Ten Things I'd Want My Kids To Experience Before They're Ten

• To reguarly go karting, and learn to be quick.


• To reguarly go snowboarding, swimming & ice skating, and learn to be good.


• To learn a martial art, and learn to be confident.


• To play music as a language, and not as bunch of notes strung together.


• To get into the habit of reading for 30mins before they sleep.


• To write at least one line about their day before they sleep.



• To learn that being creatively pro-active is a much more effective method of getting their way than whinging.


• To spend every Christmas/New Years with all the siblings and cousins, all two hundred of them.


• To know that I will never use the phrase, or any variation of; "Do as I say, because I told you so."


• To know that I'm also not above saying, "...and that is Why. So, if you don't start doing as you're told, I'm gonna break out the 雞毛掃!"

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- 1, 2 and 3 are obviously the opportunities I wish I had had when I was a kid (Not blaming my own parents for that fact - as times and priorities were different back then - and I know that if my Dad had moved to another country and taught 2-12yr olds for the past 4yrs... =)
- 4 just means that I gotta find a much wiser and better piano teacher than the one I had when I was 10, like the clarinet teacher I had when I was 16... a few months before I graduated out of that school (=.=)
- 5 and 6 is something that I used to do, but started too late in life for it to really bed in and become automatos.
- 7 is something that I know now, and I've seen in some of the smartest kids in my classes. So I know they're capable of it, consciously or otherwise, they're capable.
- 8 is from my father, and some of my best childhood memories.
- 9 is from my mother, and her obliviousness to its utter ineffectivity even to a 10yr old.
- 10 is also from my mother, and her awesome awareness of its utter effectivity especially to a 10yr old.