Isn't Initiative Good?

When I fetched Abang from kindergarten last week, his principal sent him to the car. My first thought was Oh-oh, she must have a message for me.

Ha! I was right. She walked with him to the car holding his English Activity Book. Then she showed me some pages which he had done.

"Um, this is his activity book and he's already done the pages for letters 'P' and 'Q' which the teacher hasn't gone through with them yet. Plus he's done the writing in colour pencils. So actually he's not supposed to do the activities yet."

Then she turned to Abang and said, "Remember, don't do the pages after the homework, ok?" Uh-huh, yeah. Reminding "him" indeed!

I was too surprised to say anything more than, "Oh, ok." I think Abang may have felt a bit betrayed because I actually ok-ed him doing all that. I remember when he was doing the homework for the letter 'O' - which included half a page of writing the words beginning with that letter and another half a page of activities/ colouring - he finished it so fast and wanted to go on and do the following two pages.

There didn't seem to be anything wrong with that, in fact I was rather pleased that he wanted to do more than the homework assigned to him. I figured, he was obviously enjoying himself so why stop him?

The last thing I want to do is to 'stifle' him by telling him "You're not supposed to do more than you're told to." I think that would just dampen his spirit. As it is, he doesn't particularly like writing or colouring so when he offers to do more than required I encourage it.

Perhaps next time I'll whip out a different activity book when he feels the sudden surge of initiative.