Hannah's friends

My interaction with Hannah's friends starts with their parents. And that requires online commnication: a highly active wechat (like what's app) group. On this wechat group they organize activities, debate what the homework request is and how to fulfill it, share the latest online e-commerce deals with each other, and share parenting techniques. It's hard to work out what matters and what does not or what they are actually up to due to the ongoing stream of messages in Chinese. I think half the class skipped off on friday to go to Disney Land Hong Kong because of a special offer they found online!

The kids here are in all sorts of after-school activities (though mostly related to sport, art or dance at this age). So we try to join in sometimes, and we try to organize things sometimes. Last month we organized a picnic which became very complicated: no-one quite knew what food they should bring to a (western) picnic, some wanted to share with each other; and then the chaos of making sure everyone could meet in the right spot in the park, after they had all sorted out their parking. . Last week we invited some of them to a christmas party held at an international school; I think these are the kind of events they want from us!

I don't really know which child is who, or which adult is the parent of which child, so it's always a surprise to see who actually turns up!

None-the-less Hannah is usually happy and seems to have 3-4 good friends there in addition to her few foreign friends through my colleagues at work. This is important as she has decided her parents are no longer entertaining enough and she wants to play with her friends more at weekends.

As all parents know, the child's friends' parents become your friends; and thus you no longer get to choose your own friends! Some of Hannah's friends' parents are fine, but most speak little English which is tough, and we don't get on that well with some of them, but we try to make things work: ideally in groups!

Coming up to 4 generally everything is wonderful with Hannah. Problems mostly arise around  chocolate, sweets and ice cream; something that she is often asking for (and its hard to avoid if in shops or on the street) and won't take no for an answer. The short fuse is often on show at other times too when it involves sharing with friends, or trying to get friends to do what she wants them to do.

As kids change so often, we need to keep learning new ways of managing them. At a very young age you can rely on them forgetting quickly, then you focus more on distraction, at other times it calls for a combination of incentives or threats, sometimes you need more presuasion and sometimes you just need to ignore the child (especially if there is a tantrum) and remain firm.

There's been more than a few times when Hannah has ended up screaming or sitting down and refusing to leave a fairground whilst others look on in amazement! Eventually we'll work something out with her, but i feel most Chinese parents are either very soft or very hard (i.e. shouting) whereas we are somewhere in the middle. Of course the hardest thing of all is when kids are together, because then you have to fall to the lowest common denominator and let Hannah do whatever her friends do.