Mystery Reader

This week K-Pop was a "Mystery Reader" in K-bao's class. The Mystery Reader is a parent who comes in to the class on a given day to share a book or two with the girls, but doesn't reveal his or her identity ahead of time; instead, he gives the girls some clues so the girls can guess who's coming.

The clues are revealed over time and are supposed to get progressively more obvious, and K-Pop's clues included:

• As a child I owned a large dog in a place far, far away
• Your name plus my name = 11 letters
• I have three siblings and none of them live in San Francisco
• I love basketball and my favorite player wears #7, but yours wears #30

Of course, K-bao guessed who it was right away, and badgered K-Pop incessantly in the days ahead of the reading, but K-Pop stayed strong and didn't confess.

The day of, K-Pop read two books to the 2nd graders: Ruby's Wish and Cat and Rat: The Legend of the Chinese Zodiac. Both are set in China, and with Chinese New Year coming up this week K-Pop and K-Mum thought the subjects apropos. The second book is just a fun animal story, though it alludes to issues like competition and selfishness; the first has much more serious themes around gender discrimination, girls' education, ambition and hard work. Both were fun to read.

K-bao was beside herself with excitement, as she usually is when either K-Pop or K-Mum show up in class. Several times she tried to take over the reading entirely.

Afterwards -- and full credit goes to K-Mum for this idea -- K-Pop passed out red envelopes with chocolate gold coins, but not after the girls learned how to say Xin Nian Kuai Le! And, no surprise -- the coins were a big hit.

Strict

One thing the K-folks have always struggled with is the fine line between appropriate sternness and discipline -- to hopefully engender in the kids a healthy respect for authority and boundaries -- and overly authoritarian "traditional" Asian parenting that might "clip their wings."

Of course, according to K-Mum, given the sometimes unbounded sassyness on display in the house from time to time, that's one balancing act that K-Pop need not worry himself about.

Over this past year a specific area that K-Pop has wrestled with is the enforcement of piano practice. K-bao has progressed remarkably quickly in her first real year of piano playing, but it has not come without some, um, "struggles" along the way. Given both K-Pop's and K-Mum's own childhood experiences, the irony of some of our impositions today have not escaped us. And it should be clarified that the piano proposition is really K-Mum's brainchild, though of course music education is something that K-Pop wholeheartedly supports.

However, little notes like the below, which K-Pop received from K-bao after one particularly challenging practice session, reassure K-Pop to grit through it.

(By the way, having just completed Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, K-Pop can rest assured that he is but a marshmallow in the greater tradition of Asian parenting)