Author: suyunsu

Ironically, the more my son improved, the less homework he copied.

At the beginning of Primary Two, I genuinely thought we had finally turned a corner. His hyperactivity had reduced, he was sleeping better, his attention had improved, and he could now read simple books that would have been impossible just a few months earlier. Yet, while all these little victories were quietly unfolding, one problem was becoming increasingly obvious.

He was copying less and less homework.

I started my personal one-to-one “day care system” for him in November 2025. During the December holidays, I spent most of my time doing foundational catch-up. Much of my earlier journey in trying to understand his ADHD, experimenting with different interventions, and combining Western science with Eastern philosophy had already been recorded in my first book, My Child Is Not Naughty — Just Different: Raising an ADHD Child Through Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science.

By the time he entered Primary Two, however, I realised that regulation alone was not enough. His attention had improved, but the deeper difficulties of dyslexia and dysgraphia had become much more obvious.

Back in November, despite English being the main language used at home, my son’s reading ability was still closer to that of a four-year-old child. In my country, especially in a Chinese school, children are expected to learn three languages simultaneously — English, Chinese and Malay. By December, he was formally diagnosed with moderate to severe dyslexia.

I used the month-long school break to rebuild his foundations. For English, I focused on Peter and Jane, which I personally think is a fantastic reading system. I will probably explain this in another Parenting Reflection because I genuinely believe the repetition and systematic reading played a major role in bringing my son’s dyslexia from moderate-severe to mild six months later.

For Bahasa Malaysia, I continued reading level books with him, but perhaps the greatest help came from a tuition teacher who patiently taught him to decode suku kata bit by bit through one-to-one sessions. For his dysgraphia and handwriting, I bought stacks of handwriting books for both English and Chinese, allowing him to repeatedly rewrite directly over printed words and characters until the movements slowly became more familiar.

At that point, I focused almost entirely on language and deliberately left Mathematics and Science aside because I believed language was the foundation upon which every other subject would eventually depend. More importantly, I was trying to rebuild my boy’s confidence. I wanted to bring him from functioning closer to a developmental age of four towards perhaps six. During those two months, I constantly reminded him to focus better, copy his homework, pay attention to what the teacher was teaching, organise his books and school bag, and learn to bring home only the books that required homework while leaving everything else inside the classroom locker.

When Primary Two finally started, he seemed genuinely excited. He managed to copy some homework lists and completed perhaps ten to twenty percent of the homework given for each subject. To many parents, that may sound insignificant, but to us it felt like progress.

Unfortunately, Chinese schools are notoriously heavy with homework. Sometimes children are expected to copy two or three pages of sentences or questions from the whiteboard before bringing them home to complete. On average, my son could easily have five or six pieces of homework from different subjects in a single day.

We genuinely tried our level best to complete them every day. Honestly, even I felt overwhelmed by the quantity and deadlines, let alone my son who has ADHD, dyslexia and dysgraphia, all of which compound the difficulties even further.

I had originally imagined having enough time to strengthen his foundations slowly while still allowing him proper rest and opportunities to explore other interests. Instead, most of our afternoons became consumed by homework. He would come home around lunchtime, eat, shower, lie down for a while, and sometimes we would read a little together — Peter and Jane, his textbooks or anything else that interested him. Then came two hours of homework.

People often ask me why homework takes so long. The answer is actually much more complicated than simply saying, “He has ADHD.”

When he cannot answer a question, he starts fidgeting. At the same time, I am usually busy messaging parents’ groups asking whether anyone can share photographs of the Mathematics or Bahasa Malaysia homework that my son failed to copy in school. Once we finally have the correct homework, another challenge begins. I spend a great deal of time trying to find different ways for him to understand each concept. Most of the time he answers one question beautifully, then disappears to play with his Lego. Sometimes he insists on watching his Kada reading app from China. Looking back now, I wonder whether he was never trying to avoid the work itself. Perhaps he was simply trying to avoid the frustration of not understanding.

Months passed, and almost every afternoon I found myself asking the same question before we even started.

“Did you at least copy one sentence today?”

Recently, as examinations drew nearer, things actually became worse. Some days he returned home without copying even a single word.

Naturally, I started questioning everything. Was it the teaching method? Was there not enough follow-up? Or were there other reasons that I had completely failed to see?

One afternoon while driving home, we started talking about teachers he liked.

I compared his current teachers with his Primary One teachers. Teacher A had taught him Mathematics, Science and, most importantly, Chinese during Primary One. I asked him whether he preferred Teacher A or his current Chinese teacher.

Without hesitation, he said he missed Teacher A.

I mentioned another Mathematics teacher.

He still said Teacher A was better.

Then, almost casually, he added that he also missed Teacher B, his Primary One Bahasa Malaysia teacher.

I laughed and asked him,

“But didn’t they scold you a lot? Didn’t Teacher B even beat your little hand when you were naughty?”

He immediately replied,

“Yes.”

Then he added,

打是疼，骂是爱。

(“Beating is affection, scolding is love.”)

Of course, I do not interpret this literally. But in his own way, he had translated her strictness into something much more meaningful.

To him, strictness meant that the teacher cared.

Over time, I started noticing similar patterns in his other subjects. His English teacher is also rather fierce. However, she constantly follows up with him, reminds him about his work, and pays close attention to whether he completes his tasks. Interestingly, despite his ADHD and dyslexia, he usually makes the effort to copy his English homework, although he occasionally misses parts here and there. For some of his other subjects, however, copying homework remains a daily struggle.

Initially, I thought this difficulty was entirely due to ADHD, dyslexia and executive functioning problems. Certainly these factors play a huge role. Copying from the whiteboard is already a demanding task because he first has to stabilise the words visually, remember what he has just seen, and then produce them through writing.

However, as I observed him more closely over the past few months, I began to wonder whether another layer existed.

Perhaps many ADHD children do not merely respond to instructions. Perhaps they first respond to relationships.

For many neurotypical children, a teacher’s instruction may be enough. Teacher says copy, therefore they copy.

But with my son, I suspect another question comes first.

“Does this teacher care whether I succeed?”

Once he feels the answer is yes, his willingness to cooperate seems to increase dramatically. He accepts reminders, corrections and even scolding because, emotionally, he interprets them as investment rather than rejection.

The more I reflected on this, the more I realised this pattern was not limited to school.

I see exactly the same thing in his Shaolin classes. Traditional Shaolin training is strict. Children are corrected repeatedly and sometimes lightly tapped with a bamboo stick on their posture or legs to remind them to straighten up or focus. Yet my son absolutely adores his Shaolin masters. He talks about them fondly, listens attentively, and happily returns every single week. He knows they are strict, but he also knows they genuinely care about his progress. When he struggles, they encourage him. When he improves, they celebrate together with him.

The same thing happens with his piano teacher.

She does not simply praise him for everything. She corrects his rhythm, stops him when he rushes, asks him to repeat passages and expects him to practise. Yet he enjoys going to piano lessons because he feels seen. He knows she remembers his pieces, notices his difficulties and patiently guides him through them. The expectations are there, but so is the relationship.

This made me realise that perhaps some ADHD children do not necessarily need softer teachers.

My son certainly does not.

What he seems to respond best to are adults who combine high expectations with high involvement.

In other words, strictness itself is not the problem.

Indifference is.

A teacher who follows up, notices his struggles and keeps reminding him sends a message that says,

“I see you.”

A teacher who simply lets things slide may unintentionally communicate,

“It doesn’t matter whether you do it or not.”

For a child who already struggles with attention, organisation and self-confidence, feeling unseen may hurt much more than being corrected.

