A Day of Work, A Day of Play

This pretty much sums up our weekend...

On Saturday yesterday, before we went to a Korean BBQ house for Rachel’s birthday dinner, Sienna went for piano lesson, did Chinese homework, went for Chinese lesson, did Chinese new homework again, practiced piano... I admit that I tortured my daughter –- for good reasons. I started to reinforce the rule of life, "No work, no play." Food and water are necessary; the rest is luxuries and privileges -- she has to earn it somehow. I had so many goodies at stake: two birthday parties, another musical to go to, chocolate... She lost her chocolate treat because she whined when she had to finish the Chinese.

Today was all about fun. She went to the Chinese New Year’s celebration recital at her Chinese school. She was so cute on stage reciting old Chinese poems. We went to her friend’s birthday party where they attended a cooking class together. Afterwards, she had a play date with P. I looked at her and was relieved that she showed absolutely no sign of being repressed.

Call me "old-fashioned," but I do believe in today's society, a girl needs to get as much education as possible. She needs to get used to being tortured and repressed, intellectually. Then she can decide what to do with it or to do nothing at all. One can only do the parenting based on his or her own experience. And this has been my limited experience of being a woman anyways.