The globe

To motivate Kuya Bugey for his math exercises at home, I came up with a point system that would let him earn up to 100 stars which he can use to claim a reward. I had to think of a really to-die-for kind of reward to keep him sustained. And so I thought of a globe.

It was the perfect choice. It got him focused and determined. Earning as high as 5 stars a day is no joke if you have to save it up to a hundred. That's with a scale- for a perfect 80 points, he gets 10, 79- 5 stars, 75-78 -4 stars and so on. He didn't get it that easily of course. It was anything but a smooth ride. But with a little strictness from tiger mum, he stayed with it. This was really my main aim- to get him to stay on something even if it's not that easy.

Of course he tried to outsmart me with it by asking for the globe from Santa for Christmas. But Santa was on mum's side so he gave him something else and told him to keep working on his globe. :)

After 3 long months he finally earned it, but it was too soon that Santa wasn't able to order it from Amazon on time :).

He was surprised to find it on his bed this morning, with a note that said:

"Dear Kuya, this globe is your gift to your self because you worked hard for it. Now since you have been a very good boy to your mum and dad and to your brother, I'm giving you a real treat- your favorite PS3 game! Have fun! Love, Santa! "

I think when he was reading it aloud, he choked a little, trying not to cry.

I'm proud of you, Kuya. Now, on to the next level. :)

Those days

You know how they go. You walk into a bus full of people (especially known for smile deficiency) and you wish you had better days. Off the bus and to the people in the street, you meet those you would've wanted to see on another day, but no.  There they are, radiating those negative energies at you and you just feel the churn in your guts. And then you walk into an office to inquire about your refunds, and you get this reprimanding tone on why you haven't learned the language of the place after all these years. You wonder what you did wrong that day and why you feel the whole world seems to hate you.

But then when you come home, you hear the voice of a boy who breathes of love.  All that he's said so far is "Mum?" but that's enough to replant your feet on the ground. That voice is calling at you, asking you to keep it together. The door opens and he welcomes you with a big bear hug.

You close the door, lock it from the world of indifference outside. You take a few steps and then there's this other, smaller voice, blurting soft whimpers while flailing arms and legs. You can sense how happy he is to see you, to smell the scent of your presence. You take him up and indulge him with his milk. He pauses in between suckling, looks up to you, and gives you that pure smile.

And then it hits you. Life can be unbearable sometimes as if to scatter your whole being into the sea of indifference. And then there's that loving gaze that looks at you, telling you that you matter. You then know that you have to gather yourself again.

Why the boy wants to marry mum (beyond Freud)

I've written several entries on my son's (seemingly long) oedipal phase. And many times, I've simply dismissed it as a psychologically normal stage, which, as a Philosophy major, I honestly don't know anything about. Well this big name Freud said so-and-so. I thought, it was probably true.

And then I started to really get concerned about how keen my boy was about marrying mum. Especially when he also started adding the other detail "If I will marry you, Dad will go to heaven on his own." At that point I knew this wasn't just  some psychological phase. My son was telling me something. He was telling me about his fears.


I think it all began with my one big mistake on telling him about death. He asked about  the mums and dads of his grandparents. I told him that they have already gone to heaven. And then I added, unthinkingly, that everyone will one day go to heaven. Even more stupidly, I went to the example that mum and dad will go to heaven, too. Realizing that I crossed the line there, I quickly added that he will one day go there as well, and that we will all be together.

But I was too late. The next morning, he asked the question, "If you and dad will go to heaven, who will be with me?" Then he started to cry. I soothed him with my embrace and just told him that we will always be with him (with the hopes that one day he will understand that I meant that in MANY ways).

Days after, he started saying "I want to marry you mum." To which I would reply, "No, I'm your mum. And I'm married to Dad."

When he finally said one day that Daddy should go to heaven on his own, two things finally dawned on me.

First, he understood that death meant the absence of the one who dies.

Second, he understood that marriage meant that husband and wife will always be together.

Taking these two together, he must have thought that marriage also meant that husband and wife will always be together, even after death. Ergo, marriage is the solution for the fear of absence in death.