Looking back, I think many people misunderstand ADHD children. They assume these children need fewer expectations. However, perhaps what some of them really need are relationships strong enough to support those expectations.

My son does not seem to work harder because he is afraid.

He works harder because he feels that someone is walking alongside him.

Years from now, he may not remember every spelling test, every piano piece or every Shaolin form. But I suspect he will remember something much more important.

The adults who cared enough not to give up on him.

Perhaps children do not always remember who was the easiest teacher.

More often, they remember who cared enough to stay, who believed in them enough to keep reminding them, correcting them and walking alongside them.

Perhaps that is what my son was trying to tell me when he smiled and said,

打是疼，骂是爱。

Not that punishment is love.

But that, in the language of a child, he had found his own way of saying something much simpler.

The people who cared about me never stopped believing in me.

When Copying One Sentence Feels Like Climbing a Mountain

This must be day one hundred — or perhaps even more — since my son started Primary Two. Honestly, I’ve already lost count.

Like every afternoon, I parked my car and walked under the hot sun towards his school. These days, before I even see him, one thought immediately races through my mind: Did he copy his homework today?

When I reached the waiting area, I found him sitting quietly by himself, daydreaming and watching his friends. It is a very different picture from six or seven months ago. Back then, he would be running around the basketball court with his arms stretched out like an aeroplane, flying away into some imaginary world. Sometimes I look at him now and wonder whether his hyperactivity has truly reduced over the past year. Perhaps the combination of nutritional support, supplements, sensory regulation, and the various interventions we started have helped more than I realise. Much of that journey was documented in my first book, My Child Is Not Naughty — Just Different: Raising an ADHD Child Through Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science. I am now slowly recording the next stage of his journey as well.

The first thing I usually ask him is, “Did you copy your homework?” Sometimes he greets me with a smile and proudly tells me how many pieces of homework he has. But when his head lowers and his voice becomes soft, I already know the answer. Many afternoons, I end up sending him back to the classroom to copy the homework into his little notebook. My greatest worry is usually Bahasa Malaysia. The teacher writes everything on the whiteboard, but very often my son simply does not copy it at all.

For months, I wondered why.

After observing him closely over time, I slowly realised that his ADHD was only part of the story. His dyslexia had become an equally important reason behind his reluctance to copy.

The Front Seat Didn’t Solve the Problem

At the beginning of Primary Two, his class teacher placed him at the back of the classroom. Complaints soon followed. He doesn’t listen. He doesn’t copy. He doesn’t complete his work. His handwriting is messy.

Eventually, we brought out his formal diagnosis showing that he has ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. To be honest, I have always viewed the diagnosis mainly as protection — proof that my son is not simply lazy or defiant. Unfortunately, an official diagnosis does not automatically teach a school system how to help a child learn.

We have accepted that Chinese schools are largely performance-driven and discipline-oriented. Some parents have questioned why we continue to keep him there. I actually discussed the reasons behind that decision in my earlier book, and perhaps I will revisit that topic again in another reflection.

The teacher eventually moved him to the front row beside a model student. But nothing really changed. Not because he could not see the board. The problem was never eyesight.

1. Dyslexic Children Often Struggle to Stabilise Words

One thing I slowly realised over the past year is that copying homework may actually be one of the most difficult tasks for a child like mine.

For teachers managing thirty or forty students, the process is simple. Teach the lesson, write the homework on the board, and students copy it down. For most neurotypical children, the sequence happens almost automatically. They look, copy, and continue, much like lifting rice with a spoon.

But for a child with ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia, the process is far more complicated. Before my son can even begin writing, he first has to stabilise the words he sees. Because of dyslexia, letters sometimes become visual noise and do not remain still long enough for him to process comfortably. Then he must transfer the information into working memory, hold it there long enough to write, and coordinate the physical act of writing despite his dysgraphia. By the time the pencil touches the paper, much of his energy has already been spent.

What appears to others as a simple act of copying can sometimes feel, to him, like running an obstacle course before the lesson has even begun.

2. Copying Homework Is Not One Task

As I observed him more closely, I realised something else.

Copying homework is not actually one task. It is many tasks happening simultaneously. He has to locate the correct line, maintain attention, remember the information, keep track of where he stopped, regulate his body, control his handwriting, resist distractions, and then continue writing.

For many children, these processes happen unconsciously. For my son, every step demands effort. By the time he reaches the final step, he is often already mentally exhausted.

3. Reading Itself Already Consumes Enormous Energy

Perhaps the biggest discovery I made over the past year is this: reading itself is my son’s greatest energy expenditure.

People often assume that because he struggles to complete work, he must not understand. Yet repeatedly, I discovered the opposite. He understands stories. He understands Science concepts. He can answer questions orally.

What drains him is the process of getting information from the page into his brain.

Many children simply read and write. My son often has to decode, confirm, recall, and only then produce an answer. Every word costs energy.

4. Working Memory Is Fragile

Another thing I noticed is that he cannot hold large amounts of information in his mind at once.

A classmate may glance at the board and remember an entire sentence. My son may only remember one or two words before the rest disappears. Then he has to look up again. And again. And again.

What appears to others as slowness may simply be the limit of how much information his brain can temporarily hold.

5. Attention Drifts Constantly

Even when he wants to do the work, his attention often leaves him before he leaves the task.

I see this repeatedly during revision sessions and examinations. His eyes drift away. His mind wanders. Sometimes only for a few seconds. Sometimes longer. Often, he does not even realise it himself.

Over time, I stopped saying, “Concentrate.”

Instead, I simply remind him, “Eyes back to the paper.”

Not because he is refusing to focus, but because sometimes he genuinely does not realise where his attention has gone.

6. Writing Is Work Too

People often assume that once a child understands, writing should naturally follow. But writing itself is another task altogether.

Spacing. Letter formation. Motor planning. Producing the answer physically.

Even when the answer is already inside his head, getting it onto paper can still feel exhausting. Sometimes I think people only see the final product and forget how much invisible work happens before the pencil even touches the page.

This, however, was only the first half of the story.

Because after months of frustration, I eventually discovered something else.

My son wasn’t refusing to copy homework for only neurological reasons.

There was another reason — one I never expected.

And perhaps that reason mattered even more than ADHD, dyslexia, or dysgraphia.

That reflection belongs in My Son Won’t Copy His Homework- Beyond the Lens of ADHD

Why Our Diagnosis Answered Less Than We Hoped

There is a moment many parents of neurodivergent children eventually face: the diagnosis.

When my husband and I realised our son was unusually hyperactive and struggled to sit still long enough to complete tasks most children his age could manage, our thoughts went almost instinctively to ADHD. We first noticed that his development and behaviour began diverging from other children around the age of four. Some parents are encouraged to seek a diagnosis as early as four to six years old, but we hesitated. Before the age of six, it is often difficult to distinguish between normal developmental immaturity and genuine executive function delays. Diagnoses made too early can be unstable and may shift as a child matures.

The same uncertainty applied to dyslexia. Before formal literacy instruction begins, reading difficulties are difficult to interpret. Without sustained exposure to structured reading, it is hard to know whether a child is experiencing a temporary developmental delay or a persistent learning difference. For these reasons, my husband and I decided to wait until our son entered Primary One. At that stage, the demands of school—sustained attention, classroom routines and peer comparison—made executive function difficulties much easier to observe. Teachers could offer clearer feedback, and patterns that had previously been uncertain became increasingly difficult to ignore.

