. I agree with you, it is so tough for school kids , school till late afternoon, then tuition, enrichment class then homework , , 24 hrs isn’t enough for them. Haihhh

  8. at least Alicyia can take a nap as for my boy he woke up at 5:30am everyday and only reached home 7pm as I need to put him at daycare which he can’t take a nap at all. No worry as I saw many kids at the daycare which need to go to daycare even after their school at 3pm.

  9. growing pains alright – i’m still dealing with it! 🙂

    want to ask, when did alycia became so independent? was it when baby c came along or she was like that when sher came along?

  10. Syn… Alycia became so independent about a year ago. She became even more independent when both hubs and I were away in Penang for 3 weeks when Baby was hospitalized for her surgeries.

    When Alycia was a toddler, she was very rebellious and very very cranky. I thought she would be a real problematic child. But when Baby C came along, Alycia turned around 360 degrees!! So take heart, Rye Li may change into an angel too… esp. so if you have a #3 *wink*

  11. shireen! lol!….at this point in time, no. 3 ain’t happening-la. i love myself more. lol.

    it’s really good to hear how alycia has changed 360 degrees. yea, i wish rye li would become like that too (not just if no. 3 comes).

  12. looking at alycia, i am imagining how shan leo will be when he begins standard 1 next year. hence, mummy is gonna stop his kumon next year 🙁

  13. the transition from kindergarten to Primary 1 is very taxing to many kids as well as the parents. Luckily alycia is a very discipline and independent girl. My girl, Crystal felt ill after her 1st primary one exam last week.

  14. I think her schedule is too demanding for Std 1, issit necessary to cramp so much activity in a day. Although she’s managing in well,I really pity her lack of sleep.. I hope I won’t have to subject Amber to so strenuos schedule when she goes Std 1 next.

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