Tag: parenting

My advice to you, dear daugther

April 5th, 2019
Dear daughter,

For your 18th birthday, and on my 48th year, I wish to write down something for you to refer back to in the next 30 years.

I wish to tell you a few simple thoughts to help you to build a life for yourself that 30 years later, you would look back and be proud of the person you have become at 48 years old.
- Don’t be scared that you don’t know your exact future, life cannot be planned exactly.
- Make decisions based on a long term view, it’s okay to have fears and doubts, but frame a decision based on whether this is the right decision 5, 10 or even 20 years later.
- We all have only one life, live your life on your own terms, but do seek advice from several people you trust. Then make the decision and trust your gut. You have made several big decisions that way and it has worked!
- Live your life with no regrets. Sure you might have made a different decision looking back. If there is something you wanted to correct, do it now. If you cannot change the past, forgive yourself.
- You will always be your worst critic, make sure to be kind to yourself.
- Always be creating, art, writing, or something else. This is you!
- Lastly, you never know who will say YES, until you ask. Everyone has fears. I know you have fears. I live with fears all the time.
Dad
Identity as a father

April 4th, 2019

For the last 18 years, my identity is primarily a father and a software engineer. My daughter is going to be 18 years old in a few days and I wanted to remind myself that a large part of my identity is not lost, but changed.

In order for her to be a fully formed adult, I have to learn to let go. Let her find her own path, be her own person without being in the shadows of her parents and her adult guardians.

My opinions should have some weight, but it maybe should weight less than her good friends, her teachers and her future co-workers.

Her mistakes are no longer wrong, it might be just a learning experience. Maybe her father doesn’t need to rescue every single one, until she ask for help?

In the next few months before she is off to college, I still want to spend as much time with her. Just to be with each other. To remember, recall 18 years of traveling, day to day interactions, ways we learn to communicate with each other and the times we each said something that we regretted.

On the one hand, I mourn the lost of this part of my identity. On the other hand, I am so proud of this caring, talented adult who knows exactly who she is, who her friends should be and such a loving person.

Thank you C8. I love you. Onward and upwards.
Talk About Your Frustrations

May 9th, 2018

Dear future self:

Today, you were frustrated at your teenage daughter that she was 10 minutes later in leaving the house for high school. Even though she is the only one affected, you felt that it reflected on your personal value to be early or on time.

You expressed to your daughter that you were mad at her for being late and you are getting over it soon.

She told you we are now even for the other time that she was angry at you for telling her grandparents something important that she wanted to not disclose.

When you dropped her off and you told her you are all over the issue and she actually arrived 8 minutes early for school. You told her she is the most wonderful daughter, gave her a hug. She remarked that ‘now I am your wonderful daughter!’

Future self, talk about your frustrations. It is not easy and not natural. But keep on practicing it!
Saying It Out Loud

October 25th, 2016
This week I learned something new about myself. I learned that what I’m thinking in my head, when not explicitly told to those I love, is not necessarily known to those love ones.

This seems like a very obviously point, but I often make this mistake. I think this could be that I am an introvert by nature and I like to bounce thoughts in my own head. Also I assume my love ones can feel what I am thinking because of my actions. Actions speak louder than words right?

Wrong.

Sometimes words are more powerful than simple action.
- I am reminded to tell my child that I accept her no matter what path she chooses for herself.
- I am reminded to tell my child that I think about her future. That as a parent, I have obvious biases. That I worry about her future. I worry that if she doesn’t choose the obvious path to success, that she will struggle in life. I tell her that I don’t know the right path for another human being to take. It is up to her to decide on her future. Success is not guaranteed, happiness is not necessarily the end goal. Fulfilling work, self expression and realization of your own talents is a worthy goal of life as well.
Sometimes random conversations with a child in a car leads to interesting learnings about myself and my child.

I love you.
C: Will I hate you when I’m a teenager?

June 4th, 2015

The original post was in 2005 when C. was 5 years old.

A few days ago, C asked “Dad, will I hate you as a teenager?”

I was a bit caught off guard. I told C that it’s possible that when kids grow into their teenage years, their hormones could change, and they will be testing the boundaries of being independent. There will be a lot more conflicts between the parent and child.

