Children’s Mood and Food

Did you feed your child with the wrong kind of food? 

I have not taught young beginners ’piano for at least 20 years after I designed an instructional music appreciation course for the very young beginners, Kinder Virtuoso Program (KVP).  The earliest batch of children that I taught under this KVP probably are now professionals around the globes, some of these children had been very privileging to have a uniformed driver and nanny to bring them for the lesson, they got extremely busy parents, it also hinted me they severely deprived of their parents’ immediate attention and cuddles.

I vividly remember, it was an early Saturday morning exactly 20 years ago, a little 5-year old girl popped in the classroom, without uttering any response to my greeting, she picked up a pencil angrily poking a chair’s red plastic cushion seat in a fast speed. I couldn’t stop her on time, so I let her did it curiously, after she destroyed the whole chair, she quiet down, I didn’t utter a single word to her, I pretended never see what had just happened. I never informed her nanny or told anyone what she did.  I told myself, “Well, at least she did it in front of me, but there were many kids would poke it or draw something on the wall behind my other teaching staff or me!” Eventually, all these red chairs only lasted for a year, I decided to change the whole music school’s chairs to solid metal chairs!

Often, people just saw that music teachers earned high teaching fees, they didn’t see other hidden problems that caused some of the best full-time music teachers to receive the least stable income, due to their inconsistent income, they appeared insecure and not so confident. Of course, we are not going to talk here about the majority of the female piano teachers who have a professionally eminent husband to back them up morally and financially.

I learned that if a mother doesn’t spend her full attention, time and playing with her little children, children would express their emotion and boredom by drawing on the wall, playing high heel shoes and even umbrellas. And imagine this, how about if you developed their musical notation recognition as earlier as possible, if you are busy, at least they could go play the piano to hit some simple tunes instead, or you can start to ask your children to help you in the kitchen to peel carrots, but please don’t do it if you have a hyperactive kid who may stick his finger to your cutting blade unexpectedly.

However, beside spending their full attention, playing and teaching kids, most parents have ignored the facts that food can cause children’s moodiness. I learned through the years that good diet is one of the key factors to children’s physical and emotional stability and development. The most difficult children to take care of are those who have allergic, is it developed in the fetus during the pregnancy period due to genetical reason, a mother’s inappropriate diet habit or imbalance diet?

One of my ex piano student, now a professional piano teacher WhatsApp me told me frustratedly that he plans to leave Singapore permanently due to he is allergic to the filtered tap water from waste water.  He and his piano students’ families even bought the $6K Kogan filter machine to filter such filtered waste water and then boiled it, unfortunately, they still developed rashes or diarrhea, he told me if they changed to drink bottled water, their allergic reactions would be gone immediately. Now this shows us diet or even simple water not just plays an important part to our health but it also could bother our mood.

Otago University’s research scientists already has proven that some properties from fresh vegetables and fruits that could give us good mood but during cooking would be denatured. It means that if you eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, you will have higher EQ and happier as well.  However, this cause a problem to children and even adult who don’t like to eat fruits and raw vegetables, in this case, especially the children’s parents have to be creative in their recipes and cooking method to coax the children to eat a yummy version of raw fruits and vegetables.

I noticed the serving vegetable’s portion in most Chinese families, normally they only serve a plate of stir-fry vegetable for the whole family, which is actually not sufficient to the dietary requirement, that’s why intestines or tummy cancer is quite common amongst Chinese. We need at least 3 servings of vegetable and 2 serving of fruits a day, a portion size in fact can be measured according to an eater’s individual palm size.

So, after twenty years, I decided to return to New Zealand which I acquired a PR more than a decade ago. Initially, I stayed with my extremely busy tiger-sister’s family, I couldn’t teach piano in her house, so I became her housekeeper, gardener and cook, initially she wants a cook who knows about food and safety, so she taught me basic food handling knowledge started from grocery shopping and later, her thought has evolved to a higher level, she wants a professionally trained chef to cook for her and a family, so I ended up in a chef school.

