Category Archives: A father’s POV

Long distance relationships

Posted on 9 March, 2011 | 2 Comments

Caitlin has turned 6 in Nov 2010, Caleb has just turned 3 in January 2011.

Caitlin is of a certain intellect already. We “connect” as we talk about stuff- and we can do that just by sitting down, in the car, at the table, and lately, over the internet on Skype. In fact with this latest medium, we also type messages to each other whilst I coach her on spelling them :)

Caleb however, is not at that level of intellect yet. We don’t “talk” per se- we play together. Though he understands stuff that is being said to him, he is still distracted by physical, tangible, more touch-sensory perception of the world and people around him than about to sit down and talk.

And so, he doesn’t miss me, not as much as his jie-jie does.

This was evident tonight. I got a message on my iPhone’s chat program from Caitlin, asking me to get on Skype to videochat, peppered with emoticons that she has recently taken to giggle at :)

And so we did, like usual, hearing and seeing each other on screen.

While talking to Caitlin and Hot Mummee for a while I saw Caleb in the background of the video chat. HM asked him to come talk to Daddee.

He didn’t want to.

I don’t blame him. There is no fun, at his level of intellect, to talk to Daddee in a window in the computer screen. There is no play involved like how it was with physical-Daddee; like how I’d play with his toys with him, kick the ball around with him, goof around with him.

I have said before that he will grow to not know his Daddee if we don’t hurry along our plans. This is perhaps the first step down that path.

I don’t have much time left.

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Posted in A father's POV, A toddler's POV, Caitlin the heiress, Caleb the heir, The future

Am I doing the right thing for my kids?

Posted on 5 March, 2011 | 1 Comment

It’s no real secret that I am here in Melbourne as the first step in our overall plan to relocate here.

I have studied, lived and worked in Australia before. I grew up in Malaysia, and spent my developing late-teen years here.

In individualistic ways, I am a minority. Having obtained secondary and tertiary education here and having worked on both shores put me a unique position- of outlook, experience, cultural and language backgrounds. These are perhaps the qualities that past immigration policies stressed on when they look at multicultural policies and also during attempts to address the skills shortage and its ageing population, in the competitive (now comparative?) global markets.

But I am not getting into politics here.

I can therefore speak a few languages and Chinese dialects as a result- I always tell people that one of the “given” advantages of an ethnic Chinese growing up in an Asian city is that one would automatically pick up at least one dialect. In KL it is the widely spoken Cantonese, Penang would be the local flavour of Hokkien, Malacca would be Mandarin, etc., without actually needing to attend a vernacular school (but which I did- thanks mum :) In Singapore ethnic kids are required to also take on their respective mother-tongue as a language subject, on top of English.

But as you have rightly guessed, I am now wondering what my children will be like when they are growing up here, eventually.

In a lot of ways, I don’t want them to be “typical”. Not using myself as a model, I do wish for them to be upstanding unique citizens. I know all parents want these for their kids too, but if you take me and HM in this context- we are different in the local context; and I am looking at this in an optimistic light.

But what about the kids? They are still young, and will still be when they move here and be just another “product” of the local system.

Of course, this is almost-literally two sides of the same coin: They too would be a product of that system over there.

So then we come back to the original question: Am I doing the right thing for the kids? Am I doing this for selfish reasons of my own preference for wanting to live here, and thus “dragging” them along without the maturity and knowledge to offer their own opinions and preference too?

At this stage I can only offer that what will shape them to be un-typical would be our methods and values in raising them in the local environment. Yes I am generalising here, but I would wonder how many (“young”? ;) parents out there have the kinds of background that HM and I have? A few, but not many, I would think.

And if I sound arrogant, I am not. I am looking out for my kids given what tools I have for this job.

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Posted in A father's POV, Education, Just saying, life skills, Parenting musing, The future

Updates..

Posted on 4 March, 2011 | 1 Comment

When I was home my kids would be all over my iPhone for the games. I have blogged before about how Caitlin plays a particular zoo management game; and Caleb too would have a few of his favourites.

Games, or apps for that matter, usually get updated by the developers. Either to add in new features, bug fixes, to be more updated; in particular with games, new scenes or characters would be added. With the zoo game that Caitlin plays, I have seen new animals and rangers being added when they are updated.

So now that I am away from home I have removed most of the games that were on the iPhone. For that matter I have also removed some of the security features- there were a few times when Caleb had unintentionally deleted my apps and info; he didn’t know better, of course.

So now when I check for updates of my apps, some of these installed games would indicate that there are updates available.

I don’t update them now.

And I kinda feel guilty, and sad.

