The Curio Blog

Your child comes home upset. A classmate called them a “banana.” Or told them their skin is “too dark.” Or laughed at the way they pronounce certain words. Or said they’re “not really Chinese” because they don’t speak Mandarin. Or “not really Indian” because they don’t know the temple prayers. Or not really “anything” because their parents are of different races.

The source of the cruelty isn’t a child of a different race. It’s a child of the same one.

This is intra-racial racism – discrimination that happens not between races but within them. It is one of the least discussed forms of prejudice in Singapore, in part because our national conversation about race focuses almost entirely on inter-racial tensions. But for many children, the wound of being rejected by their own community cuts deeper than any slur from outside it.

Why It Happens in Singapore

To understand intra-racial racism here, you need to understand the CMIO model – the framework that classifies every Singaporean as Chinese, Malay, Indian, or Other. Introduced at independence and embedded in everything from IC registration to school mother tongue assignments, CMIO was designed to manage diversity. What it also did, unintentionally, was flatten it.

Beneath the single label “Chinese” are Hokkiens, Teochews, Cantonese, Hakkas, Hainanese, and many others – communities with distinct languages, customs, and histories. Beneath “Indian” are Tamils, Malayalis, Punjabis, Bengalis, Sindhis, and more. “Malay” encompasses Javanese, Bugis, Boyanese, and other ethnic groups. The official categories erase all of this complexity and replace it with a single, simplified identity – one that each child is expected to inhabit fully.

The problem is that not every child fits the mould. Those who don’t often find out from other children first.

The Specific Forms It Takes

The “banana” phenomenon. Chinese children who are more comfortable in English than Mandarin – a very common situation in Singapore, where English is the dominant home language for many Chinese families – are sometimes called “bananas” by peers: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. The term implies cultural inauthenticity, a failure to be Chinese enough. This is particularly ironic given that at Singapore’s independence in 1965, many ethnic Chinese here did not speak Mandarin as their primary home language – the community’s roots were in Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, and other dialects. The Mandarin-as-Chinese-identity construct is a relatively recent policy creation, not an ancient cultural truth.

Colourism within the Indian and Malay communities. Research identifies East Asia as the world region with the highest levels of skin colour bias. Within Singapore’s Indian community, darker-skinned children can face comments about their complexion from relatives, peers, and even strangers within the same community – absorbed into a racialised beauty hierarchy that privileges lighter skin. Studies document that dark-skinned individuals face measurable bias in assessments of competence and attractiveness, and that these biases are internalised early. Children who grow up hearing that their complexion is a problem carry that message into adulthood.

“You don’t act Malay” or “You don’t act Indian.” Children who don’t observe certain cultural or religious practices, who have accents that don’t match expectations, who have mixed heritage, or who simply don’t conform to the social script of their assigned race can be told by peers that they are inauthentic. The specific content of these accusations varies, but the emotional logic is the same: you are not one of us, even though you are supposed to be.

SAP schools and racial homogeneity. Singapore’s Special Assistance Plan schools are effectively Chinese-only environments, where students can spend up to ten years with minimal meaningful interaction with peers of other races. However, Chinese students who don’t fit the dominant cultural mould within SAP schools – who are English-dominant, who have mixed heritage, who diverge from social expectations – can also find themselves marginalised within what is nominally “their” community.

What This Does to a Child

The psychological impact of intra-racial racism is distinct from that of inter-racial racism, and in some ways more complicated. When a child is rejected by members of another race, there is at least a conceptual framework for understanding it – they are different, and some people treat difference badly. When a child is rejected by members of their own race, the rejection reaches something deeper: the sense that there is no community to belong to, no authentic identity available, no safe harbour in either world.

Research on racial identity development shows that children who experience intra-racial rejection are at higher risk of identity confusion, low self-esteem, and social anxiety. They may feel pressure to perform an identity that doesn’t feel authentic – to speak differently, dress differently, signal belonging in ways that cost them. Or they may disengage from their heritage community altogether, which comes with its own losses.

What Parents Can Do

Name it clearly. Children who experience intra-racial racism often don’t have a framework for it. They may just feel that something is wrong with them. Naming what happened – “what that child said was a form of racism, and it was wrong” – gives them language and removes self-blame.

