Are you smart enough to help your kids with their homework?

I wonder how many parents are actually smart enough to help their kids with their homework. I have to admit that I am definitely not smart enough!

Have you seen what they teach kids at kindergarten now? My 6 years old Ethan is already learning about magnets and how the steel powder spread around it! I remember I only learned that when I was 9! And I had such a difficult time learning it!


He is also learning fractions in Maths! My goodness! Fractions? For 6-year-old kids? I can't even remember how to do fractions now! And 3D shapes! Did you ever learn about 3D shapes when you were in kindergarten? Ethan is now learning about pyramids, prisms, cones, cuboids, ellipsoids, etc. Ask a few adults if they know what are cuboids and ellipsoids. I doubt if many would know. Do you know?

And how many adults know what is a noun, verb, adjective, etc? I also doubt many adults would know!

And yet, kids are already learning all these in kindergarten! I seriously think that kids nowadays are being forced to learn things that are so much more difficult compared to what we learned 20 - 30 years ago. Do the young kids really need to learn all these things now?

I have to admit as well that I was not a very bright student. I actually started to fail in my Maths and Science subjects in primary school and it continued all the way to secondary school. My mom used to nag me every time I asked her to sign my report card until I found out that I can actually get a guardian to sign my report card. So, when I was in Form 4, I stopped asking my mom to sign my report cards and got my sister to do it instead. That was the end to all the nagging about my poor results, thank goodness! And the best thing is that my mom never asked me about it. Perhaps she preferred not to see my report cards anymore? Hhmmm....

Anyway, back to my kids, I wonder if I am smart enough to help them with their homework. I would probably have forgotten almost every thing that I had learned in school. So, I guess I would need to re-learn it as I help my kids with their homework. Hope I'll do much better this time round compared to my own schooling days!