I have always considered myself to be fortunate as I grew in a family where my parents did not have the typical Asian mindset of sending me to as many tuition and as many curricular activities as possible. However, as the lecturer showed us a film about childhood in the US, it definitely gave me a shock. From the young ages of 7 and 8 years old, they leave a life where everyday after school, they had to either go for extra lessons or learn extra activities such as piano or swimming.

The intention of this film was to encourage the use of free play in the lives of children today. As I witnessed in the video and in my parents when I had a conversation with them, in the past, they used to live very free lives where after school they could just go home and find their neighbours to play. To put it in Singapore's context, they created many childhood games some of us may no longer know how to play today that revolve around objects they can find at that time such as marbles. Free play encourages creativity and is able to unleash the child's potential to explore more of his/her interests, unlike a fixed structured schedule of studying and learning.

Another problem I witnessed that impeded such free play was the advancement of technologies. The inventions of mobile games and social media has caused not only adults, but children to be disengaged with reality. Even when parents do not give their children much activities to do after school, most children would choose to go home and play their online games rather than go out with their friends and play. In my opinion, this is an equally pressing issue to solve together with the high expectations of parents if we want to change the lives of children and bring a better childhood for the future generation.

In my personal opinion as well from an external video I watched, the expectations of parents normally do not come out of nowhere. As it is the first time these parents are parents as well, most of them will pick up traits that their parents taught them. When young, they undergo strict parenting and this may lead to them following these footsteps since they do not know how to parent a child. For parents that grew up with more freedom, they have the mindset that learning skills from young would be useful in developing a child since they grew up without it and may feel as though it would be helpful to be proficient in something when they grow up.

The idea of expectations and an increasingly saddening childhood ultimately comes from the global expectations today. Wtih advancements in technology, research and development. Education has became a very important aspect of people's lives. People aspire to be intelligent since it is something that can really land them a stable future. As such, to be able to bring back the childhood of the past would not be an easy feat and it can in fact require global cooperation.

To conclude, this session titled "Chasing Childhood" really gave me a lot to think about and also helped me to reflect through how I grew up and how I wished to grow up.