How parenting changed me \ stacker news ~meta

2631 sats \ 32 comments \ @cryotosensei 3 Mar meta

zaps forwarded to @Undisciplined (50%)

This post was suggested by @Undisciplined. I’m happy to oblige and 50% of the happy sats goes to him.

—- I have always known that I’m a free spirit. What parenting made me realise was how much I hated being bound by rules and obligations.

I send my son to the childcare centre so that they can keep him alive while I’m working. I’m happy if the staff teach him things to prepare him for elementary education, but I resent how the school sometimes dishes out homework.

Can you imagine the chore of having to do a home project with your child on weekends? That is time I cannot utilise on other things. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth because I don’t feel like I am given a choice. Being the rebel that I’m, I will gladly speak my mind to my son’s teachers and say that he won’t be participating in any Show and Tell session that requires him to present his homework.

Sit him out. I don’t care. 🤷‍♂️

My freedom to choose is more important to me. Already I feel like a syringe being squeezed to the maximum. Only, I’m not as adaptable as air. Squeeze me too much and I feel like exploding.

Maybe it was the way I joined a Meditations book club recently. I somehow feel more in the moment these days.

Which is necessary because apparently, my son needs to do a self-portrait before 8 March.

Today was the only day in which we could complete his homework. The remaining days are spent living from wire to wire because there is just so much to do.

Because my mind was calm, I hit upon the idea of using red packets since Chinese New Year was over. I then took him to the supermarket and bought some foodstuff and stationery. You can say that I had a plan to get his homework done.

Back at home, I steeled myself to assist him by eating the Kit Kat chocolates (which was then used as his clothes for the self-portrait). In all, the time spent wasn’t as agonising as I had feared.

I won’t exactly say that I had fun because negotiating decisions with a 4-year-old expended my energy faster than you might think. But well, he took ownership of the project and executed his creative vision. It could have gone worse.

It would have been worse if I had chosen to stick to resentfulness.

So I guess parenting helps to rein in my free-spirited nature a bit. I don’t know whether it’s a good or bad thing, but at least, I don’t have to worry about not meeting his homework deadline on time.

His favourite colour is blue. That’s why his self-portrait face is blue. I’m just going to unleash his quirky imagination without bothering to censor anything.

view all related items

955 sats \ 15 replies \ @grayruby 3 Mar

My friend, remember you don't have to do this stuff, you get to do this stuff. They grow up really fast.

80 sats \ 5 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 3 Mar

Yes, that’s what I have been telling myself since you told me that last November haha.

The other day, I was whining to my colleague about how my baby girl passed motion in her baby chair. She was having diarrhoea. I told her that “I get to do this”. My boss walked past and said, “Oh that’s not good enough. You need to think ‘I love to do this’”.

Haha.

Thanks for reinforcing your message

27 sats \ 4 replies \ @grayruby 4 Mar

Haha there are certain things, like cleaning diarrhea, that require a different mindset such as "this fucking sucks but just get it done".

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 4 Mar

My mom is one of those bizarre people who genuinely seems to love every aspect of taking care of little kids. It's borderline inhuman.

28 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 4 Mar

My wife is awesome. I never minded changing diapers or cleaning up spit up but the explosive diarrhea I usually had to tag her in for. Not always, if she was out of sleeping then you gotta do what you gotta do, but I would freeze up and just stare and say "it's everywhere" and not know where to start. Haha.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 4 Mar

I would freeze up and just stare and say "it's everywhere" and not know where to start

Oh yeah, that takes me back. That was usually our shared reaction: just sort of staring at it and being completely unsure where to start.

My wife is definitely the one who rises to the occasion when poop needs to be touched, like when there's a turd in the bath and someone needs to act fast before it gets on the kid.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @fm 5 Mar

You just described my morning today😂

31 sats \ 6 replies \ @0b1CoinObi 3 Mar

Your should have kept the sentence at: My friend, remember you don't have to do this stuff.

Neither does the child.

31 sats \ 5 replies \ @grayruby 3 Mar

Ok fair, but the intent of my comment was as written.