Guilty because, even though they are games- I only install educational games or at least non-violent games; they do teach something to the kids. Hand-eye coordination, math games, basic strategies (the zoo management game), or simply interacting with “tools” that will become even bigger parts of their adult lives compared to us now. Guilty because I have taken away this opportunity/”toy” away from them.

And sad. I miss them.

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Posted in A father's POV, Caitlin the heiress, Caleb the heir, Ergonomics, The future

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Dreaming my dreams of you..

Posted on 27 February, 2011 | 1 Comment

Had a weird dream last night. Wonder if it is my subconscious expressing my not-so-hidden concerns.

In my dream I could recall real-life memories of skyping with my kids. I could recall the blurry image of them in the chat window, how I could still make out Caitlin’s missing two front teeth.

Then, still in that dream and with that “knowledge” or memory, I approached the Caitlin in my dream.

She was already a grown teenager, my height, bearing a full set of adult teeth. She was also dressed in her school uniform. She didn’t speak, just smiled lots.

Typical of my dreams (that I could at least remember) I was running around a lot, asking what’s-this/what’s-going-on questions. Particularly (mainly because I didn’t see anyone else) asking Hot Mummee this. She nonchalantly ignored me/my questions, went about her usual staring at her laptop. I recall I kept saying “But she was always only this tall”, holding my hand to my sternum, palm down. In the dream I even asked HM if Caitlin had even gone through puberty yet.

Cut to another scene; you know how dreams are.

There was me, the current-sized Caleb, and one other character in the foreground. We were near an open window.

Caleb proceeded to swiftly walk-climb to the open window, and fell out!

I peered out over the ledge; it was only a ground floor window, and he was faced down in a drain.

Cut to the next scene I was already outside. I picked him up, and sat him on the ledge of a flowerbox wall next to the drain. He was sobbing quietly. “Where ouch-ouch?” I asked, brushing dirt off his body. He points to a few joints here and there.

Then I woke up.

They say you can really only remember the last dream you had just before waking, forgetting the earlier dreams you have had from your whole sleep.

I think there are obvious underlying themes here, in my current conscious state of mind.. :-/

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Posted in A father's POV, Ergonomics, Just saying, Parenting musing, The future

Will the gifts be cherished?

Posted on 23 February, 2011 | 1 Comment

You are walking around window shopping and you see something you like.

And you thought Hmm I think my kid will like it too.

So you buy it. You bring it home to your kid(s). You give it to them. They go “WAAaah! Thank you Daddee” and proceed to play with it not the way you’d like it to be!

I have had toys, stationaries, cards, even my own toys, not played with “properly” (“properly” in this context is of course relative. What’s a little crashing of the remote helicopter, dirtying of a pair of perfectly white shoes, pressing too hard of the new colour pencils, or even creasing of a nicely made origami??)

I have come to accept that, however much you like the item yourself, and thought your kids might like it too, you have to “surrender” to the fact that they may not think the items is as great as you do, and not cherish or look after it as well as you might yourself!

I have seen the gifts that my parents bring for them after their trip overseas. My mum has bought Caitlin kiddie handbags before. Not that Caitlin trashes them- she does use them and store things in them and carry them around. But after a while, new broom sweeps clean, something new and better comes along and she forgets about this new item.

After giving this some thought, I should make it a point to highlight to them the effort that people have taken, to pick out the gift after giving the kids some consideration (that people are thoughtful of them), the money involved in buying it, and the whole idea of not wasting things.

.. Cos I have just bought them something too ;)

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Posted in A father's POV, Just saying, life skills, Parenting musing, Parenting rules

School and bullies, just saying.

Posted on 21 February, 2011 | Leave a comment

So the time will come when my 2 kids will be moving to Australia too- starting at a new school, and starting school, respectively.

Especially for Caitlin, she will have to readjust to another new school, after having completed the last 3 years in pre-school to start primary schooling this past January- at a new school, new friends, new syllabus- new everything. When she comes, she will be the new kid in an environment where her peers are no longer unfamiliar like newbies anymore.

I just hope that that will be the only thing she will have to cope with.

I recall during my first year in boarding school in Australia, albeit I was already 15; there was a senior who was, for some reason, watering the lawn outside the dorm. I was walking in his direction to go in. He thought it was funny to raise and aim the hose at me. All I could do was shout “STOP IT”. Through the spray I think I saw him laughing. It didn’t last long- he decided to stop. I didn’t know what to do, could do. I just continued on my way.

There was another time when a girl-classmate did the slanty-eyed thing on her temples and thought it was funny uttering “Look I can’t see through my eyes” to the other schoolmates; who didn’t think it was funny. I Just ignored her. I think she got expelled- she was of that character anyway.