However, if we continue to communicate, if I spend quality time with her and we genuinely enjoy each other’s company, I don’t see why it has to be the case that my teenage daughter will hate me.

I did tell her that she might be embarrassed by me since I am very geeky and uncool. This she did laugh at and agreed.
30 Minutes Of Focus Time For Children And Adults

December 26th, 2010

I spent Christmas night and the day after Christmas with my parents and my sister’s 2 kids. A 2 year old girl “C”. and 4 year old boy “M”. We all spent the morning filled with sounds of the TV and the new Nintendo games the kids got for Christmas.

Thirty minutes before we are suppose to leave for San Francisco, I told the kids we will spend 30 minutes of writing time where all electronics will be turned off. I set a timer so everyone can see it count down.

The 4 year old “M” is drawing, 2 year old “C” is playing with her abacus, my 9 year old is writing her fictional story, and I am writing this blog entry. The room was quiet, with the occasional question. I find that this type of focus and silence is rare and very important for children to learn to focus.

Electronics like the iPhone and iPad are all about short attention span and trying to fill every free moment with some distraction. We can give our kids an iPad, DS,or Wii and they will leave us alone. Then we might put a DVD on the tube and that’ll consume another 2 hours. I use electronics as a babysitting tool myself. I remind myself to have reasonable limits to screen time, maybe only 30 minutes a day.

When Cate and I play catch with her new baseball glove, or we build electronic circuits, I know Cate appreciates this time I spent with her. She forms a stronger relationship with me. We talk about how to catch a baseball backhand, where to have the ball land on the glove. We talk about how to trouble shoot a circuit that isn’t working and what experiments we can try on an existing circuit. This interaction back and forth is what will make a bigger impact in our relationship. It will build up trust and strengthen our relationship for the future.

Last night, after playing catch, Cate said that she realizes how much more fun things are when I do them with her. I jumped in too early and said “I am not your playmate though”. Later on I realize that she is telling me how much she appreciates me spending time with her, teaching her card tricks, catching balls, badminton, swimming and probably even our 30 minutes of focus time where we both just sit and write.
Binary Numbers: Teaching Computer Programming to Kids: Lesson 1

November 17th, 2010

Crepe at home

This morning Cate and I were eating crepes with hazelnut chocolate and she asked me what this means? “10001001” I think she must have seen it somewhere on a piece of paper or an advertisement. I’ve always found it difficult to talk to her about what my job as a software engineer is, so I decided to use this a chance to get her more interested in computer science.

This is beginning of my attempt to start a series on educating kids on computer programming.

Computers are pretty simple machines, they do what humans tell them to do, no more. On the basic level, the computer has a brain, the CPU that is made of millions of transistors which has only 2 states, either on or off.

The 1 means it’s on, 0 means it’s off

Humans count using decimals 0123456789, computers count with binary. 0/1

Let’s start counting like a computer, turn on our binary brain. The numbers are all in binary.

0 is the number zero
1 is the number one
10 is the number two
11 is the number two plus the number one which is three
100is the number four
101 is the number five
110 is the number six
111 is the number seven
1000 is the number eight
10000 is the number sixteen
100000 is the number thirty two
1000000 is the number sixty four
10000000 is the number 128
100000000 is the number 256

Then I started just asking her some random numbers like what
101, 110,10001 and she seem to enjoy it, great.

We started walking to the ZipCar to drive to Berkeley for school and I was explaining to her about pixels on the computer monitor. The typical monitor is 800 pixels across and 640 and each pixel is represented by a byte for each color. A byte has 8 bits. We have 3 colors RBG. Red, Green and Blue.

To make a color dot on the screen the computer has to turn on bits. So for the red part of the pixel, if all the bits are turned on R = 1111111, the pixel would be red. If R and B are both all turned on, the dot would be purple. R=11111111, B=1111111.

Cate then asked what is a computer language. I said a computer language is a very limited set of vocabulary that allows humans to talk to the computer and tell the computer what to do. Most computer languages have only about 40 words, much simpler than the French and Chinese that Cate is learning.