31 sats \ 4 replies \ @0b1CoinObi 3 Mar

I'm not sure how you meant the comment, but when you say, you get to do it. I would take this as, you are the one who's doing the homework as much as them

10 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 3 Mar

I meant you get to share these moments with your child.

Mental framing kind of thing. I don't have to help my 4 year old with a silly daycare assignment. I get to spend some time doing something fun with him.

118 sats \ 2 replies \ @0b1CoinObi 3 Mar

Here's one of the issues and as you can tell I have a big issue with homework, especially for preschoolers. Your valuable free time with your child is being taken up with doing homework. This isn't a subject that you've chosen but the school, the state, the government. Your free time should be yours and your child's, free to play and have fun. This is social conditioning and control and it starts at such a young age now. Obviously home education (or freedom education, a bit like freedom money) is the answer but not everyone is in a position to home educate.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Mar

And freedom diet (carnivore diet), from the looks of trending posts on ~health

You just gave me an idea for my next post. Thank you 🤩

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 3 Mar

Agree.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 3 Mar

great attitude, applies to so much in life

69 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 4 Mar

I am a simple guy. "I get to do this" and "cities are shitcoins" gets me through life nicely.

622 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 3 Mar

There were a few changes I noticed almost immediately.

I was always someone prone to feeling existential dread if the topic of mortality came up. When I was younger, I explicitly thought that I would rather everyone on Earth die than dying myself. As far as I was concerned, either option deprived me of everyone else, so the difference was just whether I existed or not.

Now, I would unthinkingly do whatever necessary to protect my family. Some people refer to this sort of thing as an "immortality project". I also feel no more existential dread when contemplating my own mortality, since I'm setting the stage for my daughter and the life she builds for herself.

Another thing I noticed right away is feeling connected to other parents. There's a Team Parents that I didn't appreciate before.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @doofus 3 Mar

Same here

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 3 Mar

Now, I would unthinkingly do whatever necessary to protect my family. Some people refer to this sort of thing as an "immortality project". I also feel no more existential dread when contemplating my own mortality, since I'm setting the stage for my daughter and the life she builds for herself.

This resonates hard. Thank you for sharing.

27 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Mar

Interesting!

I’m actually more afraid of dying before my time these days. I mean, when I was single and happily gallivanting around the world, I didn’t have to account to anyone, except for my parents. But now I have dependents - my wife n kids. I think my apprehension is compounded by the fact that my wife is a foreigner. I have to try to live longer than her so that I can bring her ashes back to her hometown haha.

I’m a bit blown away by your thinking wrt “immortality project”. Here I am, trying to get through every day, but you are already weighing the existence of your daughter in the broader context of a legacy and your fanily tree. Kinda reminds me of the parable about the three bricklayers 👍

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 4 Mar

I relate to that feeling too. My family certainly gives me more reason to cling desperately to the mortal coil. I guess it's a complicated dynamic.

227 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 3 Mar

50% of the happy sats goes to him.

Are you going to cut me a check later?

51 sats \ 3 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 3 Mar

I forgot! Haha 😝

Should be okay now

129 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 3 Mar

Getting homework from our preschool is one of my wife's pet peeves. Especially since it's usually something an adult has to do (or at least help with extensively).

27 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Mar

I’m almost afraid to ask. What are other examples of her pet peeves?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 4 Mar

She's been known to say "Everything is bullshit." on more than one occasion, so there are plenty of them.

159 sats \ 1 reply \ @dagny761 3 Mar

I love your conclusion and hope you and your kiddo have tons of fun letting his “quirky imagination” run rampant!

Our preschool didn’t assign any homework and gave the parents a speech to help us establish appropriate expectations about what our kids’ artworks will look like coming home since they have very little adult help.

Basically we received lots of works that resembled Pinterest fails… plus glitter. Lots of glitter.

Yet, several years later, my kids are eager to get creative, don’t fret about going outside the lines (at some point they did learn how to color inside them), and have wonderful senses of personal expression.

I would also encourage you to continue to communicate your feelings about homework and workload in general with your kid’s teachers.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Mar

Your children’s preschool sounds wonderful. Smart in calibrating parents’ expectations and in taking a step back and letting your kids hold the reins. Too many teachers invest their energy wrongly in getting children to colour inside the lines!

