I thought this might be a fun question to ask because we are shaped by those who come before us and are motivated by the desire to nurture those who come after us. Passing on the baton. Through our hands flow the passage of rites, routines, and rituals.

I recently posted about making a customised vocabulary book for my son. I am motivated to fill up the pages of this notebook with high-frequency, high-utility phrases to aid my son’s acquisition of Mandarin Chinese.

A few days later, just when I was about to shower my children, a flashback surfaced in my mind. Some of you may already know that 12-year-old kids in Singapore have to excel in a nationwide exam called the Primary School Leaving Examinations before they can advance to the next stage of the educational ladder. It’s a high-stakes exam for sure.

I recalled that my father had spent a lot of time clearing my misconceptions and helping me see the air for my Science, particularly the topic on simple machines (levers, pulleys, etc). Thanks to him, I scored an A* (the highest grade) for this subject. Now, the bell curve existed during my era, so I might not have actually scored more than 90 marks for my exam. But suffice it to say that I scored above the 90th percentile. I couldn’t have accomplished this without my father’s help because I scored a B for my preliminary exams. (Welcome to hothousing Singapore!)

Years later, my father shared that he had actually spent two weeks reading up that chapter on simple machines before he took me under his wing. Which makes sense because he was a humanities major in college. Geography and History, in fact. Science might not have been his forte, but he sucked it up and did his best for me, releasing my potential then as a result.

In a nutshell, I hope to do the same for my son, like what my dad did for me.

How about you?