The bees-ness

This morning hubs and I instead of sleeping in on a Saturday got out of bed early (10ish) to travel to a polytechnic to attend a seminar on how to talk to your kids about the birds and the bees.

This is how dedicated we are as parents of 2 teens. Well, actually a few days ago, hubs was writing his weekly column and came across an advertisement for the seminar in the newspaper. Although the registration had closed, he asked me to sign us up. I did that and almost immediately we received phone calls confirming our registration.

This morning I found out that food was also provided. Cool.

There were 3 sessions altogether. The one in the morning was in Malay and you get breakfast. The one I attended was in English and we got lunch. The last one was in Chinese and I'm guessing they got teabreak. And it was totally free.

If you are a parent, this is an issue you're bound to face. How to handle the birds and the bees with your kids. This is something you don't learn about in school or from your parents. It's really learning on the job. Anyway, the purpose of attending the seminar was in the hope I could gain some insights from others. Well, either that or listen to 3 hours of bullshit.

The first part of the seminar was a talk by this guy, Joshua Ng. He's a talker. Talks and talks. He's not too boring though so it wasn't so bad. After one hour, we broke for lunch.

There was a buffet and it was mostly healthy food. I think HPB (health promotion board) had a hand in that. Some of the people attending the seminar really attacked the food. They must be really hungry. The attendance was not full house. Not even half house. So I'm guessing there was a lot of leftovers. I wished this seminar was more well publicized so the hungry could come attend and eat the free food. And of course learn to communicate about the bees-ness. Either that or take off right after lunch.

After lunch we were separated into 3 groups depending on the ages of your children. Our guy Joshua Ng also conducted the talk in our group. This time he focused on teens and at one point, he brought out the big guns - a lit candle and a sparkler. It made me very nervous because I did not want to be burned alive. I thought him playing with fire was totally unnecessary. It's just showmanship.

The talk became a bit more of the same. So I played with my slippers and I yawned openly. Immediately Mr Ng saw my yawn and called for a toilet break. After the break, we did 3 case studies. We were put in groups. Me and hubs teamed up with 2 ladies and a guy. We were supposed to tackle the case studies and submit answers. So typical of the men, it was us 3 ladies doing all the work. I mean, the two guys did not open their mouths even once.

Finally we were chased out of the room because the Chinese session was starting soon. 

Oh, did I mention that Mr Ng gave out supermarket cash vouchers every time you volunteer a question or answer? There weren't that many opportunities to volunteer so I received 2 $20 vouchers. As I was leaving someone gave me another $20 voucher. Later hubs said he was also handed another voucher. So in all, we netted $80. These vouchers are equivalent to cash as we could go to the supermarket and pay for our groceries with these pieces of paper. It's almost like we were rewarded for attending the seminar.

So what did I learn that was most surprising to me? That parents have the biggest influence on the kids when it comes to the bees-ness.