All About Your Child

Second day at PuddleWorld!

This time, the kids are more ethusiastic. In fact, Binbin ran to the ‘playroom‘ after we alighted from the dropoff point at Concord Hotel. Yes, PuddleWorld is located at Concord Hotel.

For those of you who missed my first blog post “PuddleWorld – Day 1 of 4” and are curious about what PuddleWorld is all about, fear not, details are here:-

• Workshops contain all round Mind and Body benefits, Positive Psychology contributes the mind component, and the Dance Movement Therapy component adds an important physical link.

Thereby their workshops are unique in employing an overall holistic, psychosomatic approach to therapy. And being drama based, it’s a really fun way to acquire skills in resiliency while your child is in play mode!

• Benefits are quite powerful: sending a child for extra tuition, or to learn extra Musical or physical skills provides excellent tools – however, is anything being Done in the meantime to improve the operation of the child’s actual mind itself?

How does the mind deal with stress, how does the mind cope with an intense workload, or peer pressure, or a competitive landscape?

It’s fine having extra skills – but at the end of the day, we need a positive and resilient mind to effectively employ those extra skills inside today’s intensely competitive landscape.

That’s where Puddleworld comes in, with it’s joint applications of Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy.

You can check out Puddleworld by liking them at www.facebook.com/puddleworld

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Today, I reached there a little earlier than last week when it was time to go home. My reward for being early was to see my boys in action! Having fun playing the ‘Cool Down Game : Duck-Duck-Goose‘ with their new found friends at PuddleWorld.

You can see the upset look on KitKit’s face, in the video below, when Binbin tabbed him. It was KitKit’s second time in a row being the ‘catcher‘, its was nice of the coaches to ‘spare‘ him after that and let another child have a go.

After two sessions in PuddleWorld, my boys told me that they now posses ‘Super Powers’ which could help them when they are unhappy, stressed or afraid.

Their ‘Super Powers’ are actions or physical movement which could ‘free them from those negative emotions.

My 7 year old Binbin started to show me some of the ACTIONS taught at PuddleWorld.

I get that warm fuzzy feeling when I see the smiles on his face as he demonstrated one action after another clearly. I think this applies to all parents, when they see their children smile, right?

In case you are thinking deeper and wondering how did PuddleWorld come about….

The beginnings were back in September 2011, during the InHerShoes-Art and Music Against Cancer concert at Fort Canning, an event which Puddleworld Founder Simon Wong was organising in support of cancer research, and Stephen Lew (Director Of School of Positive Psychology) was a volunteer for.

Both men were subsequently inspired by a series of discussions over the subsequent months, and with School of Positive Psychology looking to serve a social cause and InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer, seeking to doing likewise through it’s drama capability, an idea was born to bring to people the benefits of a healthy mind through the medium of drama and play.

Stephen had often remarked upon the extreme resiliency of some cancer fighters, caregivers and survivors, a trait which Simon seemed to posses in some quantity having lost his wife Peikie to cancer in 2008.

His response was to get up and carry on, with the birth of InHerShoes – Art & Music Against Cancer (an annual event run in conjunction now with the NCCS and it’s RunForHope), and then with writing the story of Puddleworld, and the subsequent Puddleworld programme which drew it’s objectives from the first hand experiences of members of the InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer team affected by cancer and an identification of needs to help cope as both caregiver and fighter.

From there the InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer team discovered some common examples of resiliency and coping, and it was clear that if cancer fighters and caregivers could face death and dying, and come out for the better of it – an analysis of such a mind and it’s mechanisms could identify some strong traits, which we could then identify and apply Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy, principles to replicating or enhancing in the rest of us – and that’s where the School of Positive Psychology came in.

Puddleworld’s own Dance Movement Therapy specialist and Programme Director Agnes Law added the physical dimension; through her long experiences of working with children both in Singapore as a social worker and in London for the UK National Health Service as Dance Movement Therapy specialist, that when the mind is in a state of play, humans tend to absorb much more information and are more likely to internalize the lessons at hand.

With the InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer connection to the performing arts scene, it was only natural then to incorporate the principles of Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy into drama, resulting in the creation of the Puddleworld storyline, a story largely inspired by Simon’s caregiver experiences during his wife’s resilient and inspiring fight against cancer.

With the sciences of Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy firmly built into the course, they hope to instill healthy resilient qualities into children and adults to improve their coping with difficulties in school, work and: all important life situations.

After all, we must not forget to live while investing time in school and office!

With a clearer understanding PuddleWorld. I must say that what they believe in is very similar to my beliefs, which I often talk about on my blog(s) over the years. Live a Fulfilling Life with a Positive Mind and Attitude.

My boys are eager to show their drawings to their coaches and friends at PuddleWorld in the next session!

PuddleWorld

Its been FOUR days…from my previous post “My Son Hates His Name!”
4 days of feeling horrible, finally ENDS NOW.

Just came back from the lawyer’s office. Deed Poll done for my elder child. From this hour forth, the name ‘Keat‘ is abandoned. It has been changed to ‘Kkit‘.

On top of that, we have also included his English name ‘Zec‘ into his Deed Poll.

We thought, since we are already paying S$80.00 to change his dialect name, I might as well make full use of the money to add in his English name. With this done, the teacher can no longer say, “I will NOT call you ‘Zec’ because it is not in our school record.” *Humph*

As stern as a court order, I told KitKit that he is NOT allowed to change his name ever again! He shumpah agreed.

I went through lots of discussion with Kitkit over his name before we submitted the Deed Poll online to fix an appointment. We asked if he wanted his ‘Zec‘ to be infront or behind his dialect name.

After knowing that he may end up having the last register number in class if he choose to put ‘Zec‘ infront, he shook his head and said, “Though having ‘Zec’ infront sounds nicer, but I do not want to wait for so long during oral exams. I do not want to be the last one to be called in class. So put ‘Zec’ behind.”

Now that Kitkit is matured enough to understand what is going on, he is very much involved in the changing of his name. So much so that he highlighted this point, “I do not want my name to be the same ‘Kit’ as Mun Kit (his best friend), I feel like I am copying him.”

I want my child to feel comfortable with his name and feel proud of his name, therefore I chose to put an extra ‘K‘ infront of ‘Kit‘, hence we end up with ‘Kkit‘. Well, so long as its STILL PRONOUNCED THE WAY HE WANTS IT TO BE PRONOUNCED, I do not see any problem with it.

To me, its HIS NAME, HE SHOULD BE THE ONE choosing it.
For him, it has been a joyous event.

As for us, we would be running around to many places for the following days or weeks; going to school, bank, the passport office, etc to get his name changed.

The running around is all worth it, so long as NO ONE WILL EVER call him ‘K-iat’ again and make him so pissed, but will call him ‘Kit’ from now on!

Hooray!
*clap clap clap*

***SPECIAL NOTE: For all future blog posts, I will be calling my elder son ‘KitKit’ and NO MORE ‘Keatkeat’.

Deed Poll : ChangED my Child’s Name