At the end of his Primary One year, we finally decided to pursue a formal assessment. The waiting list was six months long. By the time the appointment arrived, however, something important had already happened. Long before we stepped into the clinic, I had begun building my own system of regulation for my son through nutrition, supplementation, traditional Chinese medicine, massage, acupuncture and carefully chosen extracurricular activities such as Shaolin, abacus, piano, art and swimming. I had even restructured my own work so that I could function as his full-time developmental support, creating rhythms, expectations and daily routines around him. That journey eventually became my book, My Child Is Not Naughty—Just Different: Raising an ADHD Child Through Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science.

We did not pursue the diagnosis because we were unaware that something was different. We pursued it because we hoped—perhaps irrationally—that once the problem had a name, it would finally become manageable.

When we told our son we were taking him to see a doctor, his first reaction was unexpectedly funny.

“Will I need an injection?”

On the day of the appointment, we arrived at the hospital and completed our registration. As we waited, the same question kept returning to my mind: could a doctor really understand a child in a single consultation? One session to assess ADHD, dyslexia and perhaps even dysgraphia, when I had already spent six months observing him every single day and putting an entire system of regulation in place? From both my husband’s and my own observations, our son had already changed—not dramatically or overnight, but through a series of steady, qualitative improvements that were unmistakable if you lived alongside him.

The consultation began on time. Like many paediatricians who see several children each day, the doctor first laid out a small play mat with a selection of toys and asked my son which ones he liked. My son chose a few, quietly removed his shoes without prompting and, within minutes, was lying comfortably on the mat, absorbed in an imaginary game between an aeroplane and a truck. While he played, the doctor began taking a detailed history. We discussed when we first suspected ADHD, how his behaviour presented at home and school, and what his teachers had observed over the past year. As the conversation unfolded, I explained the interventions we had already introduced—acupuncture, nutritional support and supplements such as magnesium, omega-3, choline and taurine. I also described his convergence insufficiency, which had initially led us to believe his reading difficulties were primarily visual rather than cognitive. Through vision therapy, that issue had since resolved to zero deviation, something I had written about elsewhere. I briefly mentioned my background as a pharmacist—not to claim authority, but to make it clear that these decisions were not based on internet searches or passing trends. They were interventions chosen after careful consideration of the available evidence.

The next stage was a literacy assessment consisting of picture-word tasks that gradually increased in difficulty. There were perhaps thirty to fifty items altogether. As the session stretched on, my son became visibly tired. His attention drifted, and even the doctor found it increasingly difficult to redirect him consistently. At first, he remarked that my son seemed able to read more words than he had expected and wondered whether dyslexia might not be present after all. To clarify the picture, he proceeded with a Bahasa Malaysia dyslexia assessment while continuing our discussion about executive function and behavioural regulation. I shared that one strength my son had always possessed was his ability to recover emotionally. He did not experience explosive meltdowns or prolonged tantrums. When he became dysregulated, he generally returned to baseline relatively quickly. I also explained that I had stepped away from my career so that I could support him full time, treating learning, nutrition, sleep and sensory regulation as one integrated system rather than as separate problems to solve. At one point, the doctor looked up from his notes and commented that it seemed I knew what I was doing.

The formal ADHD diagnosis was ultimately based on parental questionnaires, later identified in the report as the NICHQ Vanderbilt Assessment Scale. After nearly three hours, the results were presented. My son met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. On the Raven’s 2 assessment, his non-verbal reasoning fell within the low-average range at the 21st percentile. His Bahasa Malaysia performance was below the expected level for his age, and the overall conclusion was a moderately severe specific learning disorder in reading and writing—dyslexia with dysgraphia. There was no formal assessment for Chinese literacy, as the doctor explained this lay outside his expertise, although he observed that my son appeared noticeably more comfortable reading logographic script than alphabetic or phoneme-based languages.

At the end of the consultation, I asked the question almost every parent asks.

“What do we do next?”

The answer was both clear and familiar. Ritalin was offered to improve classroom focus for approximately three to four hours per dose, with the explanation that appetite suppression and sleep disturbance were likely side effects. For dyslexia, we were referred to an Orton–Gillingham-based intervention centre.

I nodded. None of these recommendations surprised me.

Yet as we walked out of the clinic that afternoon, a quiet dissonance settled in. Ritalin might help him remain seated in the classroom, but what about the drifting that happened long before he left his chair? What about the restless fidgeting, his sleep architecture, or the slow, effortful reading that had already begun to improve through Peter and Jane? Could medication explain the progress we had already witnessed over the previous six months? Could Orton–Gillingham explain why he was beginning to acquire Chinese with greater ease than phoneme-based English?

As I reflected on the report over the following days, I realised it had answered one set of questions while leaving another untouched. It confirmed what my son had and gave us a shared language for describing his difficulties, but it did not tell me how he learned. It could not explain why certain interventions had worked, why regulation had changed so much before the diagnosis, or why his learning profile differed so markedly across languages. Those answers were not in the report. They would come later—not from another assessment, but from continuing to observe the child who lived with us every day.

…After His Brain Was Finally Ready

After my son’s first-term examinations, the results arrived quietly, but they landed like a blow.

English: 13 marks. Mathematics: 23 marks. The remaining subjects followed much the same pattern. He had failed almost everything.

I remember sitting with those results in my hands—not angry, not even surprised, but simply hollow. For years, my husband and I had suspected that something about his development was different. ADHD had lingered quietly at the edge of our awareness, an unspoken possibility that neither of us was ready to confront. We had hoped, perhaps rather naïvely, that a structured, academically demanding Chinese primary school would somehow organise him into alignment. Instead, it dismantled him. That was the moment I stopped asking whether my son could adapt to the system and began asking whether the system had any understanding of how his brain actually worked.

Regulation Comes Before Learning

I realised then that no academic intervention would succeed unless his ADHD was first regulated—not simply managed or suppressed, but regulated at the level of his nervous system, cognition and physiology. The following three months produced nothing that could be measured on a report card. We began acupuncture, introduced consistent supplementation with probiotics and omega fatty acids, rebuilt his nutrition from the ground up, protected his sleep and incorporated massage together with other forms of somatic calming into his daily routine. I deliberately slowed the pace of his world. Much of this journey is documented in detail in my book Different, Not Less — Bridging Western Science and Eastern Philosophy in Parenting a Hyperactive and Inattentive Child. At the time, however, I was not writing. I was simply watching.

Gradually, I noticed small but meaningful changes. His emotional volatility softened, he could sustain his attention a little longer than before, and frustrations that once overwhelmed him became easier to recover from. None of these changes were dramatic enough for anyone else to notice, but together they told me something fundamental was happening. Only much later did I understand what it was. His brain had finally developed some spare capacity. Before regulation, every task consumed almost everything his nervous system had available. There was simply no room left for learning. Only after the internal noise began to quieten could anything else begin to take root.

The Afternoon That Changed Everything

It was during this period that an ordinary lunch unexpectedly changed the course of our reading journey. One afternoon, while having lunch with my husband at our familiar neighbourhood noodle shop, my eyes wandered towards a small shelf against the wall. A handful of children’s books had been left there to occupy young diners. Among the mismatched titles were several slim readers from the Peter and Jane series. Not a complete collection—just scattered volumes: 7A, 6B, 9A.

I had never grown up reading Peter and Jane. I only became an enthusiastic reader much later, during upper primary school, largely on my own. When reading finally captured me, it was Enid Blyton that opened that world. Early readers, systematic literacy and phonics had never really been part of my childhood. Like my son, however, English had always been my primary language, so language itself had never frightened me. I had often heard that Peter and Jane helped children who struggled to read, and curiosity got the better of me. The restaurant owner knew I had a young son. When I asked whether I could borrow one of the books, she smiled immediately and encouraged me to take it home. That evening, we opened Book 6B together.

