Play Group: Day 6

WS mentioned that I left early yesterday....to which I didn't give a reply in return. *Hmmm* What could I say? I could have told her, but....maybe another time when it is more appropriate. I guess??

My lecturer, Leisa dropped by, to which I told her the circumstances that I am currently in. I would say that it's the cultural adjustment that I am still trying to get over with. The interaction style that I am used to in KL, would not be suitable in Toowoomba

(or in an International School context where there are many foreign international students. This happened to me a couple of years back when I was back in KL, so I can tell you that from experience!)

The way that parents interact with their children is similar almost everywhere, but at the same time, there are elements which are different. For me now, I am still concerned with the "right" and "wrong" way of approaching the children here. My lecturer told me that the best way to approach it is to observe WS when she interacted with the children and parents, using her as a basis I can model my interactions on. I think that that is a good advice.

I guess, now is the best time to use my knowledge (after all the amount of reading I have done!) and put it into practice. What is knowledge (theoretical as it is) if it can be made use of, isn't it?

The best part about today is that I actually finally sat down with the children (and parents) and read to them from my resource book. (It is not that much different of how I would have done in KL anyway..) but the most important part is that I got it done. I still need more practice...but heck. I need to get started somehow. Somewhere.

I told my lecturer about how I wrote my science resource appraisal, and she said that if it was in the wrong direction, she would get back to me. I told her that I would re-do it if it was necessary, but *I am crossing my two fingers*. Re-doing an assignment is not really a problem for me, as long as I get the context right.

Digressing here, I would like to write about something and bring up a point that a classmate of mine, SY brought up in mid-2005 when she returned to KL after one semester in Toowoomba. SY said that when she was on a bus ride one day to town to Grand Central, that she saw pre-teen girls dressed up too adult-ish for their age, even though they were barely in their teens. They were talking about boys and all that kind of things. To tell you the truth, I really didn't think too much of it then, as I thought it was pretty normal for people here.

That is, until a local parent brought this same subject up today. We were actually talking about Enid Blyton storybooks (and I how I loved the Five-Find-Outers!), but somehow the topic changed to what children did these days.

The parent (who has a large family herself and children in their early 20s) brought up a similar point, stating that she notices that children these days, and the girls rather, at a young age want to dress like adults.

Instead of watching shows appropriate to their age, they are watching teen Beverly Hills 90210 soap-opera-ish shows like Home & Away, and OC. She was out at a supermarket one day, and overheard aconversation that a young girl (who looked about 8 years of age) who asked her mother for a "g-string"! Surprisingly the girl's mother didn't disapprove of it.

Not wanting to critique too much, but even children's shows like Hi-5 (which I actually enjoy watching, and so do children and girls in KL like!) perpeatuate this style of dressing.

(which is something that I noticed initially about the style of dressing, but I was more concerned about the content of the show, but that is a totally different topic altogether).

I was actually surprised that in the Australian context, the Anglo-Australian parents are concerned that their children (mostly about the girls) that children are no longer dressing like children. In dressing like adults, I mean clothes like jeans that are hanging and showing the bum, or spaghetti strap and piercings. I would have only expected that Asian-Australian parents to notice that, but I guess I was proven wrong in that point.

The thing about dressing adult-ish and looking adult-ish, is that people expect more adult behaviour from them, but the reality of the situation is that that is not necessarily true of the child themselves.

Anyway, I went to the library last night and borrowed a British published book I found on play-groups. It would make an interesting read, since there is much I do not know about playgroups. Play groups have been in existence for a long time, and one of the books was published in the early 70s. I will write more about it once I am done reading it.