When he expects me to know the answers...

Tonight, Zaki asked me to help him in his Arabic homework. Seriously, I don’t know what to do when he showed me his schoolwork. I have no basic knowledge of Arabic. Therefore, I found it tough to teach him, and he didn’t want anyone else to teach him except me. Anak manja.

So, as not to disappoint him, I took the book and looked at the homework.  I have no clue what to do as the instruction is in Arabic too. But I know that he needs to fill out the missing letters.

I looked at the previous page; the questions were to arrange the words in order. When he saw me, staring at the page, he said, “That’s the name of the day in a week.”

“Oh!” I said, and still couldn’t connect between what he said and the homework.

I flipped few more pages from the exercise book, but I still have no idea what is required. Finally, I asked him to bring the textbook.

“You won’t find the answer in the textbook,” he told me and handed me the textbook.

I didn’t say anything. I took the book and opened it up. Nothing looked similar. After some times, I gave up. I closed the book, and stared at the exercises book again, hoping for some clue.

Suddenly, a bright light appeared somewhere, and I could see some connection between the previous page and his homework.

“A-hah!” I said excitedly. “This page and this page is the same. It’s about the name of days,” as I pointed to the two pages.

“Yes. Didn’t I told you earlier,” he asked.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I told him how to do his homework, which he happily does it.

Nowadays, the young children are lucky. They have the opportunity to learn Arabic at the young age. When I was their age, I didn’t get to learn Arabic at school. There was no Arabic subject offered at all.

But it was not to late for me to learn the language with them. As I teach them, I also learned, but the only problem, I would forget what I learn few months later. Ahhhh!!…. I’m old already.

Bahasa Melayu, Arab or English?

Last night, Zaki, told me that his teacher asked them to do their revision as they will be having their test next week. "Oh! Okay, go and take your book," I said. He went to his room and brought back three books.

"Hmm...shouldn't we just do only one tonight?" I asked him.

"No. Teacher said I must read all these books," he said and shown me his English, Bahasa Melayu and Arabic books.

"Okay, let's start," I said thinking that this will be easy.


He took the Arabic book and opened the first page. "Read," I said knowingly that I might embarrassed myself for not able to answer him.


He was staring at the book and then he said ,"I don't know. When at school, I pretended to open my mouth to read," he said and showed me how he did.

"What? You cannot do that. Didn't you ask your teacher when you don't know?"
He shook his head. "Okay, let me see," I said and looked at the book. 


First word, no problem. I can pronounced it and know what it means but as we progressed through the next few pages, I can read but cannot pronounced it correctly and don't know what it meant. Few times he corrected my pronunciation and when I asked him what the meaning of the words, he don't know.  That's was when the pictionary dictionary that I bought for him came to my rescue.


I always find it a problem when teaching my kids languages, whether it is Bahasa Melayu, English or Arabic. Give me maths and science, I would have no problem. In fact, I can teach my oldest son, Syafiq, how to do differentiation and integration in Maths but the moment he asked me something about Bahasa Melayu, I surrender.

I don't know but I found it that Bahasa Melayu is quite difficult to teach. Maybe because it is our everyday language that we take it for granted and never really bother to learn the right way of writing the language. Furthermore, I always mixed my words with Bahasa Melayu and English and that is bad. Bad! Bad! Bad for the kids.


My friend who is a children book's author has invited me to join her for the Bahasa Melayu tinggi class but so far I have not accept her invitation. I guess with my struggle with the language and for the sake of my kids Bahasa Melayu, I better join her and it is also not too late for me to learn Arabic. Don't you agree?


Okay gotta go..Have to get my little girl ready for her school...Salam

When mommy doesn't know everything...

All my boys attended religious school besides the national school. Since both me and my husband are busy working, we need to ensure that they learn about our faith and the best place to ensure they get this knowledge is from this religious school. It is not compulsory but most of the parents now opt to send their kids to this school.


One of the subjects is Arabic. I found out that Arabic is not that easy to learn even though some of the words has similar meaning with us. Since my knowledge on Arabic is zero, I really don't bother to go through my sons lesson until Zaki attended his class.


This boy loves to ask me questions. I have no problem in answering his question except for Arabic. One night while I was going through his class work, he asked me for some words in Arabic.


Son:  "Ibu, what do call eye in Arabic?"
Me:   "Ainon," answering him confidently because I know the word.
Son:  "Nose?"
Me:   "Aaaaaa...."
Son:  "You don't know?"
Me:   "I don't know."
Son:  "But I thought you know everything." He looked surprised.
Me:   "I didn't say I know everything."
Son:  "But you are mommy. Mommy must know everything."


Wow, when I heard that, I'm kind of shock because definitely I don't know everything. The same thing happened when it is related to my work. When they know that I work this %*&I$ company, they started asking me things that I also don't know the answer or start complaining about the services.


Sometimes when there is family gathering and someone has problem with their computer, they will asked me to look into the problem. Just because I work in IT line, they expect me to know everything but hey, I have not done technical for more than 8 years. I might not know how to resolve the problem but I can look and give advise.


Eisshhh...It is tough to live up to the expectation. What should I do? Should I pretend that I know everything? I don't think so but I can't let them down either. Ahhh tough..tough world we live in....


Okay, enough of rambling...until then...salam