Painfully Slow, Yet Different

It was painfully slow. Some evenings we managed only two pages. Sometimes even less. It took almost two weeks to finish that one slim reader. Night after night, I found myself wondering whether my son simply could not learn to read. Yet something about this attempt felt different from every previous one. The words repeated. The situations became familiar. The rhythm of the stories was predictable. Although reading remained difficult, he kept coming back.

Looking back now, I realise the timing mattered just as much as the books themselves. This attempt succeeded because it came after months spent regulating his nervous system. Reading is not an isolated skill. For a child with ADHD and dyslexia, it depends on sustained attention, working memory, sequencing and inhibition—functions that are often compromised when ADHD remains unregulated. Dyslexia adds another layer by making it difficult to map sounds to written symbols. Before regulation, my son simply could not access these processes consistently. After regulation, the door finally opened a little.

Why Peter and JaneWorked

Only much later did I begin to understand why those books suited him so well. The repetitive sentences reduced the cognitive effort required to process each page. Familiar contexts stabilised his attention, predictable structures lowered the demands placed on working memory, and meaning itself anchored the process of decoding. Rather than approaching every line as something entirely new, he was able to anticipate what might come next, recognise familiar patterns and confirm what he had already begun to understand.

As I watched him read, I noticed something even more revealing. He did not naturally read letter by letter. Instead, he seemed to recognise words as visual patterns. Either the entire pattern held together, or it collapsed. Peter and Janehappened to support exactly this way of learning. The repeated vocabulary, recurring sentence structures and familiar narratives allowed recognition, prediction and confirmation to work together, rather than forcing him to decode every single word from the beginning each time he encountered it.

Many people later asked whether I worried about spelling. Of course I did. But I also understood something that, at the time, felt more urgent. A child who begins to associate written language with repeated failure eventually stops wanting to engage with it altogether. Dyslexic readers already expend far more cognitive effort simply trying to decode text. If every reading session is immediately followed by correction, spelling drills and another reminder of what they cannot yet do, reading quickly becomes something to avoid rather than something to enjoy. I decided that confidence had to come first. Spelling could wait because it can always be taught later. Fear, once deeply attached to reading, is much harder to undo.

When School Confirmed What I Had Begun to Understand

Meanwhile, school continued presenting language as disconnected fragments. Vocabulary lists appeared without stories. Spelling tests rewarded memorisation. Worksheets trained examination formats rather than communication. Yet at home I was seeing a completely different child. My son loved stories. He understood humour. He could infer meaning remarkably well and followed narratives with surprising ease. His difficulty had never been language itself. It was accessing written language in the way school expected him to.

After his second-term examinations, his teacher told me that although he appeared far more regulated than before, he was still struggling because he simply could not read well enough. That conversation confirmed something I had already begun to suspect. Reading is not merely another subject. It is the gateway to every subject. Without it, English becomes difficult, but so do Mathematics, Science, Chinese and Malay. Sometime later, my son quietly admitted that during the one-hour-and-fifteen-minute examination paper, he drifted—not because he was bored, but because he lacked the confidence to even begin reading the questions.

Starting Where He Was

This was what I now think of as the unmasking effect of ADHD. As the neurological noise gradually settled, the underlying learning profile became much clearer. What remained were dyslexia, dysgraphia and, later, confirmed convergence insufficiency. Writing exhausted him. Copying fractured his attention. Behaviours that had so often been interpreted as laziness or inattention increasingly revealed themselves to be the combined effects of visual strain, language-processing difficulties and the enormous motor effort required simply to write.

Eventually I had to ask myself the hardest question of all: where do I begin? The answer required a great deal of humility. I accepted that my seven-year-old was reading at approximately the level expected of a four-year-old. There was no benefit in pretending otherwise, and certainly no shame in acknowledging it. The only meaningful place to begin was exactly where he was. From that point onward, I applied the same principles across English, Chinese and Malay, always beginning with the earliest reading levels. Learning became less about pushing forward and more about rebuilding foundations through repetition, predictability, meaningful stories and, above all, time.

I also made another decision. He needed one-to-one teaching. I stepped away from work and took him out of daycare so that I could observe him closely, repeat lessons whenever necessary, slow the pace and adjust continuously according to how he responded. Within a month and a half, we had reached Book 5B of Peter and Jane. We had travelled from Here is Peter. Here is Jane. to pages filled with paragraphs and complete stories.

Looking back now, I don’t think Peter and Jane was the miracle. Had I introduced those books three months earlier, I suspect they would have failed just as every previous attempt had failed. What changed first was not the reading material but my son. His nervous system had finally become quiet enough to receive what those books were offering. That experience fundamentally changed the way I think about learning. We often spend enormous effort searching for better schools, better programmes or better teaching methods, when sometimes the first question should simply be whether the child’s brain is ready to learn at all. For my son, regulation came before reading. Reading built confidence, and confidence made further learning possible. Looking back, I believe the sequence mattered far more than any single intervention.

When Words Don’t Stay Still, and Learning Breaks Before It Begins

I have a seven-year-old son who entered Primary One at the beginning of 2025.

For years, my husband and I carried a quiet suspicion that he was slower in learning and reading than his peers, and that he might have ADHD. It was never an accusation, never a label we hurried to place upon him—just an instinct, the kind that lingers quietly at the back of a parent’s mind when something doesn’t quite fit the usual pattern of development.

Even so, we believed, perhaps rather naively, that a structured environment would help him grow out of whatever was holding him back. We thought that once he entered a traditional, academically demanding Chinese primary school just a short walk from our home, everything would somehow fall into place. The routines would shape him, the discipline would ground him, and the gaps we had been noticing would gradually disappear.

We were wrong.

When School Began, Everything Fell Apart

The moment school started, all of those assumptions collapsed almost overnight.

He struggled with almost everything. Not mildly, and not gradually, but in a way that became unmistakably obvious within the first week. He couldn’t sit still for long. He wandered around the classroom. Copying from the whiteboard seemed almost impossible because the words simply refused to stay where they were. Homework rarely came home completed, not because he was unwilling, but because he genuinely didn’t know where to begin. Even the unwritten expectations of being a pupil—remaining seated, following routines, understanding what “school behaviour” meant—seemed completely foreign to him.

It wasn’t stubbornness.

It was confusion.

Almost every day his homework book came home covered in large red remarks, written with the frustration of someone trying to manage forty children at once.

“Parents please take note, student is lazy.”

“Student is not listening.”

“Student refuses to complete work.”

To a teacher managing a crowded classroom, these observations were understandable. Looking at one child among many, it is easy to conclude that the problem is attitude or discipline. Yet from where I stood as his mother, watching him every day outside the classroom, I wasn’t seeing a child who refused to learn.

I was watching a child who was drowning.

What I Thought I Had Already Fixed

Long before he entered Primary One, I had already begun wondering whether ADHD was only part of the story. I suspected convergence insufficiency. I wondered about dyslexia and dysgraphia. Rather than waiting for school to tell us something was wrong, I started intervening early through the means available to me—acupuncture, movement-based regulation, sensory work, nutritional supplementation and building more structure into his daily life. My intention was simple: reduce the constant overwhelm his nervous system seemed to be living with.

Those interventions helped.

Over time he became calmer, more emotionally regulated and far less reactive than before. He appeared more grounded in his own body, and I remember thinking we were finally moving in the right direction.

What I did not yet understand was that regulating ADHD is only one part of the journey.

It can calm a child.

It cannot teach a child how to learn.

