Bedtime" scene in the middle of the night
At 11:30 PM, in Dong Dang border commune, Lang Son, it was already quiet, but the window of the apartment of Ms. Thu Ha and Mr. Dinh Tuan's family was still lit.
The rustling sound of flipping books, occasionally interspersed with a soft sigh, broke away in the quiet space.
Sitting slumped beside her son's desk in 5th grade, Ms. Ha (34 years old, accountant) put her hand on her temples, her eyes still not leaving the History - Geography syllabus.
Next to him, baby Bin is diligently writing, occasionally yawning tiredly.
My child is preparing for the final semester exam of elementary school, so it's extremely stressful. For a whole week now, no one in my family has been able to sleep before 12 pm. Mom comes home from work and rushes to the kitchen, cooking and cleaning quickly so that she can'put on duty' at 8 pm to study with her child," Ms. Ha shared, her voice hoarse because of lack of sleep.
Not just simply sitting next to supervisors as before, Ms. Ha said that she herself also has to learn from the beginning.
Current knowledge has changed a lot according to the new program, and the way of thinking about solving math problems is also different from before.
In order to be able to lecture her child to understand without being "out of sync" with the teacher in class, at noon at the office, instead of dozing off, she opens textbooks, goes online to find lecture videos to supplement her knowledge.
The hardest thing is memorizing subjects. The child reads and forgets later, the mother has to work hard to summarize the main idea, draw a mind map for the child to easily remember. Some nights, the two mothers and daughters just hold out the outline to probe each other's papers, the mother asks the child to answer like taking an oral exam," Ms. Ha laughed and recalled the scene of "fighting" every night.
Sharing "on-duty" during exam season
Seeing that his wife seemed exhausted, Mr. Dinh Tuan (38 years old) quickly made a glass of hot milk and brought it into the room, patting Ms. Ha's shoulder, half-heartedly wanting to change shifts.
Opening a notebook full of unfinished lines, Mr. Tuan carefully held his child's hand, neatly marking each stroke. Few people know that to be able to train his child, the man himself, who is familiar with computers and technical drawings, also had to retrain his own handwriting.
I am inherently hot-tempered, and my writing is familiar with quick typing or hasty signing. But the teacher instructed that if the essay exam paper is presented carelessly, with bad handwriting, and heavily erased, the presentation score will be heavily deducted.
So every night, the two fathers and sons worked hard to buy notebooks to practice sharp lines. For some math problems, the father worked hard to cover the entire paper surface to get the answers, then groped his head and thought about how to explain so that the 10-year-old child could understand according to the correct elementary school method instead of solving in the style of building an adult equation," Mr. Tuan confided.
While massaging his tired arm for his son, Mr. Tuan clicked his tongue: "Recalling how gently I went to school in the past, self-study, self-play, carrying a fishing rod at noon, playing football in the afternoon, my parents almost didn't have to worry about homework.
Now looking at the children spinning around with school schedules, extra classes, and homework, how can parents not feel sorry. Not rolling up their sleeves to study with their children is not reassuring, but studying together is indeed two generations under the same pressure".
According to school psychologists, the companionship of parents during the exam period is very necessary, but the boundary between companionship and creating additional pressure is extremely thin.
Instead of focusing on achievements and turning each evening into a "battle", parents should play the role of supporting and guiding their children on how to plan, allocate time reasonably, and most importantly, maintain a comfortable spirit.