Cate: “Can I tell the compute to blow dry my hair?”
Tony: “Sure, let’s try it”

While Cate was in the back of the car seat, I told her, if we were to do it in JavaScript, this would be how we will tell the computer

var purpleHairdryer = new HairDryer();
purpleHairdryer.blowDry(“Cate”);
purpleHairdryer.stop(15);

var, new are the only vocabulary words we used.

Before I left her at school, she asked me to give her at least 5 vocabularies from JavaScript.

I gave her var, new, for, do {} while, alert

Then I said goodbye and we’ll do more programming on Sunday. That was a fun morning. I drove back to San Francisco to catch my Yahoo! bus.

Note to self, there are plenty of links out there about teaching kids to program

Scratch from MIT looks interesting

More links:
http://www.daddymodern.com/what-is-the-first-programming-language-you-would-teach-your-child/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29

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This is a series that documents my daughter’s curiosity to learn about computer programming
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Update 12/14/2010 : This post has also been published on the Yahoo! Contributor Network
dreaming of father+daughter team

November 4th, 2007

I have this fantasy of playing badminton with C. as a mixed doubles team. The C.+Tony dynamic duo! She is 12 years old, flying at the birdie in front of the net. Father Tony jumping and smashing from the back. We are both enjoying executing what we’ve been training to do during our weekly badminton training sessions. Father and daughter filling in the gaps for each other as any good doubles team should be doing.

Now back to reality. C. is 6 1/2 years old and we are hanging out at the local badminton club :-)

This morning is the first step to that fantasy as I bring C. to the GGBC badminton club this Sunday morning. She refused to play for the first 2 hours, citing that she would rather play in the basketball courts close to my apartment. I spend the first 2 hours practicing serving 100 birdies into a bucket across the court. Then when her battery ran out for her MacBook, she came over and said she was bored.

She brought over her racket and I started to practice with her, by throwing birdies over the net and she was hitting them nicely across the net as I clown around bouncing the birdies on my head and my foot. She was loving it!!!

There was a badminton class that was going to start in 15 minutes but the coach was late. So I substituted for the coach and I helped coached 3 other kids along with C.. The other kids were 10-12 years old and I had C. return drop shots from the kids as I trained the older ones and made them run, swing the racket and sweat… Kate had a wonderful time and when we got home, she asked for more badminton training..

I think my fantasy will become reality one day. C. was coming up with our team name already. C&T badminton team
No coffee for you Dad !!!

January 23rd, 2007

Kate and I got into an argument Monday morning, I think it was about wearing clothes or maybe I was slow in getting up in the morning.

She wrote me a note

“No Coffee For You Dad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I asked her why I don’t get any coffee and she said

K : “Because when you are mad, your favorite things get taken away”
Me: “What about you? When you are mad, what favorite things can I take away?”

(I was expecting a toy or dessert or a doll)

K: “You! you are my favorite, you can’t take yourself away! haaa. You won’t ever leave me.. isn’t that funny dad?”

Me: “That was pretty sweet kate” (kids are pretty damn funny and they really know how to make you feel good huh?)

I was pretty speechless, I kept on laughing and gave her a hug.
Kate’s sunday conversations

January 20th, 2007

Some random bits of conversation between Kate and me

K: “Dad, are you going to die before me?”
me: “uhhh, I think so.”

K: “but not for a long long long long time right?”
me: “I hope so.”

K: “Dad, even when you are angry, you still love me right?”
me: “I’ll always love you”

K: “You won’t love me when you die…”
me: “As long as I’m in your heart, you’ll feel my love”
K: “ok…”

(this is during the freezing morning in SF visit to Patite Patisserie)
K: “I don’t want to put on my jacket, I’m never cold”
me: “you don’t want to catch the cold that I have, just wear the jacket until you are inside”

K: “no no no, why do you have to be mean dad all the time”
me: “because I love you”
The Good And The So So

July 18th, 2006

Kate arrived yesterday, her mom brought her over to Paris while traveling towards eastern Europe. Kate was excited as was I to be reunited after a month. The good.

We spent the day visiting a few food places around Rue Lepic, and I was introducing Kate to the vendors. The good

The vendor selling tarts asked wheter Kate is going to the French school in Paris, nope. Is her mom French? Nope. Do I speak French? No. I think he told Kate to teach her old man some French.. Doh! Ok, I’ll start to learn the language soon, very soon. The so so

Then Kate wanted me to play cooking with her by cutting up paper and pretend we are cooking mac N cheese. That almost put me to sleep. The so so.

