Don't waste money trying to groom your kid to be another Einstein

Engage your kids personally. Don’t let them be bored with nothing to do or stressed out with too many "enriching" lessons.

JENNIFER, a corporate communications manager, recently bought a baby grand piano. She didn’t have enough cash for an outright payment, so she takes up an installment plan.

"When I was a kid, I was made to learn the piano till I passed the Grade 8 exam," she says. Grade 8 is about the highest for piano students. "But when I began working I lost interest in the piano. Now, after so many years, I want to practise again, so that what I’ve learnt would not be permanently lost," she says, explaining her expensive purchase.

Jennifer is fortunate that the piano lessons she was forced to take when she was small did create an interest in music in adult life. Not many grown-ups, however, continue to show interest in those pricey "life enrichment" activities of their childhood.

Ballet, sailing, French, gymnastics, the piano, Chinese calligraphy, and, for crying out loud, the harp! Children are kept busy after school in a breathless round of such activities. Parents hope that these so-called life-enriching lessons will help develop the child with, say, a bit of Albert Einstein (his brain, not his looks) and Marilyn Monroe (her looks, not her brain).

Too often, the kid is not asked if they are really interested. Now that prices are going up for both basic necessities and luxuries, parents should consider carefully they should continue shelling out cash on lessons and activities that their children have little or no aptitude and appetite for. Worse, some of the enrichments do not have long-time realistic benefits.

Consider French lessons and ballet dancing. Unless you are planning for your kid to go work in France as a professional ballerina, why on earth do you want her to learn these subjects?

Instead of leaving your child with an expensive tutor, a less-kiasu and more productive approach is to spend your own time doing activities with your child. Here are some suggested do-together activities that can be planned on a regular basis for primary school-going children and parents:

♥ Brushing up on your Mandarin (or Malay, depending on the second language that your child is required to learn in school). Take your child to the super mart to buy groceries and other food items. Back home, spread your purchases on the kitchen table, and with the help of a Chinese dictionary, identify and write the Chinese names for each item.

You can even turn it into a memory game. After you have written the list, both of you memorise it, and then write all the names again, from memory. The one who scores worse must wash the dishes after meal.

♥ Memorise a poem. Both of you pick your own poem (from a book of poetry or from the Internet), then give yourself a week to memorise it. At the end of the week, recite the poem from memory, to each other, and to the rest of the family. Bonus points if either of you can explain the poem in your own words! For starters, look for poems by Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop.

Note: Do not make the mistake of limiting poems to "childish" ones. Children are often smarter than you think, and excellent poetry can be understood and appreciated by readers big and small. Try this poem, which talks of everyday occurrences: