Yes, traveling is a major hinderance especially for families with kids.
Even if I am willing to wake up at 5am, the wife may not take it.
Even if she can sacrifice, the kids will suffer with the daily travel and waste of time.
It WILL affect their development and grades.
If I am single, I will go in and stay.
Actually disagree with the grades suffering, maybe development a bit. I have seen hordes of MY kids going into Singapore to study.
If anything, the long journey reinforces their determination to be better and i can see that they tend to strive harder with fire in their
bellies.
Sometimes a little hardship toughens the kids, these days kids are too soft. Everything they want instant, instant gratification, easy this, easy that.
We need to ask ourselves sometimes, the kids we are developing in Singapore these days, learning under so much pressure, learning so many things at once and maintain high grades. Are they really educated despite going through all the hardship, lugging heavy bags, etc?
In the end, these well "trained" kids have to compete for the same jobs as kids from other countries who may have taken a slower/gentler and not as taxing route. Why do we need to stress our kids so much so that in the end they have to compete with people who didn't need to go through all of this (yet are good enough to be deemed suitable to compete for jobs with them.)