It does not automatically build the reading and writing foundations that never developed in the first place, nor does it fill the developmental gaps that a Primary One classroom assumes every child already possesses.

A Mother with a Clinical Lens

My professional training is in pharmacy, so my instinct has always been to think clinically. When faced with a problem, I naturally begin mapping causes to effects, looking for mechanisms that might explain what I am observing.

At the same time, I was raised in Southeast Asia, where healing has never been understood as something purely biological. It includes the body, emotions, movement, food, sleep, breath and the environment in which a person lives. Rather than seeing Eastern and Western approaches as competing with one another, I gradually found myself drawing from both.

Our journey eventually became a combination of Western neurodevelopmental science, Eastern methods of regulation, nutrition, movement, breathwork, acupuncture and, perhaps more than anything else, relentless observation. Much of what we learnt during those early years later became the foundation of my first book, My Child Is Not Naughty—Just Different: Raising an ADHD Child Through Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science.

Yet despite everything we had done, I still didn’t have the full picture.

The First Misleading Breakthrough: Convergence Insufficiency

Before school began, we discovered that he had convergence insufficiency towards the end of age six. At the time, I genuinely believed we had finally found the answer to everything.

His eyes struggled to sustain near focus. Text drifted across the page, words seemed unstable, and sometimes they even appeared to double. A single word had to be repeated over and over before it would finally “stay still” long enough for him to recognise it.

After six months of targeted intervention through visual exercises, structured reading distance and sensory reinforcement, his convergence insufficiency improved significantly by around seven and a half years of age. Almost immediately, I noticed changes. Copying from the whiteboard became easier. Tracking lines of text was far more stable than before.

Yet something still wasn’t right.

His English reading barely improved.

That was when I realised that even after removing the visual barrier, another obstacle remained.

When All the Pieces Finally Aligned

The real breakthrough came only when I stopped looking for a single explanation.

My son was not dealing with one condition. He was living with ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia and convergence insufficiency at the same time. Each of these conditions alone can interfere with learning. Together, they create difficulties that are far greater than the sum of their individual parts.

For a long time, I had been trying to understand each diagnosis separately. Only later did I realise that they constantly interacted with one another, making it almost impossible for teachers—or even parents—to see the whole picture.

ADHD explained why he struggled to regulate his attention, not because he lacked intelligence or motivation, but because his brain processed information differently. His thoughts often moved faster than his hands. His body responded before instructions had fully settled. The more the environment demanded prolonged control and sustained attention, the more overwhelmed his nervous system became. Even after his ADHD became considerably more regulated, however, the learning difficulties remained. That was my first clue that attention alone had never been the whole story.

Dyslexia answered another set of questions. It explained why he loved stories but disliked reading individual words, why he could understand emotional nuance in conversations yet consistently fail spelling tests, and why isolated vocabulary such as broccoli, sausage or pencil seemed to carry so little meaning for him. His brain was constantly searching for context. Give him a meaningful story and he became completely engaged. Present him with disconnected word lists and his interest disappeared almost immediately.

Dysgraphia revealed itself whenever he picked up a pencil. He could explain ideas fluently, yet translating those ideas onto paper was exhausting. Letter formation was inconsistent, strokes were often reversed and his pencil grip changed constantly. The problem was never a lack of effort. It was the complex neurological coordination between visual processing, motor planning and written execution.

Looking back, I also realised how much convergence insufficiency had shaped everyone’s perception of him. When words blur, lines drift and sustained focus becomes physically difficult, children naturally disengage. Unfortunately, that disengagement is often mistaken for laziness or inattention. By the time his visual difficulties had largely resolved, the label had already been attached to him.

Only when I stepped back and viewed all four conditions together did everything begin to make sense. Suddenly I understood why he could discuss stories intelligently yet struggle with worksheets, why he inferred meaning so naturally but repeatedly failed spelling tests, why conversation came easily while copying remained painfully difficult, and why a bright, curious child appeared to perform so poorly in school.

He had never been incapable of learning.

He was learning through multiple developmental barriers at the same time.

When Respect Flows Only One Way

Every Saturday, my parents come over for dinner with me and my son. It has become a simple family routine, one that allows three generations to gather around the same table. Recently, however, one seemingly ordinary evening left me reflecting once again on the meaning of filial piety.

Like most Chinese, I grew up understanding that 孝 meant respecting one’s parents and elders. It is one of those values repeated so often that we rarely stop to ask where it begins or where it ends. Curious, I went back to read a little more and found myself returning to Confucius’ teaching on 孝悌 (xiào tì). 孝 refers to respect towards one’s parents, while 悌 speaks of respect towards elder siblings and those slightly senior to us. In both cases, respect flows in the same direction—upwards.

What I could not find was equally interesting.

Where was the word for respecting the young?

Where was the cultural expectation that elders should also examine how they treat those younger than themselves? Where was the reminder that respect, if it is truly a virtue, cannot simply be demanded in one direction?

Before I had the chance to think any further about it, something happened that evening which made those questions feel unexpectedly real.

The Home I Grew Up In

Perhaps I should begin a little earlier.

I was born into a family where both my parents were what we locally call “bananas”—Chinese on the outside, Western on the inside. English was spoken at home. Chinese traditions were observed more through festivals than through philosophy. Neither of my parents had the opportunity to pursue higher education, as university places were extremely limited during their time. They entered the workforce soon after secondary school, met one another, married, and many years later had me, their only child.

Being their only daughter, I was protected in many ways. Looking back now, some of that protection also became restriction.

Growing up, my parents argued constantly. Every two or three days the house would be filled with raised voices, harsh words and conversations that children probably should never have heard. Neither of them knew how to regulate their emotions particularly well, and social circles outside the family were almost non-existent. They had very few close friends, little community around them and, perhaps because of that, very few opportunities to learn healthier ways of communicating.

Children absorb far more than we realise.

Without knowing it, I grew up carrying many of the same traits. I became socially awkward, uncertain of myself and often afraid of taking up space. As I entered adulthood, I found myself avoiding spending long periods with my parents because those years of conflict never quite left me. More than the arguments themselves, it was the lingering sense that I was never quite good enough, particularly through my mother’s own insecurities, that quietly shaped how I saw myself.

I don’t share this to blame them. They raised me with the knowledge and emotional tools they had, and like many parents, they did what they believed was best. But the home we grow up in inevitably shapes the way we understand relationships, communication and respect. That is why what happened next stayed with me far longer than I expected.

The Dinner That Turned Into a Storm

That Saturday began like any other.

Dinner was simple: tortilla wraps, oven-grilled vegetables, luncheon meat and homemade potato fries. My parents arrived, and as always, my son greeted them politely as Grandpa and Grandma before we sat down together.

Almost immediately, the comments began.

The fries, according to my father, were “not fully cooked.” When my son reached for a little more, my mother stopped him, saying, “Don’t give him so much. It’s only carbohydrate.”

I replied gently that it was alright. With ADHD, he burns through energy quickly and is often hungry.

A few moments later my father casually mentioned an upcoming family gathering. I happily agreed that we should go. My mother, however, was upset that she hadn’t known about it earlier. Within minutes the conversation shifted completely. What began as a small misunderstanding became accusations about keeping secrets, criticism over the choice of restaurant, worries about who would be paying for the meal and, before long, grievances that had nothing to do with the original conversation.

The argument escalated rapidly.

Old resentments resurfaced. Personal attacks followed. Four-letter words that had no place at a family dinner were thrown across the table.

I asked them to stop.

When that didn’t work, I asked my father to leave before things became worse in front of my son.

They continued.

My son, who is particularly sensitive to sound, quietly asked them to stop as well. They barely noticed. Instead, he picked up his iPad, walked to a corner of the house and chose to remove himself from the noise rather than become part of it.

It was only then that I realised the irony unfolding before me.

The adults were demanding respect from one another while showing very little of it themselves.

I finally told my parents firmly, “Please don’t use that kind of language in my house. My husband and I don’t fight in front of our son. Don’t bring this into our home.”

My mother’s response came almost immediately.

“I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

The Question That Stayed With Me

After they left that evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened.

It wasn’t simply that my parents had argued. Couples argue. Families argue. That, unfortunately, is part of life. What stayed with me was the contrast between the generations sitting in the same house.

My son never shouted. He never answered back. He never disrespected his grandparents. When the noise became too much for him, he quietly removed himself from the situation. Knowing his auditory sensitivity, I could see he was trying to protect himself in the only way he knew how. He wasn’t making a statement. He wasn’t trying to prove a point. He simply chose silence over conflict.

Later that night, I sent my father a message.

“The boy is still young now, and all of you think you’re right in how you behave. But one day, when he’s older and he chooses to walk away from you, will people say he has no manners? Or should we ask what the adults taught him about respect all these years?”

As I reread that message, I realised I wasn’t really speaking only about my son. I was thinking about myself as well.

For years, I struggled to spend long periods with my parents, not because I did not love them, but because the emotional climate I grew up in had never really left me. Children eventually become adults, but they carry their childhood with them far longer than we realise. Long after the words themselves are forgotten, they remember how a home felt. Whether it felt peaceful. Whether it felt safe. Whether respect was something that everyone practised, or something only the younger generation was expected to show.

That was when my thoughts returned to Confucius.

We often speak about 孝, about respecting our parents. We teach children from a very young age to greet their elders politely, to lower their voices, to obey, to give way and to show consideration. These are all good values, and I have tried to teach them to my own son.

But sitting there that night, I found myself asking a different question.

If we spend so much effort teaching children how to respect adults, when do we teach adults how to respect children?

Not by surrendering authority, nor by treating children as equals in every decision. A child still needs guidance, boundaries and correction. Yet correction and dignity are not opposites. Authority and respect are not opposites either. In fact, perhaps genuine authority is only possible when it is exercised with respect.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this was the part we rarely speak about. Filial piety has survived for thousands of years because it asks something of the young. It gives them a responsibility towards those who came before them. But every relationship has two ends. If one side alone carries the responsibility of maintaining respect, eventually the relationship becomes unbalanced.

Perhaps that is why so many adult children quietly distance themselves from their parents. From the outside, it is easy to label them unfilial or ungrateful. It is far more difficult to ask what kind of relationship they experienced growing up. Respect that is demanded but never demonstrated slowly loses its meaning. What remains is no longer virtue, but obligation.

As parents, we often remind children that they are always watching us. Yet we usually mean they are watching our successes, our discipline or our achievements. That evening reminded me they are also watching how we disagree, how we speak when we are frustrated, and how we treat people over whom we hold more authority. Those ordinary moments may become the lessons they remember most.

On noise, culture, and the adults children become.

Every Friday, my son attends drum class at school as part of the extracurricular programme. It isn’t Western percussion, but the traditional Chinese drum—the deep-bodied drum commonly seen in cultural performances. Before I ever paid attention to drumming, I simply heard it as noise: loud, rhythmic and, at times, overwhelming. Trained as a classical pianist, I had always thought of music in terms of melody, phrasing and emotion. Percussion sat somewhere in the background, providing rhythm but rarely demanding my attention.

That changed when I began reading about the Twenty-Four Festive Drums （二十四节令鼓）, a tradition that originated here in Malaysia. I realised the drum had never merely been an instrument. Like many things in Chinese culture, what appears simple on the surface often carries layers of meaning beneath. The drum is one of them.

Created in 1988, the Twenty-Four Festive Drums bring together three classical Chinese traditions. There is the lion drum (狮鼓), whose deep resonance once announced celebration, movement and awakening. Each drum bears one of the twenty-four solar terms, written boldly in calligraphy, reminding us that the changing of the seasons has always been woven into Chinese thought and daily life. Then there is the choreography itself. The drummers do not simply stand and strike the drum. They leap, bend, turn and rotate in synchrony, moving almost like martial artists whose bodies happen to create music.

The more I watched and read, the more I admired the philosophy behind it. There is tremendous force in the drum, yet that force is never separated from discipline. Every strike belongs somewhere. Every movement has intention. Power is expressed not through chaos, but through rhythm.

I wish my reflection on the drum had ended there.

Instead, the “shouting drum” I encountered that Friday came not from an instrument, but from an adult.

The Incident

That morning, my son mentioned rather casually, “Mummy, coach wants to see you today.”

He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was about an upcoming performance, perhaps fees, perhaps something else entirely. He simply knew that his usual coach had asked for me, so after school we made our way there as we always did.

The afternoon, however, didn’t quite go according to plan. His favourite mixed-rice stall happened to be closed, so we drove elsewhere for lunch and ended up waiting almost twenty minutes for a bowl of noodle soup. By the time we had finished eating, changed him into his sports shirt in the car and climbed the stairs to the drum hall, we were probably no more than three minutes late.

On the way upstairs, one of his classmates mentioned, almost as an afterthought, “It’s not our usual coach today. Replacement teacher.”

My son immediately looked at me and said, “Then no need to find coach already.”

I still went upstairs anyway, thinking perhaps the replacement teacher knew why the coach had wanted to see me.

The moment my son stepped into the hall, she raised her voice.

There was no pause to ask why he was late, no moment to understand what had happened. Instead, she immediately demanded to know why he had arrived after everyone else and asked, in a tone that left little room for anything else, “What must you say when you are late?”

My son froze.

Children sometimes do that. When caught off guard, they are not thinking about excuses or even answers. They are simply trying to understand what is happening around them.

He quietly managed to say, “Sorry.”

Before the word had fully left his mouth, she had already turned away.

I remained standing at the doorway. She looked in my direction but never asked who I was or why I had come. There was no acknowledgement, no conversation, only a brief wave of the hand accompanied by a curt, “Bye.”

As I walked back down the stairs, I realised I wasn’t simply angry.

I was saddened.

Not because my son had been corrected for being late. Being punctual is important, and children should learn that actions have consequences.

What stayed with me was something else.

The loudest thing in the room was not the drum.

It was the adult.

When Adults Forget Their Own Rhythm

As I drove home, I found myself thinking less about the replacement coach and more about the drum itself.

The drum is loud. It fills an entire hall with sound. Yet it never feels disorderly. Its force comes not from volume alone, but from rhythm. Every strike belongs somewhere. Every movement has intention. Even the loudest beat exists because it knows when to begin and when to end.

Shouting is different.

Shouting also fills a room, but it leaves behind something entirely different. It may achieve obedience in that moment, yet it rarely leaves dignity in its wake. A drum commands attention because it is disciplined. A raised voice often commands attention because it has lost that discipline.

Perhaps that was the irony that stayed with me. Here was an art form built upon centuries of refinement, where strength and restraint exist together, yet the first thing a child encountered that afternoon was neither rhythm nor restraint, but anger.

Children, of course, rarely separate the lesson from the person teaching it.

When we send them to learn music, they are not only learning rhythm. When we send them to sport, they are not only learning technique. They are also observing the adults standing in front of them. How does this adult respond when something goes wrong? How does this adult exercise authority? How does this adult speak to someone much smaller than themselves?

Those lessons are never written into the curriculum, yet children learn them all the same.

