John’s series 9– Never enough time to play!

“Mom, who I am going to play with today?” It is usually John’s first question after he wakes up during summer break.

“We are going to have brunch with Maggie and her mother.” On most Sundays I will arrange play days for him.

“ Is that all? What about after brunch?” Of course John always expects more activities and fun.

“After brunch, we are going to Splashdown water park together.” Of course, as a mother I know my son very well.

“ After the water park, can we have dinner together with them at Whitespot?” one of John’s most favorite restaurants is always Whitespot .And another one is Boston Pizza, because they know how to please kids with kids meals and games. John can eat ice cream after dinner there. At home, I try to teach him not to eat lots of sugar.

“I need to ask them if they would like to have dinner together…” I told him.

Above is a typical conversation on weekends or before weekends. John likes to play with his friends from dawn to dusk. He never has enough time to play with his friends.

During summer break, before we left for a vacation in China, I sent John to my friend’s home every morning around 8:30 and picked him up at 6pm after work. Every afternoon when I picked him up he always tried to stay longer.

“I haven’t been to the park yet. I need to finish building this Lego house with Evan. Can I play 10 minutes more? Can you go to have dinner first then pick me up from auntie’s home, I have eaten dinner with Grace & Evan already….”

Everyday seems like a short day for my son. I am surprised to find that a full day is far from enough for John to play with his friends.

“What? It’s bed time again? I haven’t had a chance to play yet…” He always feels sad when we remind him the time for bed is approaching.

As a mom, who also had a great joyful childhood. I always have a debate with my husband. In my husband’s traditional, conservative, hardworking oriented opinion, he thinks John should spend his time more on reading and studying instead of playing.

“What do you have after you played with your friends a full day? One day passed but nothing is left.” My husband always educates John in that way.

I told my husband that, as a kid, play is very important for John. Through playing with his friends, he can build friendship, learn communication, explore the world with his buddies, have a great memory of childhood, and simply have fun!

Although my husband is not a person who thinks “having fun” is important in life, I do insist on it.

My John shall enjoy his kid’s time as much as possible. Adulthood is not reversible. Childhood is not long enough in a lifetime. Even after growing up, “having fun” is always part of life. I strongly believe that if people do not know how to “have fun” and relax after hardwork, they are too hard on themselves.

My last opinion is that, I hope my John can learn how to balance his life. As well as having fun everyday, he’d better also remember to do his homework on time and go to bed on time to be energetic and healthy.

Mode A and mode B

One day , a friend invited me to a toastmaster’s workshop. After the workshop, I had a talk with my friend. We started the conversation from how to evaluate others after they delivered a speech. After a while, we changed the topic and started to talk about careers.

I told her that my dream career is to work for a great company which appreciates my strength and gives me lots of opportunities to perform, learn and grow.

“You have to switch to mode B when you work in a competitive field such as  marketing . You need to communicate with local people a lot, unlike accountants or IT specialists, who don’t need to communicate with people very much at work. When communicating with people, you can’t be your own self, which is your current one –mode A. You are nice, modest and easygoing. You are a very nice person but you are not aggressive enough；you are not loud enough to be heard .You need to be heard as you are a marketing professional in the North American market. You need to use a strong and bold voice when answering those tough challenging questions thrown from business people.”

It is interesting to hear my friend’s opinion –mode A and mode B. As a Gemini in the horoscope, I do realize that I seem to have a dual personality –mode A and mode B–as described in horoscope books. But maybe mode A and B apply to many people.

When I talked with my friends who are mothers, to my surprise, we found that our children all seem to have a mode A and B. For example, John is a very good boy in everybody’s eyes outside of the home.

“John is such a good boy. Everyday he practices piano by himself for 1.5 hours at my home. He is well mannered at the table. He likes reading with my kids. He is just a role model for my kids.” My friend told me everyday when I sent John to her home for babysitting for one week. She has two kids, one is a bit older than John, one is 2 years younger.

“Is that so?” I am smiling. I am thinking about the scene at home. John fights with me and refuses to sit on his piano bench for more than 3 minutes. During piano practice, he keeps moving here and there. He goes for washroom breaks, water breaks, snack breaks or just to check what other people are doing. I am often driven mad by his misbehavior.

“Can you sit on the bench and finish this piece? Then you can come to me and have some snacks.” I am irritated and tell him to seriously practice his piano

Or the usual conversation like: “Are you practicing piano seriously? Why do you need to check what we are doing in the kitchen? Why do you need to know where grandma is? She is doing gardening. Have you been focused on what you are doing? ….” Then John’s reaction usually is to make faces , or ignore us and laugh.

When having dinner, I always need to remind him to be focused on eating instead of looking at his Pokémon cards or his toy car. He always eats slowly and always is the last person remaining at the dinner table.

But from my friend’s comment, what a good boy John was at her home. He practiced piano over an hour and didn’t move  from the bench. John was well mannered at the dinner table. John even read , while he often finds excuses not to read at home. How extremely different John’s mode A and B are!

