Hats (Draft 1.0)

Hats

Hats aren’t a necessity to our outfit, but they definitely give you an extra edge. In my wardrobe analogy, hats, being worn on the top of our heads, represent our daughter’s formal education.

Do you remember those old school movies where the poised and beautiful ladies would adorn large hats to top off their tailored suits? Those hats just somehow completed the look and gave them that extra attractiveness. I always love the way Audrey Hepburn could pull off the look so gracefully.

Likewise, education is not a necessity in life for success. We have real life examples like Bill Gates dropping out of school but eventually becoming one of the world’s richest men. However, education definitely helps to give you an extra edge and equip you for challenges in the world.

“Hats” send messages and expectations about our intellect and capabilities in work. Imagine 2 people going for a 10 minute interview for a job that required a capable, responsible and learned candidate. If one wore a pristine mortarboard while the other wore a hard hat, who do you think would get a leg up?

What we wear on our head is an important cue to the world that speaks of our achievements, capabilities and experiences. They help us to stand out from the rest and differentiate us. Likewise, education is an important part of you that will help you stand out and open doors of opportunities.

Furthermore, like hats, our education protects us from potential risks and dangers in the working world.

It’s interesting to consider that hats started off as protective gear from the elements. Education- protects you from bad weather as well. When the rain comes, it affects our plans- like having to cancel picnic plans. In an economic crisis, getting retrenched, or having our employer changed, it looks like our lives are pretty much being rained out on too. In these scenarios, hats (or our formal academic qualifications) can protect us.

Hats provide us with the “Dry Weather Plan” by helping us stand out at the start and “Wet Weather Plan” when it bad times rain down on our children’s future careers.

Parents, helping us make the choice to pursue good grades and study what excites us is an important way to help us get by, matter what the stormy economic conditions!

Emphasizing the importance of doing well is probably easier said than done, so allow the insider (i.e. myself, the ex-kid) to offer perspective on what makes us tick:

Telling us to do well in school ultimately sounds like an order, and kids like us who have grown up witnessing democracy in action, don’t take well to top-down orders. It is a fact, especially among growing teenagers, that we are stubborn creatures.

The choice to do well in school is more meaningful when it comes from within. Parents just need to plant the seeds of motivation:

- Get us excited about learning, by bringing out the fun in discovery and the sense of accomplishment in gaining new knowledge! Then learning is for the sake of learning…and good grades become the icing on the cake.

As little kids, a lot of us learn to read using flashcards. My mom didn’t just flash them card after card to make me read. Instead, she laid all the cards on the floor, and turned it into a game:

“Touch ‘elbow’ with your elbow!”
“Point to ‘ball’ with your knee!”
“Put your nose to ‘flower’!”

Putting a twist on an otherwise dry exercise had me giggling through the entire flashcard game, and got me to think reading was fun.

Not only that, every time I read a flashcard right, my mom would compliment me excitedly and hug me. That sort of encouragement made me think I was really talented at reading. When an activity makes you feel smart or talented, you naturally grow to love it. On the flipside, if an activity makes you feel lousy about yourself, most of us tend to end up hating it.

Its important that parents recognize our strengths. Strengths are still strengths even if they aren’t in line with what you had planned for your daughters. If you want your daughter to be a ballerina, but she’s not cut out for it, it’s okay. Move on and help her discover something perfect for her.

My little sister was happily swooped up into ballet classes when she was 5 years old. But wait, one thing you have to understand first is that my sister, as a young girl, was a real tom boy! She would run around with toy pistols and pull at Barbie’s hair. So every weekend she would sadly be made to put on a pink leotard and go for ballet classes. She was miserable. Thankfully my mom realized that and put her in a sport instead! She signed up for gymnastics and loved it for all the running around and flips you could do and did gymnastics all the way up until she was 18.

At this point you might think to yourself, what if my daughter doesn’t like something she needs to do? What if the ballet in this case, was mathematics?

Good thinking. While encouraging them is great, we certainly can’t let our daughters simply do whatever they wish! Without a guided path, they might choose the wrong route that they thought was the best for them! It’s important to have the discernment to decide when something should be pursued in spite of them disliking it.

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I grew up in Canada, so when we returned to Singapore in 1995, we had to take up a compulsory second language. Because my brother Joe and I had started learning French in our previous schools, we were allowed to continue with that. My little sister, on the other hand, was required to take up Chinese. Boy, did she hate it! You can imagine a little primary 1 girls getting 70s for her first year of Chinese, while other primary 1’s were getting full marks!

Thankfully though, my parents made her persevere because they knew that Chinese was a highly important skill to pick up. They put her through tuition, and remedial classes and eventually she scored 97 for her final paper!

Likewise, I joined track and field when I went to secondary school. After years of hard training, I was getting tired of it. However, my parents constantly encouraged me to continue because they knew I was good at it. In the end, I was rewarded with a few trophies at the annual competitions and learnt so much about discipline and strength by persevering through it.

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In this case, as parents, you should ask yourself why you are pressing your child on to pursue activities she may not like. Is it because you are trying to live vicariously through her activities, to make up for opportunities you didn’t have when you were younger? Or is it because you see the activity as adding value to her life in terms of honing her life skills and experience? If it is the latter, then putting your child through it should do her good, as much as she hates it now. Many years down the road, she will appreciate the skills she has cultivated, that have helped her get ahead in life. Not only that, sticking to choices instills a spirit of excellence, accountability for choices and resilience- all key to dealing with life. After all, in everything you can learn something…it’s just a matter of whether you want to or not.

Because of our parents guidance, we became the people we are today (My sisters the only one out of the 3 kids that can order at Chinese restaurants!) There are certain good things that we, as parents, must continually encourage our daughters to pursue. I think the trick here is to encourage them to do what they are good at and what they like, but also, at the same time, encourage them to persevere at the things they are essential but do not like too much. With this formula, you’ll be setting your daughter in the right direction to put on her best hat that will make her stand out by doing what she’s good at and excelling as a result, while arming her with critical and essential skills that will protect her in the working world.