I often wonder whether we underestimate how carefully children observe us. We assume they remember instructions, but more often they remember atmosphere. Long after they have forgotten what was said, they remember how a room felt. Whether it felt safe. Whether it felt respectful. Whether they were seen.

Perhaps that is why I found the experience so unsettling. It had very little to do with being three minutes late. It had everything to do with the atmosphere that greeted a child the moment he walked through the door.

Teaching a Child to Stand on His Own Feet

There was another part of that afternoon that stayed with me, and it had nothing to do with the coach.

It had to do with my own decision to remain at the doorway.

Everything in me wanted to explain why we were late. The closed food stall. The unexpected delay. The rush from one place to another. It would have been easy to speak for him, as parents often do.

I chose not to.

Not because I believed he deserved to be shouted at, but because I have been trying, little by little, to teach him something that may matter far beyond childhood.

To speak for himself.

Confidence does not suddenly appear when a child turns eighteen. It is built slowly through countless ordinary moments. Answering an adult’s question. Admitting a mistake. Explaining what happened. Learning that their own voice deserves to be heard.

I wanted him to say, “I’m sorry I’m late,” because he understood why punctuality matters, not because he was frightened into saying it.

Yet parenting is rarely that simple.

At what point does teaching a child to respect authority become teaching them to quietly accept every expression of authority? How do we encourage politeness without suggesting that every adult is automatically worthy of imitation? More importantly, how do we teach children that respect is something both given and carried?

These are questions I never imagined asking before becoming a parent.

When children are young, we spend so much time teaching them how to behave that we sometimes forget they are equally busy learning how adults behave.

When Teaching Becomes Learning, and Parents Learn to Bow Too

It has been a year since my son and I began training with our Shaolin coach.

Over that year, we have both earned our First Duan and are now preparing for our Second. Like Taekwondo, Karate and other martial arts, Shaolin also has a system of ranks. What began as a weekly two-hour class every Sunday has gradually become much more than physical training. Somewhere along the way, it became a quiet practice of reflection—for both of us.

I still train on my own three or four times each week. My son was only six when we first began, shortly after returning from two months of training at Kunyu Mountain Academy in China. That experience marked the beginning of our Shaolin journey, but it was not where the journey itself truly began. Before that, we had spent years searching for something that suited him, moving from Taekwondo to Wushu and trying to understand what kind of practice his mind and body needed. I wrote about much of that search in My Child Is Not Naughty—Just Different: Raising an ADHD Child Through Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science. What began as an intervention for ADHD slowly evolved into a lifelong discipline that neither of us had expected.

The Coach and the First Year

The first time I met our coach, I sensed almost immediately that he was from Mainland China. There was something familiar in the way he carried himself, a calm authority that reminded me of the masters I had met during our time in Shandong. He was surprised that I understood the technical names of the Shaolin forms, and even more surprised when he discovered that my son could already perform Tong Bi Quan.

My son initially joined the beginners’ class. Because I was training as well, however, we were eventually moved into the intermediate group. Most of the students there had already been practising for three years or more. I was the only adult in the class.

At middle age, my body no longer responds the way a child’s does. I may understand the philosophy behind the movements, but understanding does not make my hamstrings any more flexible or my hips any more willing. While the children folded effortlessly into stretches, I found myself negotiating with muscles that resisted almost everything they were asked to do. Even so, my coach often told me that he was glad I trained alongside the children. His school focused primarily on teaching young students, while most adults who came only attended Sanda, or Chinese kickboxing. He believed parents should learn together with their children whenever possible.

One day he said something that has remained with me ever since.

“In China, you can still find seventy-year-olds doing kickboxing in the parks—strong and agile.”

Then, after a short pause, he added,

“If parents train, children learn more than forms. They learn endurance.”

At the time, I thought he was talking about martial arts. It would take me many months to realise he was also talking about parenting.

Learning Beside My Son

In every class, I do exactly what the coach asks. If he says, “One hundred times,” I do one hundred. It may take me longer than everyone else, and I may not move as gracefully, but I finish. I cannot do the side splits, and my kicks certainly do not reach my forehead, yet I continue to train as sincerely as I can. At first I felt rather self-conscious. Surrounded by children who seemed to improve every week, I often wondered whether I looked ridiculous struggling through movements that came so naturally to them.

Gradually, however, I realised something far more important than whether I was performing the techniques well.

My son was watching me.

Not to see whether I was talented, but to see whether I kept trying.

He watched me struggle through stretches that my body resisted. He watched me bow before every practice. He watched me repeat movements over and over without complaint, even when I knew I would never perform them as well as the children around me. Without either of us talking about it very much, he was learning something I could never have taught through words alone. I was no longer asking him to persevere. I was simply persevering myself.

Something else began changing as well. Other parents slowly started joining the classes. First a mother trained alongside her daughter. Then another father decided to participate. Eventually, after watching us train week after week, even my husband stepped onto the training floor. He now genuinely looks forward to our Sunday sessions, finding renewed energy, fitness and enjoyment in the practice.

One afternoon, as I looked around the hall, I realised something had quietly shifted.

Parents were no longer waiting outside while their children trained inside.

They had become part of the practice themselves.

When Parents Join the Practice

Only after living this experience did I begin to understand what my coach had been trying to teach me all along. When parents participate in what their children are learning, the entire relationship changes. Most of us enrol our children in the best schools, the best enrichment programmes or the best coaches, hoping they will improve. We wait outside the classroom while they practise, then later correct them when they fail to meet our expectations. Yet before asking more of our children, perhaps we should first ask ourselves a simpler question: could we do what we are asking them to do?

Training beside my son transformed the way I parented him. When he struggled with a movement, I knew exactly why because I had struggled with it myself. I understood which stretches demanded patience, which stances exhausted the legs and which repetitions quietly wore down the mind. My corrections became gentler because they were no longer based on observation alone, but on shared experience. Instead of saying, “Do better,” I found myself saying, “Let’s try again together.”

Somewhere along the way, I also realised that we had begun teaching one another. He challenged the stiffness of my ageing body, while I quietly demonstrated the perseverance he was still learning to cultivate. Neither of us possessed everything the other needed. Yet together, each of us carried something the other lacked.

That, perhaps, is the quiet gift of practising alongside our children. They no longer feel as though they are facing every challenge alone. They know someone else has walked the same path, struggled through the same repetitions and understands why certain things are difficult—not because they have been told, but because they have lived them too.

What Shaolin Taught Me About Parenting

My coach has always insisted that I sit for every Duan Wei examination alongside my son. At first I assumed it was simply part of the school’s culture. Over time, however, I realised that the examinations were never really about earning another rank. By learning the same forms, I came to understand every movement my son struggled with and every emotion hidden beneath those struggles. The physical practice became a mirror, reflecting patience, humility and endurance long before it developed strength or agility.

Shaolin gradually changed the way I thought about parenting. Parents are not meant to stand above their children, pointing out the correct path while remaining safely on the sidelines. More often, we are meant to walk beside them—to bow together before practice, to sweat through the same repetitions, to become frustrated by the same mistakes and, eventually, to discover together that progress is usually quieter than we imagine.

The practice itself was never only about flexibility, power or perfect technique. It was about humility. It was about understanding. It was about replacing hierarchy with companionship. The older I become, the more convinced I am that genuine teaching rarely begins with mastery. More often, it begins with shared effort.

After a year of Shaolin training, I no longer see my son as a student I need to mould. I see him as a companion on the same path of discipline. We learn different lessons, and we learn them at different speeds, but we grow in much the same way—through repetition, patience and the willingness to begin again.

Perhaps this is the quiet lesson Shaolin has given me.