Do you believe in a feng shui guru or a God? Two years in the chef school I never missed a single day, I never got sick, I was healthier than any younger classmates, I got the best academic results both practically and theoretically, but the head chefs of different commercial kitchens played a part of either a feng shui guru or a god in my life, they decided I am not fitted even to be their kitchen hand either due to my ethnicity, sex or age, it was very hurting when I saw how my chef school’s past Students of the Year all ended up either as the head chefs or much more higher ranking chef jobs. 

I finally convinced that my fate doesn’t belong to a commercial kitchen after a head chef in Grafton could make me waiting for more than three months for a kitchen hand job, I went there for 9 hours FOC trial,  after the trial, he asked me to email him my passport and the proof of my NZ PR status immediately, as he needed to write a contract for me. He promised me the fastest I could return to work would be 2 days later or the following week’s Monday, but I waited and waited, until I asked someone from WINZ to intercept him, at the end, I received an email after 2 weeks later, I was told the café didn’t have enough budget for a kitchen hand, but I saw there were so many new faces during their Christmas party Instagram last year. 

It gives me the proofs that there are good enough chefs are bloody good liars or mockers when they thought lower ranking apprentices, kitchen hands or an Asian chefs are someone that they could fool, make fun of and bullied, and I know I will be an abused victim if I continue to dwell in the chef industry where there is not a single mentor who genuinely cherish me enough, bravely protects me and treated me honestly and openly,  unfortunately I met all these chefs who valued hierarchy and social status more than a little nobody “cook”, and I was badly misled due to a chef mentor’s secretive behavior to hurt me badly emotionally, feeling, health, self-esteem and pride. They didn’t act like all my past world-class piano professors who helped me unconditionally, and that’s the tradition I also carried to my piano students, what goes wrong to the chefs’ tradition? Hierarchy, snobbishness and lies? I have a limited count of which chefs should I respect.

The day I felt so sad, so cheap, and hurt badly was when I read from an Instagram of a very young Thai executive chef how she sang highly of this mentor whom I admired and respected so much, he helped her, he raised her up and showered her with many sample gifts, and moreover I read how he could revive a career or lavish expensive gifts on someone he truly loves and cherishes, whereas someone 7000km meter away, he knew that I couldn’t find any job, he wooed me probably to check what was my intention on his celebrity status, when he thought I got bad intention he ignored me, when he came to Auckland, he never informed me when he would be coming, this hinted that he actually never planned to meet me. When I got an information from somewhere that he would leave on a certain date, I tried to get hold of him intended to meet him and gave him an interview as well, he told me he was sitting on the plane leaving Auckland already, the next night, someone saw his entourage in Auckland International Airport leaving at midnight. What he didn’t know was I spent my limited income to buy the expensive gifts for him, a token of respect but obviously, he never appreciated them from the way he ignored me. As a matter of fact, executive chefs always received FOC sample gifts from salesmen, perhaps it was the reason, my expensive gifts were inexpensive to him, he plays god again to finally decide my trust and respect on chefs and men. Being secretive often could misled people, I came to him bluntly told him I need his feedback in my thesis, but he probably thought that I had an unknown intention on him. If a person subconsciously thought so, he could act so to mould such a victim to fall into his trap. Deliberate ignoring or ostracizing is the greatest insult and humiliation of a mentor shows to his protégé. Whereas, at the same period of time, I encountered a well-known plastic surgeon on the airplane, immediately he would reveal to me of his happy family, I knew our friendship will last until I go coffin, true enough, last month, he bought his wife, his son and even his GM to Auckland, when he reached Auckland he SMS me immediately, we had such a good meeting. Did I ever harass him? NO, even I got his WhatsApp contact! I am so proud to have a very highly respected and eminent S.E Asian plastic surgeon who not just loves to cook, can bake sourdough bread, co-own an Italian restaurant chain in Hong Kong, a man who is genuine, honest and truthful to himself and other people as well.