Kate and I are staying in a small studio, so I had to sleep at the same time as she does, we both went to bed at 10:30pm and woke up at 8:45am, the longest sleep I’ve gotten in months. The good

I’m now moving at a snail’s pace in Paris, no more biking, no more running and trying to convince the 5 year old to walk in the burning heat. The so so

Slowing down and being in the moment. The good
Does Parenthood Make You Happy?

June 12th, 2006

I’ve been listening to an audio book, Stumbling on Happiness
The author Daniel Gilbert is really funny and convincing in the thoroughness of his research. He believes that humans are the only animals who can think about the future and have an imagination.

I still do not know the secret to happiness, but after listening to him, I do believe happiness is not that elusive. I do not have to pursue happiness. There is no formula for happiness. I have to remember to be smart about the choices I make in life and be aware of why I’m making these choices. Accept that life is not under my full control and whatever happens in the future is just that simple, it’s part of life.

His latest blog post about why fatherhood does not bring you happiness

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Excerpts from his blog

Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people’s overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact.

Those findings are hard to swallow because they fly in the face of our most compelling intuitions. We love our children! We talk about them to anyone who will listen, show their photographs to anyone who will look and hide our refrigerators behind vast collages of their drawings, notes, pictures and report cards. We feel confident that we are happy with our kids, about our kids, for our kids and because of our kids—so why is our personal experience at odds with the scientific data?

Three reasons.

First, when something makes us happy we are willing to pay a lot for it, which is why the worst Belgian chocolate is more expensive than the best Belgian tofu. But that process can work in reverse: when we pay a lot for something, we assume it makes us happy, which is why we swear to the wonders of bottled water and Armani socks. The compulsion to care for our children was long ago written into our DNA, so we toil and sweat, lose sleep and hair, play nurse, housekeeper, chauffeur and cook, and we do all that because nature just won’t have it any other way. Given the high price we pay, it isn’t surprising that we rationalize those costs and conclude that our children must be repaying us with happiness.

Second, if the Red Sox and the Yankees were scoreless until Manny Ramirez hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth, you can be sure that Boston fans would remember it as the best game of the season. Memories are dominated by their most powerful—and not their most typical—instances. Just as a glorious game-winning homer can erase our memory of 8 1/2 dull innings, the sublime moment when our 3-year-old looks up from the mess she is making with her mashed potatoes and says, “I wub you, Daddy,” can erase eight hours of no, not yet, not now and stop asking. Children may not make us happy very often, but when they do, that happiness is both transcendent and amnesic.

Third, although most of us think of heroin as a source of human misery, shooting heroin doesn’t actually make people feel miserable. It makes them feel really, really good—so good, in fact, that it crowds out every other source of pleasure. Family, friends, work, play, food, sex—none can compete with the narcotic experience; hence all fall by the wayside. The analogy to children is all too clear. Even if their company were an unremitting pleasure, the fact that they require so much company means that other sources of pleasure will all but disappear. Movies, theater, parties, travel—those are just a few of the English nouns that parents of young children quickly forget how to pronounce. We believe our children are our greatest joy, and we’re absolutely right. When you have one joy, it’s bound to be the greatest.

Our children give us many things, but an increase in our average daily happiness is probably not among them. Rather than deny that fact, we should celebrate it. Our ability to love beyond all measure those who try our patience and weary our bones is at once our most noble and most human quality. The fact that children don’t always make us happy—and that we’re happy to have them nonetheless—is the fact for which Sonora Smart Dodd was so grateful. She thought we would all do well to remember it, every third Sunday in June.
Dance performance this Sunday

March 10th, 2006

I have been taking Kate to her dance lessons ever since she was 2 1/2. When she first started, she refused to participate and we spend nearly 2 months just sitting and watching.

How time has flown. She was in a dance performance 2 years before and she frozed on stage. She skipped last year’s performance and this year she also wanted to skip. No big deal to me.

Until she turned 5 years old in April, she came up to me and said now that she is 5 years old, she is no longer scared and wanted to be in this year’s performance.