Challenge the idea that there is one way to be. There is no single correct way to be Chinese, Malay, Indian, or any other race. Singapore’s racial categories are administrative constructs, not cultural mandates. Your child is allowed to have a complex, layered identity that doesn’t map neatly onto a checkbox. Saying this explicitly, and often, matters.

Validate their heritage without policing it. Parents can celebrate culture and heritage without using it as a standard against which the child is measured. Learning about where your family comes from, the food, the stories, the history – this is enriching. Being told you’re not enough of your race because you don’t meet someone else’s checklist – this is harmful.

Build community that affirms them. Look for spaces – community groups, cultural organisations, online communities – where your child can find others who share their specific experience. The mixed-heritage child, the English-dominant Chinese child, the dark-skinned Indian child who grew up hearing comments about their complexion – all of these children benefit enormously from finding others who say: I know exactly what you mean.

Talk about the CMIO system. Older children and teenagers can benefit from understanding where Singapore’s racial categories came from and what they were designed to do. This doesn’t mean dismissing race as meaningless – it clearly isn’t – but it means giving children the historical and political context to understand why the box they’ve been put in doesn’t always fit, and why that says nothing about them.

The child who is told they are not Chinese enough, not Malay enough, not Indian enough – is enough. The categories are the problem, not the child inside them.

At Curio, our tutors come from diverse backgrounds and create supportive learning environments for all students. Register at curio.sg

In 2023, a Singapore teacher was suspended and charged with sexually assaulting multiple teenage girls. In a separate case, a primary school teacher was sentenced to eight years in jail for abusing three young boys. More recently in 2026, a man called Chew Jun Yang, Sean, a 36-year-old Singaporean with a diarrhoea fetish was sentenced to jail for six years and one month after contacting a range of victims, some of them prepubescent males aged 13 to 15 in order to get them to provide him with videos and photographs of themselves being ill. These incidents are reminders of something that is uncomfortable to think about and essential to discuss: how to help your kids navigate relationships with grownups, especially when adults cross the line.

When news of such cases breaks, commentary sometimes surfaces that implies students who were abused bore some responsibility. “It takes two hands to clap,” some say. This is wrong – legally, ethically, and factually. A minor cannot consent to a sexual relationship with an adult in a position of authority. Singapore’s Penal Code makes this explicit: sexual activity between a teacher and a student is illegal regardless of the student’s age or perceived willingness. The law recognises what common sense must also affirm that the power differential between an adult and a child makes true consent impossible.

The responsibility lies entirely with the adult who crossed the line.

This article is not about blame. It is about preparation: what you can teach your child to help them recognise when something is wrong, feel confident saying so, and know that they will be believed.

The Uncomfortable Reality when Adults Cross the Line

Research shows that 93% of child sexual abuse victims know and trust the offender. In Singapore, 443 cases of child sexual abuse were investigated in 2021 alone – and those are only the cases that were reported. Studies consistently find that the majority of cases go undisclosed, often because children do not have the language to describe what happened, fear they will not be believed, or were specifically taught by the perpetrator to keep secrets.

Perpetrators are rarely strangers. They are family members, coaches, tutors, teachers, and family friends – people who already have legitimate access to a child and have spent time building trust with both the child and the family. Understanding this changes how we think about protection. Stranger danger, as a framework, addresses a small minority of cases. The more important conversation is sometimes the one about people your child already knows.

What Grooming Looks Like When Adults Cross the Line

Grooming is the process by which an adult builds a relationship with a child – and often with their family – specifically to create opportunity for abuse. It rarely looks alarming at first. It often looks like kindness.

Warning signs include:

Excessive special attention. An adult who singles your child out for gifts, extra help, or special privileges without obvious reason. Favouritism, when it comes from an adult in authority, is worth examining.

Normalising secrecy. “This is just between us.” “Don’t tell your parents.” Any adult who asks a child to keep secrets from their parents – about gifts, conversations, or meetings – has crossed an important line. Safe relationships with adults do not require children to hide things from their families.

Pushing physical boundaries gradually. Grooming often begins with touch that seems innocent – a hand on the shoulder, a hug that lasts a little long – and escalates slowly enough that neither the child nor the parent notices the progression.

Creating private channels of communication. Texting or messaging a student outside of official channels, especially late at night or about non-academic topics, is not normal teacher behaviour.