Such painful things for a young boy to think about. I wish there was any way that I could take away this fear. ...

He gave up the marrying-mummy fixation after some time. I think it finally dawned on him that he also wouldn't want mum and dad to be separated (more on this in another entry).

Last month, while putting him to bed, he asked, "Mum, can I marry one of my cousins?" I said, "No, because your cousins are your family, too. You have to marry someone from a different family. Marriage is about two families becoming one."

Then the worried boy said, "Then how can I know whom I'll marry?"

To that the dad joined in, "I didn't know I was going to marry mum when I was six years old! I met mum when she was eighteen, and I was twenty."

I think that calmed his fears for a while. I think he understood that he will have to wait.

But of course, that doesn't fill up the void created by the fear. And I don't think anything ever will.

Haaay, anak. What can I say to you. The only thing we can ever promise is that through our constant example, we will teach you to live in faith and hope. And amidst all of life's uncertainties, there is one truth that you can hold on to -- mum and dad will always always always love you.

On friends and bullies

One of the things I have to reckon with as a mom of a pre-schooler is the reality of bullies. This came to our son on the first day of his summer school when an angry friend pushed him on the sandbox, leaving his face burrowed on the sand. He probably valued that friend a lot, for what else can explain the trauma he had from that experience? It was so grave that there was no talking him into going back the next day. Months have passed and yet the mere mention of the summer school’s name would make him tense all over. The most painful thing for me was how he kept the memory of that experience all to himself. He only got the courage to talk about it last January, about 6 months since that dreadful day.

He narrated the story in clear detail, from how painful the sand was to his eyes to how long the bus ride home took before he could run to hug me. He cried a bit after his story. Lakay and I can only console him from our end.

I knew that one day this would come. At one point, I seriously considered home-schooling him just so I could shield him from all these. But then something happened last week that made me less worried and more hopeful.

My little one has this new friend, E, from Ecuador. They go to the same class together, live in the same building, and have been inseparable for quite some time now. Last week, Lakay brought them to this big kiddie land called Sportoase. While on the bus, my little one suddenly remembered his sad summer school story and related it to his friend. According to Lakay, E's eyes were really filled with sympathy. He even rubbed my little one’s back, the way adults would when they console each other. Then E said, (in Flemish), next time say “Niet doen! Niet doen! (Don’t do it!) or E's mama will get angry!”

I couldn’t help but smile when I heart this. I’m touched by the way four-year-olds could feel for the other, the way they can distinguish good friends from bad, and the unpretentious way they show how they care.

This moving story made me a see a bigger reality than that of bullies. I came home to the truth that school is, yes, a place where kids can get hurt, but it is also a place where good friendships are planted and nurtured. That whole reality should not be taken away from them.

Disclaimed and displaced

I spent 7 hours today reading a 35-page philosophy article and I'm not even halfway through. Not that it was distressful. I actually (for the first time in a long time) had fun. And was once again humbled.

I took delight in the fresh ideas of this French philosopher (Michel Foucault), especially because I have been too steeped in the ideas of the Marxists of critical theory. Reading Foucault makes me smell the staleness of my ideals about global justice. Don't get me wrong. I still hope for goodness in the world. It's just that sometimes I get too carried away by my pontificating, that I have to learn listen to myself sounding off like a noisy gong and clanging cymbal, raising claims that turn out to be weakly founded in the end. Reading this philosopher is like hearing him tell me: "Cool ka lang! You fight too much without asking if there's a battle to fight in the first place. "

I have also been humbled by the way the philosopher put so many strands together in order to support his conclusions. Many of us, (I am no exception) have the tendency to dismiss researchers and technical experts and their jargon as arrogant, to misjudge them as people who live too much within concepts and theory, to condemn them of not having or living a life.

What we don't understand is that these people who devote their lives to reading boring books and to writing articles that only 10% of the world's population will ever care to read, are people who love and enjoy life much more passionately than most of us do. These are people who refuse to live by hasty generalizations, and raise questions that come as ice cold showers to lazy minds like mine.
And today I was showered on. Thank God for philosophers.