Is it only John who has two modes? Actually lots of people do ,including myself. I am very patient. I always in a good mood when with my friends. But at home, sometimes I shout at John for not practicing piano well or being naughty.

Sometimes I am angry with him because he doesn’t want to sleep at 9. He is too energetic and doesn’t’ want to go to bed unless he is very tired ,which is very rarely.  

When I complain to my husband about John’s naughty deeds I think : why am I so patient with my friends but easily get mad with my kid and family? Is it because I also have a mode A and B?

We try to hide something from people. John behaved well at my friend’s home since he likes to be seen as a good boy in my friend’s eyes. He is at real mode at home because he doesn’t need to please his parents. I also have different modes. I try to please the external self that I am a gentle, nice, patient ,good tempered person in my friend’s eyes but at home I don’t need to please my family.

Don’t give up! Are you serious?

 Lots of times in life, whether we listen to the radio, watch movies or listen to a speech, we are always motivated by lots of inspiring stories, and those stories tell us never give up.

I remember a movie I watched on the plane. It was about a single father who lost his job and became very poor. His wife was disappointed in him since he could not find a job in a long time, so she left him and their little boy. He was in financial and emotional difficulty for some time. He didn’t have money to pay for the rental , and  he even could not afford his boy’s daycare fee.

One day he found a sales job with no base salary. His job was to sell family healthcare machines to clinics. He earned commission from selling them. Otherwise he could not earn a penny. The machines were not easy to sell. He needed to carry a heavy machine everyday and was looking for a potential client who was willing to purchase that machine. Unfortunately one day his machine was stolen by a hobo . He chased him through many streets but he still could not find the thief. He was faced with the situation of paying for that machine by himself. This would put him in a more severe situation since he didn’t even have money for enough food.

One day, a well-known financial company was hiring unpaid interns for 3 months. After the 3 months they would make a decision who finally would stay. It was a very competitive internship , everybody was smart and was working very hard so that they hoped they could have a chance to stay in their dream company.

The father of course was working extremely hard in order to stay after the intern. After the intense competition, the father was eventually selected as the only one to stay and was transferred to full time employment.

Although I can not remember the movie’s name. I was deeply impressed by the story. How many people choose not to be a warrior when meeting with difficulties? How many people choose to give up when they try to work on improving a situation but it seems never to work?

The second story is from toastmasters. I have been a toastmaster since 2013. I have listened to lots of touching stories and lots of them are stories to encourage people to persist. What great people they are! I indeed love those inspirations, and I think everybody at toastmasters is a warrior

However, one cold and windy winter evening, our toastmaster club executives were sitting around the table and felt somewhat depressed because one executive decided to leave us.

“Why does he want to leave us?” I asked the others.

“Because he has been trying very hard to recruit more new members for our club in the past  2 years, but till now we haven’t successfully recruited a single new member. In such a case, we can’t reach our club goal and maybe we need to shut down if we don’t have enough members.” One executive said.

“We are trying to invite guests to our club for the next meeting. Maybe some of them would like to stay since we are a special advanced club!” I said.

“We have been trying to invite guests and they say they will come but lots of them don’t show up. ” Another executive said in a low voice. “Maybe because our timing is not good. We meet on Friday evenings.”

“I think we should shut down our club.” The founder said. “I don’t have confidence in our club, although it’s difficult for me to make the decision. But we only have 10 club members in total and some of them don’t show up. Our goal is 15 members, but we have been trying very hard in the last two years and we still can’t recruit one member. Our club is a great club; people can repeat their speeches and get round table evaluations, which can help them to listen to different people’s feedback, and it’s better for them to improve. “ The founder sighed and continued: “ But the reality is that people don’t visit our club so they don’t know our club’s benefits. Now even though J left us, he is a wonderful person and he has been trying really hard to publicize our club by producing flyers and bring them to external meetings.”

Since we only have 4 executives after J left us. I looked at everybody, and suddenly I was determined and said : “I love our club . Everybody has motivational stories . Even J gave speeches on such stories, which were great. I still remember them. But now we are saying we would like to give up our club and shut it down? Are people serious when they are telling stories of not giving up?”

“I have two friends who are interested in being guests in the next meeting. They probably would like to stay since they told me they are serious and want to improve their English speaking. Meanwhile, if every one of us can invite one guest to our club meeting, there is a chance we can recruit new members. We just need to extend our invitation and make them feel serious instead of breaking their commitments.”

The president R looked at me and he also said :”I agree with Tabitha, I think we should keep our club open and keep on trying. Although J left us, we still have 4 people here.”

You know what? The result is after the four of us tried together and worked collaboratively, we succeeded in recruiting 5 new members in one month. I feel proud of my part in the team. It is easy to say “Don’t give up”, it is harder to take actions. Without our efforts, the club would have shut down.

I am very pleased to say that through this event, I understand my heart says: Never give up! I am serious!