Isolating the child. Arranging to spend time alone with a child, away from peers or other adults, particularly when it is not necessary for the stated purpose (tutoring, coaching, etc.).

Five Things to Teach Your Child

1. Their body belongs to them and no exception applies to authority figures. Many children are taught to respect and obey adults. This is appropriate, but it requires a clear caveat: no adult – not a teacher, coach, tutor, relative, or family friend – has the right to touch them in ways that make them uncomfortable or that involve private body parts. Authority does not override body autonomy. Make this explicit. Children who understand this are better equipped to identify when a line has been crossed.

2. Safe secrets and unsafe secrets are different things. A safe secret is a surprise party that will be revealed soon. An unsafe secret is one an adult asks them to keep from their parents – especially about physical contact, gifts, or private conversations. Teach your child that any adult who asks them to keep something secret from their family is asking them to do something wrong, regardless of how the request is framed.

3. It is always okay to say no to an adult and always okay to tell you. Some children worry that reporting something will get an adult in trouble. Others fear they will not be believed, or that they will be blamed. Tell your child directly and repeatedly: if any adult makes them feel uncomfortable, scared, or confused, you want to know. You will believe them. You will not be angry with them. Nothing that an adult does to them is their fault.

4. Trust their instincts. Children often know something feels wrong before they have the words for it. Teach your child to take that feeling seriously – the discomfort, the sense that something is off – and to act on it by telling you or another trusted adult. Gut feelings about people exist for a reason. Children should never be encouraged to override theirs out of politeness.

5. They will not be in trouble. This is the most important one. Children who have been groomed are often told that they will be punished, or that no one will believe them, or that they are equally to blame. Repeat this as many times as necessary: whatever happened, they are not in trouble. They did not cause it. And they can always come to you.

What Parents Can Do

Talk about this early and regularly. Research shows that children who receive clear, age-appropriate education about body autonomy and safe versus unsafe touch are significantly more likely to disclose abuse if it occurs. This is not a conversation to have once and consider done – it is a framework to build over time.

Know the adults in your child’s life. A legitimate teacher, tutor, or coach will not object to parental visibility into their interactions with your child. If any adult in your child’s life seems to want an unusually private relationship with them, take note.

Keep communication open. The single most protective factor for children is a relationship with a parent or trusted adult who they believe will listen without judgement and respond without panic. The conversations you have now, about everyday things, build the trust that makes the harder conversations possible.

The goal is not to frighten your child or make them suspicious of every adult around them. Most adults in your child’s life are exactly what they appear to be. The goal is to give your child the tools, the vocabulary, and the confidence to recognise the rare exception – and to know, without any doubt, that they can come to you when they do.

If your child has experienced or disclosed abuse, AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre can be reached at 6779 0282. Families can also contact the Child Protective Service at 1800 777 0000.

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One of my ex-student’s parents was an incredible parent, by all accounts. She went through every single worksheet and assignment from school. She helped talk her son through research for all group work. She worked together with her son to come up with a solid study plan for all tests and exams. All that being said, she also kept a tight watch on his screen use. My student was 14 and every communication or scroll was strictly monitored – or as some would say: his phone was spied on.

It’s one of the most common dilemmas facing Singapore parents today. Our teenagers are spending enormous amounts of time on their devices – Singaporeans average 6 hours and 49 minutes of daily social media use, with teens most active on TikTok and Instagram – and the risks are real. Cyberbullying, inappropriate content, online predators, and the well-documented effects of social media on adolescent mental health are legitimate concerns, not parental paranoia.

However, covert surveillance – going through your child’s phone without their knowledge – is not the answer. Here’s why.

1. If They Find Out That Their Phone Has Been Spied On, You Lose Far More Than You Gain

The question isn’t whether secret monitoring feels justified. The question is what happens when your teenager discovers it, and they usually do.

Research is consistent on this point: when a teenager finds out they have been secretly monitored, it is experienced as a fundamental breach of trust. Not as a parenting decision they can understand in retrospect, but as a betrayal. The damage to the relationship can take years to repair. In the meantime, your teenager is less likely to come to you when something genuinely goes wrong.

The safety you were trying to create through monitoring gets replaced by a relationship in which your child is actively working to hide things from you. Which brings us to the next point.

