Some mornings, I wake up a little later for work because of a late night of recording (or a late night of gaming too, but let’s not tell the wife). One such morning, I walked out of my bedroom in a slight daze, at around 8.55am and in the living room, I spotted Joy, my 5-year-old, making herself comfortable on the sofa, watching our big-screen TV.

A big-screen TV that was playing Majulah Singapura, the national anthem. And Joy was singing along.

For a moment, I stood there, wondering why in the world a kid would be watching the national anthem on TV. And wondering if I had stepped into the dream world of Inception. Maybe this was a Level 3 dream inside a dream inside a dream.

"Good morning, Papa!" Joy said cheerily, "zhou san!"

"Zhou san," I replied in Cantonese, then pulled all my mental energies together to ask the next logical question, "Joy-joy, why are you watching the national anthem on TV?"

"Okto going to start!" she replied, as if I was asking the silliest question in the world.

So there I stood, in my pajamas, staring at my kid who had planned to catch the free-to-air kids TV channel right from the start of broadcast.

The best I could muster was, "Next time, you cannot watch TV so early ah!"

"But I like the first show on Okto!" she protested.

I didn't bother to speak anymore on the topic. My brain had not received its morning caffeine.

Also I reckoned she had only a year or so more of this life before she had to go to Primary school. Then the party would be so over. Sure, she can now sleep later than her older brother and wake up later too (her kindergarten starts at 11am) but when real school rolls around, it will be a 6am wake-up time for her too. And there is no Okto Anything at 6am, little buddy.

"Enjoy your wild little TV lifestyle while it lasts," I muttered under my breath, "Because when you turn 7, your life belongs to the Ministry of Education for the next 12 years."

Muahahahaha.

Joy is the precocious one of my three children. She has an opinion about everything, speaks in complete sentences and uses words beyond the vocabulary you'd expect from a kid her age. While her brother struggles to get his sentences together sometimes, Joy never has this problem.

Her sense of time is marked by TV programs. Friday 7pm? That's Okto at the Movies. She can rattle off the names of all the children's programs she watches in the morning.

Her one goal in life at this point in time? To have Jie Jie's long hair. She looks at her 9-year-old sister's long tresses with longing, wondering when it will be her turn to have hair long enough to braid, brush, or adorn with every imaginable hair accessory.

For now, Joy's hair is barely long enough to tie into two tiny ponytails that stick upwards. It looks a little silly but she insists on it. Her little Char Siew Bao face helps her to carry off the look, but it makes her look like Nezha (哪吒), the Trickster God Boy of Childish Pranks and Tantrums. The latter part of that title seems most appropriate for her.

For instance, one morning, I noticed something odd about her hair, especially her fringe. It looked... lopsided. I had to ask why.

"Joy-joy, why is your hair like this? Did Mommy send you to the hairdresser's?"

"No," she beamed proudly, "I cut it myself!"

"What?!"

"Ya! The front part was so long and disturbed my eyes, so I got a scissors and cut it shorter myself," she declared.

"You shouldn't do that, you know. What if you cut wrongly? Or if you cut yourself? Next time if the hair is bothering you, tell us and we will take you to the hairdresser's, ok?"

She shrugged her shoulders, still convinced that her hairdressing skills, while not acquired in the hallowed halls of hairdressing in Paris or New York, were adequate for the task.

Perhaps I am a little too protective. I am a parent caught in a state of limbo, trying to decide how much leeway to give and how much I should clamp down.

It was easier in my dad's time. Draw on the wall? Get a beating. Sing at the dinner table? Get a beating. Fall down while walking? Get a beating. It is your fault for not walking properly.

These days, we are told by experts that spanking is evil, that children should be allowed to make mistakes, that children should be allowed to express their creativity, even if that means they mess up the house. And it makes you wonder, how much is too much?

My mom, who helps us with the kids, is old school in her ways. She lets them run and fall at the playground, and doesn't rush over to pick them up, allowing them to get up themselves. She metes out discipline when she needs to as well.

But even mom has mellowed with age. She laughed when I told her about the hair cut thing. We would have gotten hell for that kind of stunt when we were young.

Anyway, Joy's days as the youngest in the family, the one that gets away with anything, are numbered. She will soon be a Jie Jie herself.

In less than 40 weeks, in fact. That should be fun to watch.

 

About mrbrown
mrbrown aka Mr Kin Mun LEE is the accidental author of the popular Singapore website, mrbrown.com, and has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997.

Affectionately known as the Blogfather of Singapore, his readers follow his writings closely, which these days range from current affairs, his family, and even his trips abroad.

Currently, mrbrown also hosts the mrbrown show (mrbrownshow.com), probably Singapore's best known comedy and satire podcast.

mrbrown is married to Ginny, his long-suffering wife for 12 years, and is father to three lovely kids, Faith,  Isaac and Joy.