ABCDZ/ Sugar on the bread/ If you don’t like it go to bed/ Next Sunday morning come to me/ I will teach you ABC.Dart. Not again. That rhyme haunts me in my waking hours as well. Yes, it’s admission time. And tiny tots have little else to do but recite ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ ,’Humpty Dumpty’, how the wheels of the bus go round and round, and identify colours and shapes and letters in the alphabet. Whew. If this were not enough then some parents (like me) even shop around and buy strings and beads to improve their motor skills and jigsaw puzzles for improved hand-and-eye coordination.Yes, I am already exhausted as a recent PTA just confirmed my worst fears. My son’s obsession with cars has proved disastrous. The three-and-a-half-year-old simply refuses to write ABC. And that, believe me, is simply not done. Before I castigate the poor soul, my mind goes back to another PTA where my mother was truly embarrassed when my class teacher whined how her 12-year-old old (yours truly) slept during the Maths period.But that was over 20 years ago and the spanking that I received followed by a double dose of tuition ensured that I certainly learnt my multiplication tables and never slept in class again. But today as I take my son to nursery, it never fails to amaze me how competitive schools have become. Right from the play group stage onward.After all, even if my son just prefers to write standing lines and sleeping lines, there is another girl his age who can write alphabet A-H. As was pointed out at the PTA. Hmm! Never mind if that is the portion to be covered in the lower kindergarten class. But who’s complaining? No, sir, parents are not complaining. They want to send their child to a ‘good’ school for sure, and so the homework really begins now before the little ones can graduate to lower and upper kindergarten.As for me, now it’s back to the grind. Got to get the little fellow to remember his ABCs before admission time.