2. A Phone Getting Spied On Often Makes the Behaviour Worse

Researchers call it the Pandora effect: as parental monitoring of phone use increases, adolescent phone use can actually increase too. The reason is psychological reactance. When teenagers feel their autonomy is being constrained, they push back against the constraint, often by doing more of the thing being restricted.

Covert surveillance, in particular, tends to drive behaviour underground rather than stopping it. A teenager who knows they’re being watched finds workarounds. A second phone. A friend’s device. A different account. You’ve now created secrecy as a skill.

Parental psychological control, which is monitoring that is coercive, hidden, and not agreed upon, is associated in research with negative mental health outcomes in adolescents, including anxiety, low self-esteem, and what psychologists describe as negative cognitions about relationships with authority figures.

3. Privacy Is Not a Privilege — It’s a Developmental Need

We tend to talk about teen privacy as something earned, something that can be taken away as a consequence. Developmental psychology frames it differently: the growing need for privacy in adolescence is not defiance. It is development.

Teenagers are in the process of forming independent identities. They are testing values, navigating friendships and making sense of who they are separate from their families. This process requires some space that is not surveilled by parents. The same way a child learning to walk needs to be allowed to fall, a teenager forming an identity needs a private interior life.

This doesn’t mean no limits. It means recognising that granting appropriate privacy to a teenager is not weakness. It is part of helping them grow into a healthy adult.

4. It Bypasses the Conversation You Actually Need to Have

If you’re tempted to check your teenager’s phone, there is something specific driving that instinct. A behaviour change you’ve noticed. A name that keeps coming up. A gut feeling that something is off. That specific concern is worth addressing, but covert surveillance is not how to address it.

What you actually need is a conversation. Conversations require trust, which requires not having secretly gone through their phone.

Research on adolescent online safety consistently finds that the most effective approach is not restrictive monitoring but what researchers call evaluative monitoring. This involves discussing media use with teens, talking through what they’re seeing online and building the kind of relationship where they feel they can come to you. Safety, in this framing, is not about knowing exactly what’s on their phone. It’s about whether they’d call you if something went wrong.

5. There Are Better Tools Available – and Your Teen Can Know About Them

This is not an argument for zero oversight. Especially for younger teenagers, some level of parental involvement in online life is appropriate and protective. However, there’s a significant difference between covert surveillance and transparent agreements.

Screen time limits set together, with your teenager’s input, are more likely to be respected than ones imposed secretly. Agreed-upon app restrictions, discussed openly, are more sustainable than hidden monitoring software. Keeping devices out of bedrooms at night, a rule applied consistently and explained honestly, is associated with better sleep and lower problematic phone use.

The key word in all of these is together. Teenagers who are part of the decision-making process around their own digital lives develop better self-regulation than those for whom rules simply appear and disappear.

So What Do You Do If You Genuinely Find Something?

Sometimes you don’t go looking, but something lands in front of you: an accidental glimpse, a notification, a message you weren’t supposed to see. What you see is alarming.

In that case: acknowledge how you came across it, don’t pretend you didn’t see it, and have the conversation directly. “I saw something I wasn’t looking for, and I need to talk to you about it” is honest. It preserves your integrity even in a difficult moment. It models the kind of directness you’re hoping your teenager will eventually bring to you.

The goal of every difficult parenting conversation is not to win. It’s to keep the door open. The conversations that matter most – about safety, about relationships, about the things teenagers are genuinely struggling with – will only happen if your teenager believes you are someone they can talk to.

That belief is built slowly and lost quickly. Guard it accordingly.

At Curio, we work with teenagers every week and understand the pressures they face – academically and beyond. If your child is going through a difficult period, many of our professionally trained tutors are trained to notice and respond with care.

Register at curio.sg

Singapore’s education system is, by most measures, extraordinary. Our students consistently rank among the top in the world for mathematics, science, and reading. We produce engineers, doctors, lawyers, and accountants at scale. The system works, but on its own terms. There is one subject that doesn’t appear on any timetable, isn’t tested at PSLE or O Levels, and carries no grade. Emotional Intelligence or EQ, is the subject missing from Singapore schools, and research increasingly suggests it may matter more to your child’s long-term success than you think.

