Above all else

So we all woke up one morning this week to the electronic thunder of the first salvos being fired between members of probably the most famous family in our country.  Since then, the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire has continued to sporadically break out from one side or the other, with accompanying shots from interested bystanders as well! I have no interest in adding bullets to the skirmish, other than to observe that, as in real war, cyber-warfare may be just as deadly!  I'm sure we've all experienced it ourselves.  Someone sends us an antagonistic email at work.  Someone's rude to us on Whatsapp or Facebook or Instagram.  Our pride is stung, our sense of outrage and injustice is invoked, our itchy trigger fingers snap into action and a sharp reply is issued (and sometimes cc everyone else so we can all keep score). Just happened to me this week.  Got a rude message on Whatsapp, my quick temper flared, and before my brain truly engaged, my emotions did, and so m

I recently read a post online that shared that a significant percentage of child leg fractures occurs when a parent is attempting to shepherd a child down a slide.  So the parent puts the child on his lap, and then slides down with the child.  Problem is, the child's shoe gets stuck halfway.  Normally, the child would stop sliding, everything's fine.  But the parent's weight drags everybody on, and so, aaargh, fracture happens. That's a really neat analogy to what the Ministry of Education has been circulating on helicopter parenting - that the weight of our parenting can sometimes do more harm than good. Are we the sort of parents who rush down with our kids' homework when they forget to bring it to school?  Or argue with teachers to get one more mark for them?  Or do their art homework to get them the "A"?  No, the MOE says, let kids learn the consequences of forgetting homework, the initiative to negotiate with teachers and the realisation that art