Incidentally, a year after that, a genuine friend actually asked me how I really do see through these eyes! I appreciated his honesty, but I guess he needed a(nother) lesson in eye physiology and the physics of light :) I don’t think I have small eyes anyway!

So when my kids come, I just hope that adjusting to the new school will be all they need to worry about. I would tend to think that between my time in the mid-80′s to now, kids today are more “multi-cultured” and that if any bullying it wouldn’t be race-based.

That they would only need to find out things that are idiosyncratic to that school. Hmm I used a big word correctly.

It’s quite cool that local schools are starting programs such as this. This article reminded me of what Annie Fox has been writing about bullying. We are not affiliated; I follow her on twitter because she talks about parenting on a professional basis.

I think programs like this is also double-edged in that they probably make a leader out of the older child. The whole “taking care of the new/weak(?)”

Just saying.

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Posted in A father's POV, Education, Just saying, life skills, Parenting musing

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A dog in the family..

Posted on 18 February, 2011 | 2 Comments

So I was watching Marley and Me which was on TV tonight.

I hadn’t watched it before, and it was already running when I got out of the shower. SPOILER WARNING: I am going to talk about the ending of the movie below.

I have kinda always had a dog in my life. When my older brother did well in his mid-high school exams, our dad honoured his promise of a reward with an Alsation pup. I would have been around 8 then.

He was a great dog. I gotta admit we weren’t the most “mature” in our methods of disciplining him, but we did give him a home, played with him, trained him. In return he was obedient and loyal. The only time he wasn’t obedient was when he needed to satisfy urges to run out of the house compound, and needed lots of coaxing to come home. I believe there was even once when he went out without our knowledge, and was found waiting outside our gate; presumably all satisfied with his outing and thought it was time to go home :)

He was eventually put down. He was about 13 years old, which means he would have been 90 dog-years old. He was just too weak physically as well as with his immunity, and started to develop some skin and ear problems.

It was my brother and I who brought him to the vet. We weren’t strangers to the vet; been taking him there for similar problems already. The vet had told us off a few times of “neglect”, but he also knew that dogs of this breed would be hard to maintain in the tropical climate.

That last visit, when we brought him in, the vet’s tone changed when we agreed that perhaps it was time.

Dog lovers all in the room.

The scene in Marley and Me was very similar. My brother and I just held Alley as he slowly slipped away. I recall I was patting him, uttering “it’s okay” quietly. Stroking his still fluffy mane, comforting him. He had never liked the vet or the clinic, and would put up a fight when the vet came near. He was putting up a fight again when the vet gave the dose, but the fight slowly slipped away too. I hoped he heard my last words too.

The car ride home with my brother was just silence.

I am writing this because of an immediately earlier scene in the movie.

The kids in the movie was saying goodbye to Marley at home, just before he was taken to the vet; when everyone kinda already knew he wouldn’t be returning.

I am writing this because where I am now (alone away from home in a friend’s house) they have a dog; probably not that much smaller than Marley. Harley is a black dog, similar line of the labradors. My friends got him from a pound when he would have been about around 2 years old. They are not sure of his breed either.

In watching that goodbye-at-home scene, I found myself wondering what it would be like if my own family had a dog. The kids would be about the same ages even though I only have two. I believe the kids would grow to love the dog like I did Alley, and would have assumed the dog to (almost) be part of the family. And, how they would react when the dog was dying.

Or how to handle impending death.

This same older brother of mine had/have other dogs since Alley. Shadow, a doberman (by choice due to a shorter coat!) was hit by a car a few years ago, and had to be put down too. Shadow was in his prime; a champion-of-the-class dog who was also of very good temperament. I had followed my older brother to a few of their obedient classes, and had watched him graduate as champ of the class. I recall I was at my inlaws’ having dinner, and broke down when my brother called to tell me the news.

His kids were pretty distraught too.

They now have another doberman, Kaiser, and a beagle Yoshi. Similarly I had followed Kaiser to dog classes; and rest assured we now know how to handle dogs “maturely”, so Kaiser also responds to my calls. My kids see how friendly I am with the dogs, and vice versa. If it weren’t for Hot Mummee around, I would let the kids interact more than just touch their noses. Caleb is the braver of my two kids, venturing to stroke the big black menacing looking dog.

I don’t know if I will eventually also have a dog in my family. I know I wouldn’t let him into the house, but at least whether I’d have one. I know the kids would be inclined to one, just a matter of whether HM would also be okay with it.

Nah, she won’t.

Kaiser the 2nd champion doberman

Yoshi the not-so-trained yapper!

Photos taken from my brother’s collection.

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Posted in A father's POV, Education, life skills, siblings

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