All About Your Child

My 4-year-old had his development assessment check at the Polyclinic. His performance for his eye sight was perfect. So far so good, remember my post on my super duper high myopia and how terrified I would be, if it could affect my boys….so no worries for now.

Gentle reminder from the nurse, “Don’t introduce computer games to him till he is 6 years old. Many kids have myopia as high as 300-400 when they reach 5 years old, all because of computer games and too much TV-watching.”

But the biggest words that came out from her mouth was, “Underweight & under-height.”

An average kid of Keatkeat’s age should be at least 107cm tall and weighs 17kg. But Keatkeat is standing at 100cm tall and weighed 15kg.

The nurse checked on Binbin (the 15month younger boy) and made a remark that I hear almost everyday from strangers, “I thought they were twins.”Binbin stand tall at 97cm (3cm shorter than his brother) and weighed 14.5kg (only 0.5kg lighter than his brother). “The younger brother must have been eating his brother’s share of food….” giggled the nurse.

But we know, with Binbin’s eating habits which comprises of so much vegetables and fruits in his diet, its hard that he doesn’t grow faster than other kids of his age.

Binbin passed with flying colours for his 2-3 years old development assessment and all the other on-the-spot tests like ‘name the animal’ and ‘blocks stacking’. Below is the development tracker for 4-6 years old and Keatkeat could do what was beyond his age pretty well, do you know of a child of this age group? Could he/she do these:

Personal Social
45.5mths – Your child uses a friend’s name when referring or speaking to the friend.

51mths – Your child can brush his teeth with some help.

54mths – Your child can dress himself up completely and correctly without help except for tying shoe laces and buttoning or zipping the back of dresses.

Fine Motor-Adaptive
47mths – When shown a picture card of a circle, your child can draw a figure approximating a circle that is closed or very nearly closed.

50mths – When shown a picture of a cross, your child can draw two lines, not necessarily straight exactly, which intersect at any point.

56mths – When shown a picture card of a square, your child can draw a figure with straight lines and with 4 square corners.

57.5/62.5mths – When asked to draw a picture of a boy or girl, your child can draw at least 3 or 6 parts.

Language
52mths – Your child can count from 1 to 10 in correct sequence.

55.5mths – When asked on the functions of a cup, a pencil and a chair, i.e. “What is a cup used for?”, your child can give the correct answers to all 3 questions.

63.5mths – When shown coloured blocks in red, blue, green and yellow one at a time, he can name as least 3 colours correctly.

Gross Motor
41mths – Your child can jump breadth-wise across a piece of A4 size paper, without landing on the paper.

41.5mths – Your child can peddle a tricycle.

53.5mths – Your child can hop at least 2 times in a row, on one foot, without holding to any support.

How did your child fare?

A memory that will scar the childhood…that was what happened to me when my dad threw away all my dolls right before my eyes. I stopped him, I wrestled his strong arm, I snatched my dolls from his hands, but nothing works.

All I could managed was sat there crying out loud, “Papa, don’t throw…don’t throw…” as I peered through my watery eyes, brushing off the trickles from my face with the back of my hands. My voice grew weaker, slowly diminishing as my vision gets blurred from the tears as my playmates goes in pairs down the rubbish chute.

The hurt was done, the ugly emotion of hatred started to grow stronger….its one of the worst memories I had about my relationship with my dad.

I have forgotten why he did that. Maybe he found out that those were my rewards whenever my Mom wins on the gambling table; maybe he was to take revenge on his girl who had never showed any love for him, maybe he was just having a bad mood and needed to vent his anger on the helpless human like toy.

Its been more than 20 years now, but the moment, the emotions that stirred in my soul, the thoughts that raced through my mind are still as clear as distilled water.

Yesterday, Binbin threw away Keatkeat’s Mack head. As you can see, the head is detachable.

No one saw him threw it away, according to both sides of the story, what I could figure out was this….

‘Keatkeat found it difficult to attached the head back to the body and so he left it aside. Binbin probably insisted his brother to put the head in place but was refused. In a fit of anger, he threw it into the dustbin.’

I have emptied the dustbin in the morning, didn’t take much notice of the rubbish in the plastic bag. By the time we knew about this, it was past 2pm already.

Allan wanted to soothe his crying firstborn, who curled up on his bed, like a worm which was brutally stepped on, with his head buried under his bolster and pillow; went down to the rubbish dump on the ground floor in attempt to salvaged the severed head.

But the rubbish dump was piled up to his waist. The loving dad dropped his mission. There was nothing we could do. I carried him up and sat him on my lap, hugged him so tight as he hugged his knee just as tight, rocked him a little like what I used to do when he was a baby.

I felt his pain…I really do…it hurts…it hurts doubly hard when the pain is caused by someone he loved. You can see it on Binbin’s face, his remorse. The 3-year-old caressed his brother’s head but his small hand was brushed away. The little boy said sorry, but it couldn’t reverse the damaged done.

The only way to let go of the old love is to get a replacement.

Allan brought him out to get the Car Transporter. That was the only way which stopped his tears…..

Keatkeat was determined to keep this to himself. He has always been a boy who’s willing to share. But not this time.

Binbin had his eye on the green car (see the one on the top [center]) All he wanted was that one small green car, nothing else, but Keatkeat was not giving in no matter what. Till today, his anger towards his only brother is still strong.

Allan and I have done our best to explain to both of them, the bottom-line – do not let a toy come between the love for each other. Binbin has no problem dealing with that. If you don’t have a 3-year-old, let me tell you, they filter away bad emotions like the flush of the toilet bowl.

Keatkeat understands, but its difficult for him to accept. For a 4-year-old boy, whereby toys are his only treasures, it will take time….only time can heal the broken hearted….