Stomach Pain for the Whole Month????

After starting primary school for few months, my daughter complained about abdominal pain for numerous times. The school teacher told me that my daughter frowned and asked what she could do to help her. I was clueless. 

As a matter of fact, I have brought her to see a GP for a few times. One suspected urinary infection but the test showed nothing. We went to see a second GP, who suspected that my daughter was just not used to the school and sent us home to monitor. This continued for a few weeks, adding to my stress.  The school form teacher opined that my daughter has no stress in school.  She said that if a child has stomachache because of stress, he or she would complain about stomach ache at the first moment he/she stepped into the school.  My daughter, from her observation, enjoyed school very much and the pain seemed to be unpreditable. Sometimes the pain just struck while my daughter was enjoying PE lessons. Certainly, my stress and worry increased. 

One night, she complained about severe pain. In the middle of the night, I sent her to hospital. She looked really pale. The doctor performed ultra-sound, and X-ray. She was hospitalised for few days. A thorough check was performed on her focusing on appendicitis. However, the result was not conclusive, as she had no fever and the pain was not that acute. The specialist was very experience. However,  he was not a surgeon nor an expert in gastronomy. Every time he walked the ward, he was accompanied by at least two-three younger doctors.

Few days later, my daughter was discharged. The doctor suspected constipation, but I was still clueless.
As I expected, the pain came back few days later. This time, I was much better prepared. I had read through a lot of information from the website, and I nailed down to few possible potential root cause.  The doctor in charge wanted to hospitalise my daughter again. When we were at the hospital, my daughter refused to walk and she complained stomach ache. I insisted to see a doctor specialised in Gastronomy this time and refusing to be admitted.  Luckily for me, someone canceled his appointment and I was given a slot.  (Thank God for that). 

The Gastronomy specialist was a very experience professor. He spoke to my daughter talking about her coming holidays etc. The consultation was just 30 minutes but she just came out cured!   Just imagine that a sick young child who needed to be on wheel chair, could not stand straight because of stomach ache could walk out straight, and even ran!!!!    I am really thankful to Prof.  He told me that worries could cause real pain.  After talking to my daughter, she has a lot of anxiety and she tended to worry a lot over simple matter.  However, he did not want to conclude psychological reasons as main cause. 

Root caused can't be ascertain, plus recurrent of abdominal pain would be RAP (Recurrent Abdominal Pain).  According to my other doctor friend, RAP refers to abdominal pain that cannot be explained.  The pain did come back, but this time, I know what to say. I assure my daughter that she would recover and she completely recovered after 2 weeks.

P/S  (1) :

Need to warn you that the hospital in Singapore is really overcrowded. It was hard to secure the specialist/doctors time. The appointment waiting time can be easily 3-4 weeks. Hard to secure doctors of your preference during emergency. Also, my daughter was admitted twice practically, but there was no bed available. This reflects how bad the situation is regarding health care needs in Singapore. 

P/S (2):

Check out  WebMD for details. In case the link got broken: 

 RAP stands for Recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) with no cause is defined as at least 3 separate episodes of abdominal pain that occur in a 3-month period. These episodes are often severe, and the child is not able to do his or her normal activities. Some website said that RAP may affect 10% of school going children between 6-12. 

Let me quote from WebMD about the symptoms. 

• Sharp or dull pain.

• Severe pain that causes the child to look pale, become sweaty, or cry and bend over in pain.

• Pain that lasts a few minutes or hours.

• Pain in the belly button area or anywhere in the belly.

• Pain that may or may not be related to eating.

• Pain that occurs anytime of the day or night.

• Abdominal pain that occurs with vomiting, headaches, or pain in the arms or legs.

• Not being hungry like normal or skipping meals but usually without losing weight.

7 Habits -- Not too young to start early

One motivation book that I benefit most from my work life is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  It took me 2-3 years to finish the book. I made sure I practice these habits before moving on to the next chapter. I always wonder why didn't I read this book earlier.  I used to buy this book and give it to young colleagues.  So, the challenge will be how to teach these concepts to kids.


My job was made easy with the following book, by Sean Covey.


