Happy 2026

Happy New Year, fellow parents. 

Whether you’ve been cradling your baby, reining in a restless primary schooler, or hopelessly commandeering an apathetic teen, you’ve made it through another year of semi-successful parenting. They don’t give out annual parenting awards – mainly because we’ve all bought into the silly belief that a happy and healthy child being is its own reward – but if they did, we should all get a prize. 

Or 22. 

After all, we’ve endured yet another year of slo-mo dinner dawdling; we’ve survived 12 months of constant and inexplicable coughing; and we’ve suffered – for two whole semesters – the chronic condition known as Math PTSD (Parent Teach Sure Die). 

And not once did we think of giving up. No, not once. Because we actually thought of giving up many, many times. In fact, we wanted to call it quits at least “6-7” times in 2025. We could’ve just accepted the “brainrot” and sat on our “gyatts”. But instead, we powered through those “skibidi” storms and we didn’t stop trying to “slay”. In short, we remained impervious to our children’s moans of “Ohio”, and stoutly reminded ourselves that – “no cap!” – we’re the adults here! 

And then we proceeded to hide in the toilet looking up the definitions of this newfangled nonsense while waiting for the year to end.

So here we are now in 2026 — older, wiser, and already knackered in January. 

P3 Hits Different

Our kids, too, have grown another year older. My wife frequently looks at our now-nine-year-old daughter, JJ, and laments that she’s grown up all too quickly. “Where has my baby gone?!” she’d cry. 

To which I would chime enthusiastically: “I’m right here, darling!” 

Neither my wife nor daughter find my rejoinder funny, unless eye-rolling is the new guffawing. And yes, JJ is starting to roll her eyes a lot more frequently at this stage of her life; maybe that’s the reason why my wife doesn’t recognise her anymore and is always looking for her baby. Eye-rolling is usually the harbinger of the nascent tween years, and that white-eyed-face will eventually come to symbolise her utter disdain at all things parental. 

Another minor milestone that JJ has reached this new year is primary 3. The Ministry of Education doesn’t like to admit it but P3 is really the “Mordor of Primary School”. Because things can get pretty scary for a nine-year-old in primary school. 

Firstly, students will finally be put through graded assessments at this level. Which means that from P3 onwards, failing in school suddenly becomes a distinct possibility. It is also a harsh reality that the first two years of primary school did little to prepare them for. 

In 2019, the Ministry of Education removed all forms of formal grading for P1 and P2 pupils so as to focus on holistic learning. In JJ’s school, in place of these tests are “Checkpoints”, which is a leisurely indicator that your child understands the broad strokes of the concepts being taught, without assigning scores to these subjects. And in place of numerical scores, a child’s progress is reported via descriptive comments that better help to steer and encourage them.

This system does nothing to prepare them for the onslaught of graded examinations in P3 but is – I admit – a great confidence booster for our kids. The educators, meanwhile, will not have to mark or grade any such tests or exams in the first two years of primary school. With all that spare time on their hands, they will now think up a million different ways to euphemistically describe an underperforming pupil to her overbearing, kiasu parents.

They might say: “There’s still room for improvement.” (Read: And the size of that room is roughly the landmass of Pulau Tekong.)

Or, “Would benefit from additional practice.” (Read: Please send her for tuition… lots of it.)

Or maybe, “Lacks focus.” (Read: And by focus, we also mean “tuition”.)

Three Becomes Four

On top of introducing the concept of failure to primary 3 students, they are also expected to take one more new subject – Science. Which means that instead of failing in just three subjects, they now might possibly fail in four. 

I say this because it is a dark time for scientific endeavour. The study of science is to learn about the observable world, and apply rules of logic to such observable events. This, of course, runs counter to the AI slop that overwhelms our kids today. 

Take for example, a cartoon ballerina with coffee for a head named Ballerina Cappucina. She’s a hugely popular AI-slop character that kids can’t get enough of. There’s no exciting story arc, no crisis to quell, and no fairytale moral to be learnt. But eager young minds readily accept Ballerina Cappucina without asking the tough scientific questions.

Questions like: How does she pirouette so gracefully with such a big head? (Physics); how does the latte art on her head stay in place perpetually when the asymmetrical Rosetta art on my coffee doesn’t last long enough to take a really good coffee pic for IG? (Chemistry); and if she also drinks coffee, does that make her a cannibal? (Evolutionary Biology).

Sociologists studying the phenomenon of AI slop tell us that kids love it exactly because of its facetious nature. They love the fact that it is completely ridiculous and over the top, and that it defies all logic.

I am slightly comforted by this explanation. If today’s kids have a taste for the utterly stupid and irreverent, we probably don’t want them in the labs trying to discover a cure for cancer. They might be better making a career out of penning parenting columns.