Wish me luck and wish her luck. It will be a long long day of rehersals and a 4 hour wait until the performance. I’m volunteering just so I can be backstage with her. As always, I expect the worst and hope for the best.
please give me a pink sparkly pajamas

February 4th, 2006

Kate had me open up TextEdit on my mac and asked me to type out these words.
“please give me a pink sparkly pajamas”

Now where do I find these “pink sparkly pajamas?”
Kate: the first year: Elimination/potty training

June 1st, 2005

Kate is 4 years old now, I’m ready to finally share with the world about how Angie and I decided to raise her. Our choices and methods are extreme and it caused us a lot of isolation with other parents, but it was all worth it.

When Kate was 3 month old, Angie and I felt that something was not right about keeping a baby in diapers where she sits in pee and poo even for just a few minutes. Maybe it’s because we were Chinese or maybe it’s because we like to question the accepted norm in this society.

So, Angie did what she did best, she researched and found this book called Infrant Potty Training by Laurie Boucke Angie also found a large online community of non-asian mothers who were doing the same thing.

For an overview: http://www.timl.com/ipt/
“Babies are smarter than we think! The big mistake that people make is to presume that a newborn baby is unaware of going to the toilet. We assume an infant is incapable of toilet learning since infants are small and uncoordinated and also because they cannot walk or talk. An infant is helpless in so many ways that it is hard for Westerners to imagine such a tiny being could be aware of peeing and pooping. It is even harder for us to believe that an infant has some control over elimination. With these preconceived and narrow views, we encourage and teach our babies to be unconcerned about wetting and soiling diapers. In short, we teach our infants to use diapers as a toilet.”

First steps: Angie put Kate without diapers on top of a large waterproof sheet and observed Kate’s peeing cycles and noticed Kate’s signals right before she went to pee. Kate would do little grunts for pee, a little bit longer grunt for poo. The first signs of communication!

Then the hard work began, every time Kate grunted, we would hold her over a sink or toilet and whistle and wait for the pee / poo to come. There were a lot of misses but also a lot of successes. It was very very difficult especially when we were outside driving, restaurants, I would have to leave or get off to hold her over a little potable toilet or just a bag with newspapers and whistle and pee her.

The payoff: at 6 months, Kate was completely off diapers and she hasn’t had a soiled diaper and she looks so cute in her Poquito Pants

Cute Poquito Pants

She was essentially potty trained. Her communication with us is also very heightened both in the elimination part as well as all other aspects such as eating, comfort.

This may seem very extreme to most people but think about this: We expect dogs and cats to be potty trained very early. Most Asian countries have babies potty trained when they are 1 years old because they can’t afford diapers. Also why leave a baby sitting in their own pee and poo? Why try to potty train your child at 2 or 3 years old when it’s going to be so much harder and there are so much more issues to deal with? The work needs to be done, it’s your choice whether you want to do it early on or later.

Next blog: “Kate: the first year: night time potty training”
How to discipline a 4 year old

May 25th, 2005

We are traveling in Paris with kate, my 4 year old daughter, I need some advice.

1) She likes to ask ‘why’ endlessly I can’t get a moment of peace. And she would either ask the same ‘why’ question to something I’ve already answer or she would follow an answer with another ‘why’
2) She always craves attention. When the adults are talking she always interrupts
3) When she is walking on the street and she is walking too close, if we yank her in, she yanks back
and creates a dangerous situation
4) She asks a question and doesn’t listen for the answer
5) When I ask her to do something, she ignores the question until I threaten to take away a toy or
when I actually take away something.

I find myself being one of those dads that I don’t want to be.. Constantly telling her no or constantly
threatening or taking away toys.

Help. I think I’m going crazy.. Other people look at her and think she is an angel. I think she is an angel when I’m putting her down for bedtime :-)

11 Comments

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commented
05/27/2005 02:02 pm
I found this book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0836228111
(“Making the Terrible Twos Terrific” by John Rosemond) to be absoutely *fantastic*. Perhaps he also has
a book covering your area?