I read the stories to my kids, allowing me some opportunity to have teaching moment and share with them how to apply these principles to become effective. After telling the stories, it becomes much easier to relate the habits to them.  While preparing this post, I discover that Sean has written many story books to help illustrate the concept. If you like the entire set, here is the link.



If there's some particular habits that you want, you may be able to purchase the books separately.
 

I have bought the teenager's version for my son but he has not started reading that yet.  I think this may be a good book as a 10-11 years old birthday present.


Again, while preparing this post, I notice that there is another personal workbook that may be able to help the kids understand the principle better. Sean really know how to expand business.  :-)


My son can read many non fiction book on his own now. He finished Adam Khoo's book on how to study.  I will ask him to share his experience after reading the book later.

By the way, if you are located in Singapore, do note that you may enjoy free delivery of these books if your total bill is more than USD125. I think you can get the main book from any major bookstore. Check with your friends. It is not difficult to find some friends sharing similar interest.

Past Exam Paper

In my humble opinion, practising past examination paper is not a good way of learning, but merely a short cut. I guess part of the reason is that I had a perception that the question may repeat.

In Singapore, primary school test or exam paper are easily available.  However, the problem is that you have to buy the entire set. That would mean a stack of 1-2 inches of papers to carry home for each subject, and certainly the children will have to spend a lot of time doing the questions. I think that's a torture.

I know many parents ask their kids to do at least one past year paper per day.  From my experience in hiring and managing young people, I would like to urge you not to do so. It has a bad consequence.  Why? Doing the past exam paper will not train your kids how to think. In fact, it is innovation spoiler. Students doing too much exam paper or going through tuition are very used to solve problems in a systematic or controlled way provided or learned through practice. No doubt, this group will do well in exam.

I really feel sorry for this group of people when they come to workforce. Many of them cannot think, cannot analyse, and they like to be told what to do. They want a magic formula, a manual, or something that they can refer to. However, we all know that every boss wants employees who can work independently, right?  Every entrepreneur or boss knows that the skill they need most to be where they are, is not be able to innovate, to think, to analyse, and to work independently.

Considering all the above, is past exam paper really necessary?  If you want to print a few paper, I think that's fine. You need to assess the ability of your child.  So, having the past exam paper is handy.  The good news is, most of the papers are available for free. No need to do bulk purchase.

Here are two websites that you can download and print some past papers:

http://www.java-samples.com/testpapers/

 http://test-paper.info
(registration needed)

My Recipe for Toddlers 11months to 18 months

Recently I shared with a friend how I prepared meal for my children when my kids were 11-18 months. I am not good at cooking, but please allow me to share this here from a perspective of a busy working parent.For working parents like me, finding time to cook is a challenge. At the same time, as parents, we want the nutritious food for our kids. Here's a good compromise :

Healthy Porridge for Toddlers.
======================

Equipment Needed :
1) Slow Cooker
2) Chopping equipment

Recipe:
1) Group 1 :  Rice, may add barley or oat
2) Group 2 : Pumpkin, Carrot, Sweet Potato
3) Group 3: Cabbage or Chinese Cabbage
4) Group 4 : Chicken or Pork
5) Group 5: Fish Meat (Grouper, Seabass, Salmon or Cod or other sea fish)
6) Group 6 : Green Vegetables (any green leafy vegetables, one good candidate is Spinach)


Use one ingredient from each group and change your ingredients accordingly. Buying small portion is quite difficult, and changing the ingredients too often may means putting the food longer in fridge.

Preparation:
The challenge is to buy such small daily portion. I buy a portion needed for the week. I prepared the material during weekends and keep one day's need into one container so that I defrost only the portion I need daily.

