About a boy called Xiao Long

During my second year stay in the student care centre, Xiao Long (name of student has been changed to protect the child) was one of the 30-boy-dominating-P2 under my charge. Xiao Long parents are from Xiwan, a small township in Johore, Malaysia. They are blue-collar workers and rented a room with a relative nearby the school. Xiao Long is their only child.



Xiao Long academic performance was below average and had been put in the last 2 classes throughout his stay in primary school. Scoring single digit grade was a norm and the family could not afford any private tuition for him. Even his stay in the centre was on grant as there was no adult at home to supervise the kid during the day.


Perhaps Xiao Long came from a rather layback or different environment, he had problem mixing with the local kids. He craved for attention but often unwittingly made a laughing stock out of himself. He was always at odd with his peers and also the other students in the center.


Being a teacher, Xiao Long was not a like-able candidate to work with. So he was academically weak I thought naively. There must be still something in him that I could still help. But I was in for much disappointment. Xiao Long often maintained that he was right and refused to be corrected - not just study-wise but also in his behavior. Each time after I corrected him, he would remorse momentarily and then went back to his old ways.


Sometimes Xiao Long would tell his doting dad partial truth about incidents happened to him in the centre, and got his dad livid to confront me or even my boss. And each time after learning the truth from us, he would become embarrassed and left the centre.




Like the son, Xiao Long’s dad also lacked the ability to learn from past mistake and kept coming back to us. Instead of learning how to find out the truth from his son, he would often become upset about us and complained that we mistreated his son. It was indeed a frustrating experience to work with both the father and son for the past few years.


Later, I learnt that Xiao Long’s mum separated from the dad. And the boy has been living with his dad without much contact with his mother.


It has been almost two years since I last saw Xiao Long. He is now a 14 yr-old youth studying in secondary school and I’d lost touch with him. Just a month ago, in June, I received a surprise phone-call from him. He told me how he was doing in secondary school, how he got my number and that he would like to visit me.

I find this very ironical. Here is a boy whom I’d written off as “un-teachable” after years of attempt. I scolded him a lot more than others and yet he bothers to look out for me and contact me. I must have done something right after all.