From reading the one book, I’d guess he’d suggest setting hard and fast limits (e.g. about trying to get attention) and sticking to your guns on them. At first, it’s quite difficult because until now, she knows that if she pushes enough you’ll cave in. She has to learn that when you set limits, you mean them. She’ll learn this only by testing them over and over. The key, as he says, is to be consistant so that they won’t keep testing *the same* limit over and over.

And, of course, as Craig points out, showing unconditional love (even when not giving them what they want) is important. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that they’re not doing this with the specific intent to drive you crazy. But as the old saying goes, insanity is hereditary…. you get it from your kids!

Some have responded to your post along the lines of “you should be embracing this”. Of course, you can embrace it at the same time as teaching/encouraging her age-appropriate self-restraint and respect for others’ attention. That’s the key.

In any case, you can rest self-assured that her urges are 100% normal. It’s work to teach/train her proper behavior — work that many parents don’t do (and hence raise brats). But if you can potty train her at 3 months, you can do this. But a Rosemond book can help….
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commented
05/27/2005 12:17 pm
4 year old needs a sibling not another toy.. So start thinking about it!
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commented
05/26/2005 11:32 pm
You guys have lots of good advice!
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05/26/2005 02:36 pm
Tony, my only thoughts are patience. And unconditional love. This is both easier and harder than the points system. By the time Kate is a well-traveled teenager, you may be wishing she were asking you “why?” more often…
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05/26/2005 05:10 am
So she just told you what she is going for. She wants zero points? She gets 25 points per day.

If she wants anything answered, this will take time and therefore cost her a point. When she gets to zero, nothing is answered anymore for that day.

Will make her more clever in asking, seperating questions she already got answered. For her to get used to it, she could start of at 50 points the first two days. Positiv things you want from here increase her points.

If she is what I would suspect from her answer, she will soon find a sneaky way to cheat the system. Do you know about the obfuscated c contest? I think it has a ‘best bending of the rule not allowed next contest’.

Make sure your system is clever enought to increase her awareness and her curiousity. :)

(Oh and if she tears apart the puzzles and solving them by putting them back together, she is like me. I can give you a deeper inside on what is working and what not then ;)))
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commented
05/26/2005 03:21 am
Thanks for the suggestion with the points. That’s rings true and I like the positive message. I tried it this morning with Kate, she says she wants zero points !! hee, I’ll figure out something she really wants .. Funny girl
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05/25/2005 10:53 pm
Duhh!
I used to be worse as a kid! I was a real pain!
So whenever I was being an especially big pain, my parents would give me a jigsaw, or a rubix cube, or a puzzle or whatever … And I used to sit and break my head on them till I cracked it.(My head usually, not the problem :() During which my parents got a lot of peace and quiet.

Of course this may not work on other kids. The only reason it worked on me, was cause I was Dyslexic/ Autistic and also suffer from OCD and ADD.
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05/25/2005 08:12 pm
Disclaimer: I’m not a dad yet. To the first question, all I can say is embrace it! My Aunt told me that ‘why’ was the only word I said from age 3-4. I give her all the credit for my booksmarts and curiosity today, because she took time to answer, or to encourage me to figure things out on my own. I would consume books like they were going out of style. Coffee table photography, atlases(?), encyclopedias, instruction manuals, whatever. When the patience runs low, break out the books or art supplies. Also, if your child takes apart all of her toys to see how they work, celebrate; young hacker in the making.
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05/25/2005 05:42 pm
ha. my parents used that “points” thing with me and my brother. he was good. he got lots of points. i had trouble accumulating them. so when we’d goto toys’r’us for him to claim his 4-6 gifts and i had none, i’d usually convince him his toy wouldn’t be as much fun if i didn’t have one too – cause then we couldn’t play together.

so he learned both how to behave and how to share.

i suppose with only one kid, the sharing aspect might be lost with this approach, but the behaving has a good chance.
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05/25/2005 05:19 pm
Michelle and I have started something new our 4-year son and 6-year daughter. We let them earn points! If the kids are nice to each other, if they eat their dinner, if they clean their rooms, etc — they accumulate points that can be traded in for watching movies, playing video games, etc.

Put a point price on something that you know she wants and let her earn it by behaving. I like this approach because it’s positive (versus taking away toys, sending them to their room, spanking their bottoms) and once a child (or an adult) has to work hard to earn things — they start to respect the things they have.