Direction :
1. Chop all ingredients from group 2 - 4 into the size of the grains (or at maximum 2-3 times)**.
2. Slice the Fish Meat.
3. Mixed everything from Group 1-4 into the slow cooker and add water. Guideline: depends on the rice, volume of water is at least 5 times the rice.
4. Cook in "slow fire" for 3-4 hours.
5. Add Fish Meat from Group 5  at least 30 minutes before serve.
6. Add Green Vegetables into the pot 2 minutes before serve***

** : If you don't want your kids to eat much meat, one solution may be throw away the meat since the meat has little taste and may be too hard after cooking for so long. I do this

*** I seldom do this. Usually we have green vegetables for adults and we just share a small portion with the toddlers.

I cannot remember the exact amount from each ingredient but I think that's not important. This needs a bit of adjustment to the kids needs.  Usually, I defrost the material in the morning and start cooking using slow cooker.  The kids will eat this for lunch and I will power off the slow cooker and heat up again at night.

I was told by my pediatrician that toddlers after 12 months can basically eat any of adult food. Therefore, I add some of my family food to the porridge so that my kids can experiment different taste and learn towards eating same food as me. I cannot remember when I stopped doing this. However, as parents, you will know because your darling will sooner reject this porridge and only wants your food!

Happy parenting!

Printer

Multi function printer (MFP) or sometimes being referred as All-in-One (AIO) is an important device for the reason that this is needed to print past exam paper that I downloaded from the website. :-)

The answer I obtained asking around many people who have a printer at home about how often they use the printer is quite amazing. Those without kids seldom use their printer but those with kids use quite often, either printing kids photo anytime they like or print school exam paper.  Some people told me that they print the paper in office but I believe we should not do that. Strictly speaking, one doing that may be fired for mis-appropriating his/her employer's asset. :-)

I discovered the convenience of having own AIO printer at home when I obtained my free HP AIO color injet printer. Having an AIO at home is really convenient because I don't have to go out to get ID or documents photo-copied. I seldom print photos due to the cost.

One effective way to teach kids is by asking them to redo some papers. With AIO, what I usually do is to scan the worksheet first. Then I edit the soft-copy. Since I cannot edit the PDF file, usually I paste the scan copy into Word or Power Point, and I create empty box to hide the unwanted portion.

The printer that I have today is the fifth AIO in eight years. That's a lot because of my ignorance and my unwillingness to replace the ink. When one ink is low, usually I would wait. As I waited too long the print head may be damaged as cleaning using the ink cannot be done when the ink is low.  In addition, although most of the time I only print black and white document, the color ink dry up pretty fast due to the cleaning process. I have to basically replace the ink every 6-8 months even though I seldom use colour printing.

Here are my 2-cents experience for those of you considering a printer with similar usage.

(a) Go for AIO or MFP, the scanner is really convenient.

(b) Don't go for injet if you usage of color printing is low. Your ink may end up drying up or wasted to clean the print head only.

(c) Consider Laserjet Black and White if your use is only printing documents and test exam papers.  :-)

At the point of writing, my survey reveals that HP MFP425dw is among the best per my need. It has duplex printing, very fast printing time, auto feeder that scan stacks of document with one click. I bought this under Trade Show for less than SGD500 after all the goodies.

I think this is much more cost efficient compared to buying a full set of ink every 6-8 months for my colour injet which may cost about close to SGD100. Hopefully I am right this time. 


Here's the link from Amazon for those of you in US :

IQ Math for PreSchool

 When I first saw this book, I was a bit against the idea of bringing forward the teaching of primary school Math to Pre-school.  However, my daughter said she would like to try, so we bought book 1. After she finished book 1, we bought book 2.

Let me say this. I believe some of the questions may be too difficult for 4 years old, or even 6 years old.  However, some of the questions are doable. I have to admit that I am quite surprised with what kids (my daughter and her classmate) can do.  I won't recommend this book to all parents, but if the kids have interest in this area, worth a try.  The questions may be similar to olympiad math questions. Honest, I don't think every kid will like this book.

Some questions are really very difficult. How did I coach my kids? Well, I explained those difficult questions, give clues. With that, my daughter can do many of the questions. If she cannot do the question, I told her that it's OK and I will teach her how to do the questions. Sometimes, I have to look at the answer too. :-)  She even brought this to school and "finished" the book on her own but she left it blank if she did not know the solution.

If your kids like Maths, show this book to them and see whether they like the book.

P/S: Thanks the author for writing this book.