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Tug of war


She’s on the high chair, eating mashed potatoes and she throws her toy from the chair for the hundredth time? How do you react? Do you scold her for dropping it? (She’ll stop eating). Do you take away the toy? (She’ll stop eating). Do you pick it up for her yet again? At least she’ll eat.


Person 1: Does your baby sleep throughout the night?
Me: Almost. She wakes up maybe a couple of times, but she’s back to sleep in no time
Person 1: You know you could train her to sleep throughout.


Person 2: Has she started going to pre-school yet?
Me: Nope
Person 2: She could, and then your wife can start working. You could hire help for the rest of the time. There’s also day care.

Parenting is a constant tug of war in your own mind. How strict should I be? When should she go to school? How much time away from parents would be okay? How much can we pamper her without spoiling her? People who give advice don’t help much either. When there are no right or wrong answers, you tend to rely on instincts. The books on the subject don’t always agree. To add to it, when you think about it, you were probably not raised by the book yourself.

My fear is that if we go wrong, “honey I tried my best”, might be a lame answer. On the other hand, always thinking like this is lame way to enjoy parenting. You may have handled expensive machinery or run a billion dollar business, but this is by far the most valuable thing you’ll ever be responsible for. There’s no instruction manual or educational course for it. Past data shows that a lot of kids grow up as wonderful human beings while a lot of other kids turn out to be criminals or politicians.

If raising a kid doesn’t teach you to trust your instincts, nothing will.

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About the Blog

I became a father on 17th April 2010. Even though I was prepared for being a dad, I was not the least bit prepared for what it meant to be a dad. This blog is about some of the pleasing, joyful, horrid, wonderful and annoying realisations that I've had as a parent of a beautiful baby girl.

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