What Emotional Intelligence Actually Is

Emotional intelligence – often called EQ – is the ability to recognise, understand, manage, and effectively use emotions, both your own and those of people around you. It encompasses:

1. self-awareness (knowing what you’re feeling and why)
2. self-regulation (managing those feelings rather than being controlled by them),
3. empathy (understanding others’ emotional states), and
4. social skills (navigating relationships effectively).

It is not the same as being kind, or sensitive, or emotionally expressive. It is a set of learnable skills – and the evidence for how much they matter is striking.

What the Research Says

The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study – spanning 40 years – found that emotional intelligence is the single strongest predictor of future financial success. It ends up outperforming academic grades, IQ scores, and even parental wealth or education level.

In workplace terms, EQ accounts for 58% of performance across all job types – making it the strongest single predictor of professional effectiveness. When employers are asked what they look for in candidates, 71% say they value EQ over IQ. More pointedly, 59% say they would actively avoid hiring someone with high IQ but low EQ.

People with high emotional intelligence are four times more likely to be promoted. At the C-suite level, where almost everyone has a high IQ, EQ is what separates those who lead well from those who don’t.

And critically: unlike IQ, which is largely fixed, EQ is developable. At any age. With the right support.

Why EQ Is Urgent for Singapore Families

In 2024, 1 in 4 young adults in Singapore reported poor mental health. This was the highest proportion of any age group surveyed. The Singapore Youth Epidemiology and Resilience Study found that at least 1 in 10 school-going adolescents currently experience a mental health disorder.

These are not abstract statistics. They describe children sitting in classrooms across the island. Children who are academically capable but emotionally overwhelmed. Children who know how to solve simultaneous equations but don’t know how to manage anxiety, process disappointment, or repair a friendship after a conflict.

The academic pressure that produces Singapore’s high-achieving students is well documented. What is less discussed is the emotional cost and the gap that opens up when children are trained to perform but not to feel.

What Emotional Intelligence Looks Like in Practice

For a primary school child, high EQ might look like noticing that a classmate is upset and knowing how to respond. Or recognising that they’re feeling frustrated with a difficult homework problem and taking a short break rather than shutting down entirely.

For a secondary school student, it might look like managing the anxiety of waiting for exam results without spiralling. Navigating a conflict with a friend without the situation escalating. Recovering from a poor grade with perspective rather than self-criticism.

These are skills which will form the foundation on which academic performance, relationships, and career success are built.

What Parents Can Do to help with EQ

Schools are slowly beginning to incorporate social-emotional learning into curricula, but the pace is gradual and the depth is limited. Most of what your child learns about emotions, they will learn at home: from how you model your own emotional responses, how you talk about feelings, and how you respond when they’re struggling.

A few evidence-backed starting points:

Name emotions explicitly. Children who have a rich emotional vocabulary e.g. who can distinguish between frustrated and overwhelmed, or nervous and excited, are better equipped to manage those emotions. When your child is upset, help them name what they’re feeling precisely.

Validate before problem-solving. The instinct when a child is distressed is to fix the problem. However, children who feel heard first are far more able to regulate themselves and think clearly. A simple “that sounds really hard” before offering solutions makes a measurable difference.

Let them sit with discomfort. Not every negative emotion needs to be immediately resolved. Children who learn that difficult feelings are survivable, and temporary, develop stronger emotional resilience than those who are immediately shielded from distress.

Model self-regulation. Children learn emotional management primarily by watching adults. When you name your own feelings (“I’m feeling a bit frustrated right now, I’m going to take a few minutes”) you give them a template for doing the same.

Take their emotional world seriously. What seems small to an adult such as a falling-out with a friend, embarrassment in class, or a disappointing result is genuinely significant to a child. Dismissing these experiences teaches children that their emotions are not worth attending to.

EQ: The Subject That Doesn’t Get Graded

No exam will test your child on whether they can manage disappointment, sustain empathy under pressure, or lead a team through a conflict. But these are precisely the skills that will determine how well they do in every job they ever hold, every relationship they ever build, and every setback they ever face.

The good news is that emotional intelligence can be taught, practised, and developed. It doesn’t require a curriculum or a classroom. It requires attention, and parents who understand why it matters.

At Curio, we work with students not just on academic content but on the habits of mind that make learning sustainable. If your child is struggling – academically or emotionally – we’d love to help.

Register at curio.sg