Children do not need parents who have already mastered everything.

They need parents who are willing to become students again.

On stillness, example, and why children cannot love what we don’t live.

Every Wednesday, I bring my son to a clubhouse for his swimming lesson. Just across the road stands a beautiful public library overlooking a quiet lake. The setting always felt almost idyllic to me, and I imagined we could build a small ritual around it. Before swimming, we would wander across the road, borrow a few books, spend some time reading together and then head off to class. It seemed like one of those simple habits that might quietly stay with a child for life.

The first afternoon we tried it, however, I found myself unexpectedly unsettled.

A Library That Felt Like a Playground

The children’s section was exactly what I had hoped for. The shelves were filled with books I recognised immediately—Usborne Young Readers, Peter and Jane, Enid Blyton and many of the classics I had grown up with. I happily gathered a small pile for my son, already picturing us sitting together, turning pages one after another.

Instead, children were running across the carpet, weaving between bookshelves and chasing one another through the reading area. Some climbed onto the reading cubbies as though they were playground equipment. Their voices echoed through the room while, only a short distance away, many of the adults chatted comfortably with one another, scrolled through their phones or simply watched from a distance without much concern for what their children were doing.

There was very little of what I instinctively associate with a library. I had expected quiet conversations, children curled up with books and parents reading beside them. Instead, the atmosphere felt strangely restless. It was almost as though someone had taken a playground and placed books around its edges.

I caught myself wondering whether I was simply becoming old-fashioned. Perhaps this was what modern libraries were meant to be. Perhaps “interactive” and “child-friendly” now meant something different from what I had imagined. Yet the feeling refused to leave me.

If we no longer preserve the few spaces designed for stillness, where will children ever encounter stillness at all?

That question lingered with me because, over the past few years, much of my life has revolved around helping my son learn exactly that. His ADHD has never felt like a flaw to me, only a different rhythm of the mind that required understanding rather than force. I wrote about much of that journey in My Child Is Not Naughty—Just Different: Raising an ADHD Child Through Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science. Reading, in particular, was one of his greatest struggles. Words drifted. Sentences dissolved before they could settle into meaning. For a long time, books represented effort rather than enjoyment. It took years of regulating his nervous system before he could sit quietly enough to lose himself in a story.

When he finally began reading Peter and Jane with genuine comprehension, it felt like one of those victories no examination could ever measure. It was a small milestone, perhaps invisible to everyone else, but deeply significant to us. That was why I wanted the library to become part of our weekly rhythm. I imagined it as a place where this newly discovered love of reading could continue to grow.

Perhaps that was why the contrast felt so striking. A child who is only beginning to enjoy books does not simply need books. He also needs an environment that allows his attention to settle. Stillness is part of reading. It always has been.

Why Bring Children to a Library If Not to Read?

There are countless places where children are encouraged to run, climb and play. There are playgrounds, cafés, parks and the lakeside path just outside the library itself. A library, however, has always been something different. It is one of the few remaining public spaces built around quiet attention. The silence is not there to suppress children. It exists because reading asks something different of us. It asks us to slow down long enough for another person’s thoughts to enter our own.

If libraries gradually become no different from every other noisy public space, children naturally learn that noise is simply the default condition of life. They may still learn to decode words, but reading risks becoming another activity competing against constant distraction rather than an experience of entering another world.

As I sat there watching the room around me, I found myself wondering whether children can ever truly fall in love with reading if every encounter with books is surrounded by movement, conversation and interruption. Reading is certainly a skill, but it is also a habit of attention. It asks us to become fully present to something outside ourselves, and presence is difficult to cultivate when the environment itself never becomes still.

When the Library Became the Lesson

While we were reading, something small happened a few shelves away.

An older boy struck a younger child, who immediately burst into tears.

My son looked up in surprise. He seemed genuinely confused that a place filled with books had suddenly become a place of conflict. The incident itself did not shock me. Children argue, test boundaries and sometimes hurt one another. That is part of growing up.

What stayed with me was everything that followed.

The boy’s mother was sitting some distance away, chatting comfortably on a sofa. She seemed unaware that anything had happened until the crying became impossible to ignore. Only then did she slowly walk over, find out what had taken place and ask her son to apologise.

Watching the scene unfold, I realised that the problem was not really about children behaving badly inside a library.

It was about children responding to the atmosphere created by the adults around them.

The adults were not reading. They were not modelling quiet attention or showing that books mattered enough to deserve stillness. They were physically present in the library, but mentally somewhere else. Children can only absorb the environment that adults create for them.

That thought led me to another uncomfortable question.

If a child grows up seeing that reading matters very little to the adults in their life, why do we assume that simply bringing them to a library will make them love books?

Many of us believe exposure alone is enough. We buy books, fill shelves with them and make regular visits to libraries, hoping that love for reading will somehow emerge on its own. Yet children rarely learn what to love simply because something is placed before them. More often, they learn what matters by watching what matters to us.

A child does not enter a library thinking, “There are books here. I should read.”

Instead, the child quietly observes the adults.

Is Mum reading?

Is Dad absorbed in a book?

Are the adults treating this place differently from everywhere else?

If every adult is looking at a phone, chatting or simply waiting for time to pass, the child has already received the lesson. The books become part of the furniture rather than the purpose of the visit.

Reading, like kindness or patience, is not passed from one generation to the next through instruction alone. It is witnessed before it is practised.

Parents Cannot Teach What They Were Never Shown

Yet as I sat there, I found myself feeling more compassion than frustration.

Most parents bring their children to libraries, enrichment classes or sports because they genuinely want the best for them. We hope that by placing our children in good environments, those environments will shape them into thoughtful, disciplined and curious people.

But environments alone cannot do what example has never begun.

I was reminded of something my mother-in-law once said to her eldest grandson after watching us return from a morning hike.

“You should exercise more.”

She meant it kindly. She is elderly now, and in her generation advice was often the way care was expressed. That morning, however, I had just taken my son and his two older cousins up the small mountain near our hometown. They came home exhausted, happy and proud of themselves.

I smiled and replied gently,

“It starts with the adults. If we don’t move, how will the children know what movement looks like?”

I was not trying to correct her. In many ways, I was reminding myself.

Children imitate far more than they obey.

That same lesson returned to me in the library.

My son has ADHD, and like many children with ADHD, his attention is easily drawn towards movement and excitement. The moment the other children began running around the shelves, his own attention shifted with them. Earlier he had been completely absorbed in a book about emperor penguins, asking questions and turning each page carefully. Within minutes, however, the surrounding chaos had pulled him away from it.

It struck me that the choices made by one family rarely affect only that family.

The parents who allowed their children to treat the library as a playground were also shaping the experience of every other child sharing the same space, including those who had come hoping to find a quiet corner to read. Libraries, classrooms and parks are all shared environments. The way we use them quietly influences everyone else who enters after us.

Perhaps that is why I have come to believe that children do not learn behaviour from places alone.

They learn it from people.

Most of us grew up being told what to do rather than seeing those values consistently lived. Without realising it, we often repeat the same pattern, hoping that schools, libraries or enrichment programmes will teach what we ourselves have never embodied. Yet children read our lives far more carefully than they read the words on any page.

What My Son Saw

When we left the library that afternoon, my son hugged the books we had borrowed without saying very much.

As we walked quietly back towards the clubhouse for his swimming lesson, I found myself thinking that perhaps the most important lesson from that afternoon had very little to do with libraries at all.

Perhaps the first step is not bringing a child to a library.

Perhaps the first step is for a parent to sit down, open a book and let the child discover, without a single word being spoken, what it looks like to love reading.