Being secretive to someone whom you think is a stranger,  lower rank in your hierarchy,  she is not staying your region, she didn’t know if you are married, a gay or cohabited with a famous woman, you could fool her easily.  She could only read you according to how you try to mold what you want your worldwide readers to know in your social media and promotion. Being a long-distance protégé has a great disadvantage, the mentor is always right even if he played as an authorized figure by acting secretive and manipulative, he could make you revealing everything about yourself which was more than a friendly term, he just wanted an answer that he molded for it obviously, and at the end he only brought shame and disgrace to a woman who fell in love, he told me off that I don’t know how to handle a long distance relationship yet he himself trying to observe me through a peek hole.

Who told you that a chef school and a NZ PR could guarantee you a chef’s job? It is just another chef trying to tell lies again.  Then, I discovered about the chef industry’s hierarchy which many TV audience didn’t realize, the chefs who have to raise up from hierarchy’s staircase would look at those MasterChef Winner or any chef school’s freshly graduate (in the case even I was awarded as the Student of the Year) with an imbalanced psycho, without any backdoor help, they have to work at least 10 years to become CDP, and another 10 years to become a head chef or executive chef.

What I learned from different trial outs in different cafes, restaurants, catering companies and hotels were they either want a good robot or they want a confident-look chef, as my character trained as a pianist.  I was always careful to approach something new and trying to improve something not right during the course, obviously, my character and competent are not suitable for a normal commercial kitchen.  

For an example, after making non-bake cheese cake for so many times, now I used full-cream milk instead of full cream to prepare it. People who ate it loved it so much, the cost is much lower, preparation time is cut down and it is much easier to prepare. Now, my choir members and students’ parents asking for recipes, I write FOC for NZ Mandarin Pages. I am born to have a tag writing FOC and can be bullied on my karma, even if my recipes are good, they worth nothing, even if I was pretty and intelligent, men just wanted something from me selfishly for themselves for FOC. 

What do you feel when you work hard for something, it is not being rewarded fairly as people around you are actually playing their part as a god to decide your fate? I learned that a life coach’s BS could receive 200 likes and paid so much to listen to her hypocritic smooth honey sweet voice which ones could learn more and FOC from the Bible or Koran.

Why I have to dirty my hands and develop a pair of ugly wrinkled hands during last 4 years for FOC, so I decided to find a piano teaching job that was strongly discouraged by gods surrounded me. When I was not famous yet in Auckland as a piano teacher, a Chinese teenager student asked me, “Teacher, why you are so confident that I can play piano at the end of the day?” I told her it was due to she was NOT the first student I trained, but first of all, I must discipline her mood and practise, so I spent an extra FOC hour to stay back for the lesson so I could teach her how to practise, after 3 months later, she has improved greatly. 

The main failure for a young piano student’s progress is their mood. You would be surprised to hear that most students that I taught were male students, it happened 20 years ago, and now it happens right here in Auckland again that I got more male students than female. But gender doesn’t play the differences on mood, how many of these Chinese children’s moms feed them with enough raw fruits and vegetables daily?

Have you come across or experience a student or a teacher spent 50% of learning or teaching time fussing, acting moody? I experienced both, actually such chef tutor sent me to hell for a while that I almost quitted my chef school half way.  A person’s bad mood not just bothered his teacher or students but he is wasting time on himself and other people.

Although New Zealand produces plentiful vegetables and fruits at different seasons, but what I noticed was Chinese families have been eating too little fresh vegetables or even stir-fry vegetables and fruits. Overdose of bad protein, starch and sugar can lead adult males and menopaused older women to strokes, who says diet knowledge and planning are not important for a family? How many Chinese want to spend on a family diet plan? It is just not a Chinese’s practice, but just remember this simple fact, if you want stable mood, eat your fresh fruits and fresh vegetables daily and sufficiently, you may find there is less arguing and fighting go on among kids or their parents.