Jiang Shuyin received a call from the teacher on the way: "The child didn't bring a lunchbox. Do the parents have time to bring food over? If not, I'll buy some for them first."
"I have time."
"Okay, school ends at twelve o'clock."
ICE school is a semi-boarding school that fosters children's independence. School ends at 12:00 and classes begin at 2:30 in the afternoon, with two and a half hours in between for meals and sleep.
Zheng Lanxiang quickly cooked the dish, packed it in a thermos, and asked her to deliver it: "Hurry, hurry, you must be starving after a whole morning of classes."
Heimei and Shuining sat at the table, watching intently. Jiang Shuyin was taken aback by their behavior.
After thinking about it, I decided to wait until I got back to discuss it further.
When we arrived at the school, ICE was already waiting at the school gate, and the parents were not allowed to go in.
"Am I late?" Jiang Shuyin raised her wrist and saw that it was three past twelve.
"No, I'm just hungry," ICE said softly, looking at his toes. He had almost cried in the classroom earlier that day.
It's because I miss my mom.
Jiang Shuyin patted his head: "Then you eat here, Mom will wait for you."
The mother and son stood facing each other across a large gate.
"Has Mom eaten?"
"I just ate something at your Aunt Tian's house not long ago, so I'm not hungry yet."
ICE nodded slightly, knowing what she wanted to ask, and said while eating, "The teacher assigned me a seat and gave me a new set of books. The Chinese and math classes are too easy. If I were to go to school, I would like to go to a higher grade."
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are too simple. When the teacher calls on him to answer questions, he even teaches him to count on his fingers to calculate. How childish.
Jiang Shuyin pondered for a moment and said, "How about you ask your teacher to give you an Olympiad math problem? This one is a bit more difficult."
ICE readily agreed, and after finishing his meal, he told his mother to leave: "Go back and eat something, I'm going to bed."
Jiang Shu thought he was really sleepy, but when she turned around, she suddenly remembered that these children had never taken a nap while they were outside with her.
Turning around, ICE was still standing there. When she saw her suddenly looking over, he smiled and ran back to the classroom.
Jiang Shuyin shook her head. Her silly son.
......
Zheng Lanxiang skipped her midday nap and instead found a storybook to read to the children.
Blackberry and Shui Ning were always finding fault with each other, and Jiang Shuyin was laughing as she ate her meal at her desk.
Hei Mei: "The prince can't even find Cinderella, he's so useless, I don't like him."
Shui Ning: "What is a stepmother? Why is she so mean to Cinderella?"
Zheng Lanxiang simply read from the book, answering the child's questions based entirely on her own life experiences: "The prince couldn't find Cinderella because she didn't have pretty clothes to wear. A stepmother is... a second mother. Cinderella wasn't born to a stepmother, so she wasn't treated well."
Black Plum snorted twice, expressing her strong dissatisfaction with the prince.
Shui Ning, on the other hand, was fixated on the stepmother role: "What about Cinderella's biological mother? Was she driven away by her stepmother?"
“Uh…” Zheng Lanxiang quickly flipped forward and found the answer on the first page: “Cinderella’s mother died of illness, and her stepmother was Cinderella’s father’s later wife.”
Heimei and Shui Ning both looked at their mother. Little Shui Ning's eyes were filled with tears: "Mom, please don't die. Please don't let Dad find me a stepmother, okay?"
Jiang Shuyin suppressed a laugh and said, "Okay."
After we finished eating, we started talking about our two younger children starting kindergarten, something she had been thinking about that morning.
"Do you two want to go to school? There are lots of kids at kindergarten, and there are slides and building blocks." Jiang Shuyin wasn't trying to push her children too hard; she just noticed that no one played with them at home.
Heimei shook her head: "I want to be with my mother forever."
"Mmm." Shui Ning nodded like a chick pecking at rice.
Jiang Shuyin immediately abandoned the idea, but Zheng Lanxiang retorted angrily, "How old is the child? You're willing to send him to kindergarten to be abused? I heard that when the child cries, the teacher makes him crawl on the ground with his legs on top of him."
Jiang Shuyin said in disbelief, "How could that be? Classrooms are equipped with surveillance cameras now. How could a teacher dare to treat children like that? Mom, you're overthinking it."
The older generation has different ideas. They want to save money and are afraid that their children will be mistreated, so they think the later they start kindergarten, the better. But Jiang Shuyin thinks that as long as the child can take care of himself, the earlier he/she can be exposed to the outside world, the better.
What can you do at home? There's only about a hundred square meters of space, so the toys are limited, and parents have even less energy.
However, Heimei and Shuining didn't want to go, and Jiang Shuyin wouldn't force them; they could just stay at home.
After school in the afternoon, Jiang Shuyin and Zheng Lanxiang took their child to pick up ICE. They left home at three o'clock and it only took them about ten minutes to walk there.
Street vendors are not allowed near the school gate; it's full of parents picking up their children, with electric bikes, bicycles, and cars parked there.
“Ever since there were more people, this road has been constantly congested. There weren’t nearly as many students before; they all came later.” As a local, Ms. Zheng Lanxiang said this with a touch of pride.
There are hierarchical social structures everywhere, and parents are no exception.
Young parents who arrive in cars look down on those who arrive by electric scooter; those who arrive by electric scooter look down on those who arrive by bicycle; and those who take the bus look down on those who walk.
Jiang Shuyin belongs to the bottom of the social hierarchy. Her clothes are very casual. If it weren't for the fact that her face isn't yet that of a haggard old woman, the group of mothers next to her would probably be gossiping about her family behind her back.
"They're here, they're here." Zheng Lanxiang looked up and pointed towards the gate.
Heimei and Shuining were too short to see, and no matter how much they stood on tiptoe or jumped, it was no use. Jiang Shuyin's pants were almost pulled down by these two annoying little devils.
"I also want to see my brother."
"I want to see my younger brother."
Jiang Shuyin held up one bag in each hand, and suddenly three more eye-catching bags stood on the roadside in the crowd. ICE was stunned for a moment, then smiled and said to her classmate, "My mom, grandma, sisters and cousins have all come to pick me up."
His classmate came with him to meet his parents and was stunned.
Although I'd been watching all along, I never imagined that Ai Ge's family would act like this: "...Hello Auntie, hello Grandma, hello both sisters... Oh, my name is Wang Yuan..."
Jiang Shuyin put the two sisters down and nodded to Wang Yuan, her son's first friend: "Hello, Wang Yuan...would you like to come to our house to play?"
Wang Yuan quickly waved his hand: "No need, my mother is here to pick me up, she should be here soon."
He waved to ICE, ran towards the school gate, grabbed a woman with long, wavy hair and said something. The woman turned around and gave Jiang Shuyin a polite smile.
"The new transfer student, Ace, is amazing. He's also very handsome, like a character from an anime. He's also a superhuman. My Coke wasn't cold, and when he heard I wanted an iced Coke, he instantly covered the entire bottle with ice. He's always so helpful."
Wang Yuan was so happy that he was incoherent. In fact, he was also a superhuman, but his parents told him not to reveal it and to focus on his studies at school first.
But none of his classmates had any special abilities. After a few days, Wang Yuan felt out of place among them. Now that he had finally met someone like him and they had become friends, he was so excited that he wanted to jump for joy.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