138 sats \ 3 replies \ @gnilma 4 Mar

Just out of curiosity, is the pre elementary school child care / day care service a free market in Singapore? Or is it in real shortage and you have to consider yourself lucky to be able to find a child care spot even if its a free market?

The reason I ask is that I always thought if you did not like a service, you can always walk away and find another one that you like more, as long as the market is free and the supply of the service is not crazy scarce.

For example, here in western Canada, early child care (full day care for 1yr-3yr olds) is super hard to find. You probably have to start lining up for one when you first get pregnant. But 3yr+ day care spots are easier to find, which allowed us to shop around when we decided to put our kids to day care part time (mainly to get them to socialize with other kids and be comfortable dealing with other kids). The one our 2 older kids went to were more structured and "taught" them things, which at the time seemed fine to me, but as I learn more about kids and parenting, I started to have second thoughts on that method. So, for our little one, we shopped around and ended up on a day care that is free play based. No "teaching", no homework, everything play based, lots of toys and activities within the day care building, make arts and crafts, go outside everyday, touch mud, grab sand, catch bugs, pick worms, rain or shine.

What I'm trying to say is you should be able to choose what place you put your kid in, because they're there the whole day, everyday, for a few years. You shouldn't have to settle with a place you don't like, unless the market is not free or it's super hard to find a day care spot.

Either way, good on you for having that mind set and embraced the task at hand instead of turning resentful. As much as you don't like the homework, you are still spending quality time with your kid while doing it and that is what matters. Treasure these moments, because before you know it, they are all grown up and start to not want to spend time with you, as they start to have their own friends, their own interests, their own obligations, and their own lives.

350 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Mar

Thank you for your questions! Glad to take a breather off work to pen this.

Infant care services are rather scarce in Singapore, but we are lucky that childcare services are readily available. However, given that we are a dual income family, we opted for the child care centre nearest our house. Proximity matters, especially since my wife needs to take our daughter to the infant care centre and THEN our son to his kindergarten.

There are schools that advocate play-based educational methods. However, I don't consider those schools because 1) they are far away, and 2) even if they are nearby, they are significantly more expensive than the ones heavily subsidised by the state.

I'm lucky in that my son goes back to Japan every December. His preschool is entirely play-based; I'm shocked by how nonchalant the teachers are. He doesn't even learn the Japanese alphabet! Experiencing that makes me feel okay about sticking to the status quo. After all, he kinda gets to enjoy the best of both worlds, with things being as they are.

Also, being Singaporean, I understand that the homework isn't busy work. My four-year-old boy will be expected to present his homework in front of his classmates later this week. Honestly, I value my limited time and would gladly talk to his teacher to let him just observe his classmates' presentations. But my wife feels strongly about him being left out, and I listen to my wife and so, I suck it up and go through with it.

To put things in perspective, he just has to do a project once a term. So once in ten weeks. I just like to whine. Haha.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @gnilma 4 Mar

Understood. Indeed proximity matters, especially for a busy dual income family. And price matters too, as I went to Singapore for a few days back in 2016 and learned that it is definitely not a cheap city to live in. I imagine the cost of living being even higher now compared to 8 years ago.

As parents, we all want what is best for our kids according to our subjective reasoning. Personally, I like the play based method for younger kids, because I feel at such a young age, they learn best when they play and explore the world around them through their senses. I also think that free play helps curate their creativity and not put their mind into a mold. Kids can probably learn any alphabet in a few days at an older age, but once they think touching mud is dirty, they will probably be afraid to touch mud for a long time. Just my subjective reasoning and personal preference for my kids, not trying to say which method is superior or inferior. And definitely not trying to tell you how to raise your kids. I guess I'm just a lazy and cheap dad wanting to throw my kids outdoors to play with mud and broken branches instead of paying for and driving them to tutor classes.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined fwd 4 Mar

I'm very interested in the answer to this, but I want to jump in with another possibility.

The prevailing culture may be so aligned in values not shared by Sensai that there really are very few choices along the dimension he cares about. Alternatively, it may be that those who share his views are fantastically wealthy and he can't afford the services that he would like.