About Zaid Mohamad

Zaid is a father of four wonderful kids.  He is a full-time employee of a well-known multinational corporation.  Outside of work though, he is actively involved in his kids' school via the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA).  He is currently the PTA Chairman for SK Tropicana.  One of his missions in life is to be a very involved parent.  He strongly believes in the analogy that children are like the white canvass and the parents have the paint and the brush to create their masterpiece.  He has read many parenting books to prepare himself as the artist.  Over the years, he has also developed his own parenting strategies called the Smart Parents' Strategies ©.  He himself was subjected to these strategies when growing up.  He had also written a book on these strategies, due to be released around June 2009.

He is now ready to share his parenting strategies with anyone who cares to listen.  In the process, he is hoping to also learn a great deal more.  The best way to learn is to teach.  His kids are currently benefitting from these strategies – all of them are the top students in their classes and are considered student leaders in their schools.

Zaid strongly believes that many social problems faced by the younger generations today are preventable.  A human mind and soul are terrible things to waste.  He wants to inculcate that great parenting – if done smartly – is still possible in today's hurried world and challenging environment.  He is praying that all parents will come together and embrace these challenges together and change the world, one kid at a time.

Zaid Mohamad holds an honors degree in Finance and graduated with Summa Cum Laude (the highest honor level) and initiated into Sigma Beta Delta (an American Business Honor Society) – a proof that even a kampong boy can make it if the strategies used are right.

These are the actual results obtained from practicing Smart Parents, Brighter Kids Strategies:

I am, first of all, a father. I have also been active in the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA or PIBG) over the last 8 years, with the last 2 as the Chairman of SK Tropikana PTA. I am also a senior employee of a global multinational corporation with regional responsibilities requiring me to travel a lot.

I am blessed with 4 wonderful kids. While having four kids doesn't give me the right to write a book about parenting, it does give me a huge awareness that I am shouldering a huge responsibility here. I love to read, and when I got to know that we were expecting our first baby, my reading subjects expanded to cover parenting books. Among the first few books that I read was Raising A Happy, Unspoiled Child by Burton L. Bright (author of the classic The First Three Years of Life and How to Have A Smarter Baby by Dr. Susan Ludington-Hoe. I must say that these two books had a huge impact on me, and whet my appetite for more. I started to view my future kids as someone I can mould, and actively be an important part of their upbringing process. I know then that I can make a difference from Day One!

Fast forward to 13 years later, Faisal, my eldest son, took his UPSR in 2007, and as expected, scored 5As. Well, what's the big deal, you may ask. After all, there were 11,000 others who scored 5As that year. Well, one different that I can claim is, Faisal did it without me having to spend a fortune in sending him to tuition. I see that you are listening now ….yup, like Frankie said, we did it our way. In addition, we could still afford to take our time off to do fun stuff together, while his friends were slogging over the books after books.

What Faisal went through is actually also what I also went through 33 years ago. I excitedly attended my Day One at a primary school in Kelantan. I was raised by my eldest sister whom I fondly called as “Kak Wan” – a respectful title bestowed on the eldest daughter in a family. She had taken me to live with her when I was 5 years old because my parents could not afford to do so as they have 4 other children who were pursuing higher education.

Tough it may seem, it was actually a blessing because Kak Wan really took care of me very well. She brought me up with lots of love but with a tight discipline. She had this routine for me – I could not go out to play until I finished the school homework AND her work that she assigned to me. Not only completed, I had also had to get it all correct! She would diligently check each question and marked them on the spot. If I get them all correct, then only I could go out.

Her favorite subjects were Mathematics and English, where she would create several questions for me to do regularly. These two subjects were the most difficult ones for us back then in rural areas such as Kelantan. For one thing, we had not spoken a single word of English outside of classroom. But she was determined that I must excel in these two subjects, and that drove her to give me more and more exercises.

Her efforts paid off handsomely as I quickly became the top student in the primary school. I had scored 100% in most of my subjects, and had conquered the number 1 spot in class exams for most semesters in my six years there. However, the icing on the cake was when I emerged as the first and only student that year in my school to score 5As in the national primary school exam. That's correct, the school had never had any student scoring 5As before. It was still a big deal then to score 5A in the “Peperiksaan Penilaian Darjah Lima” ( Year Five Assessment Exam ) as it was known then. Needless to say, it was a historic moment for my school, back then in 1980. The exam is now known as the “Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR)” ( Primary School Evaluation Test ).

That was when it all began. I learned them as primary student. Lived and breathed them, under Kak Wan's watchful eyes. Many years later, I had an opportunity to put them into practice, again, only this time I am on the other side. Playing Kak Wan's role, Rose and I watched our kids living and breathing them too. Rose & I have been using these strategies for a while now, to all of our school-going children. Here are our success stories so far.

Our eldest son, Amar Faisal, was in Primary Year 6 in 2007. We started applying these strategies when he was in Year 4. At that time, his performance was not very encouraging – he was in the mid range of his class. We know he is a bright kid because he started well in his first 3 years in school, but something was just not right. We figured we had to do something. And fast.

It was a huge challenge at that time, given his average performance. But we could not lose hope. He is our eldest, and supposed to set a high standard for his 3 younger siblings. We did not want to send him to tuition classes as the time (and money) required was just too much. So we put together our game plan – the 5 strategies for him to get 5As in his UPSR. It seems a natural thing to do. Slowly but surely, we started seeing results which we thought were impossible. He steadily climbed up the class ranking to be in top 10, and then in top 5.

It was amazing! We were blown away. All these were achieved even without tuition classes (except for extra classes provided at school). His UPSR results? 5As! And as a bonus, he was also voted by his teachers, based on academic, discipline, characters and overall performance, as the "Tokoh Murid 2007" (Student Idol) for his primary school.