Daily Archives: 24 January 2017

This Too Shall Pass

Posted on by

What a beautiful sky that we had this afternoon!

 

Look at that beautiful sky! Who would’ve thought that the weather was so harsh in the last couple of days?

I believe that all our hardships and troubles will also end in no time. And everything in our lives will turn out as wonderful as this beautiful sky that amazed us today.

After all, there’s still so much to be thankful for. As I look into my heart, I’m sure that the God who loves me is just there working on all the great things that He has planned for us. And as I look around, there are too many people who love and care for me and my family.

I’m thankful that I’m here when I was diagnosed with GBS. The doctors and nurses in the hospital were excellent. The community health services have been making things easy for me. Since last week, a nurse coordinator, an occupational therapist and a social worker have already come to our house and looked into what I need in order to recover. The physiotherapist is coming on Thursday. The Plunket nurse who’s assigned to our boys have referred us to some agencies that can help us in some ways to make things a little easier for us.

I’m thankful to our families, relatives and friends who have always been offering and giving some help and support to us. Without them, our lives would’ve been too chaotic every single day.

I’m thankful to my husband’s employer who has allowed him to work from home although it is still one hell of a challenge for him. Because of my condition, it has been my husband who’s doing almost everything at home now plus he needs to assist me from time to time. So he’s only able to focus on his work from ten in the evening and he usually goes to sleep at around three in the morning. Then he needs to wake up when our baby wakes up at around six or seven in the morning.

There have been days when my husband and I don’t know anymore how we’re going to survive — physically, mentally, emotionally and financially. Our family has not been receiving the usual income that we used to have for almost a month now. We even considered just going back to Philippines but it’s not the best solution or it might even be the worst decision to make at the moment. We have been seriously considering to make a page in a crowdfunding site like give-a-little so we can at least put our boys in the childcare centre where we are most comfortable with so that my husband can work full time.

Our life now has been really hard but there’s nothing else we can do but to keep hoping that it will get better soon. Yes, just like all the other trials in the past, this too shall pass! God is with us.

To Each His Own

Posted on by

I believe that each pair of mom and dad has a unique set of ideals and preferences for their children — how  they are as parents, how they perceive their children, whom they allow to look after their children, what kind of education their children should have, which school their children should attend.

As for me and my husband, our parenting style has been inspired by this French song:

Les petits poissons, dans l’eau 
nagent, nagent, nagent, nagent, nagent,

Les petits poissons, dans l’eau 
nagent aussi bien que les gros 
Les petits, les gros nagent comme il faut,

Les gros, les petits nagent bien aussi.

In English:

The little fish in water – swim, swim, swim, swim, swim,

The little fish in water – you should swim as well as the big ones.

The little ones, the big ones – swim as well as you should

The big ones, the little ones – swim well too.

As much as possible, we do our best to treat each of our boys how we treat other adults and how we want to be treated as adults.

We encourage our 2-year-old boy to make decisions for himself. As early as now, we let him choose his clothes unless there’s a required attire. We encourage him to “socialise” and play with other people but if he’s not in the mood or if he wants to play on his own then that’s totally fine for as long as he’s still polite and respectful when he refuses to play with others. While we decide on which food he must eat, he can decide on how much food he will have in a meal (only he can feel when he’s already full). While we make him go to bed between 7:30pm and 8pm (and while we strongly wish that he falls asleep right away), we can’t make him sleep unless his body and mind are ready to sleep. We don’t insist on anything unless it is necessary.

For most Asians, I know that our parenting style is very unusual. I remember how, at an early age, I was not just being read to but I was already being taught how to read. I can still picture the letters and remember the smell of the Abakada book that I had when I was around 2 or 3 years old. Yes, I have an idea of how young I was then because I remember that it was Mama who was with me at that moment and I started living with my late grandma before I turned 4. At 4, I was already going to a kindergarten where we were asked to write letters, words and even our full names (mine has a total of 29 letters so I’d rather write all the letters of the alphabet). We were already taught how to count and write the numbers. We had quizzes and long tests. And as early as that time, I already had a belief that failures would always cause not only shame on me but disappointment on my elders. I felt like I always needed to have a 100% score or at least 90%; otherwise, my elders would feel bad and I would be laughed at by other people.

But as I grew old, I have become more and more aware of which are better and more important than being intelligent and having a “Superior” IQ level. And most of the things in my past have greatly affected how I parent my boys now.

We want them to fully enjoy their childhood as they learn and grow up as good and responsible men. We want them to experience freedom as they learn to balance it with self-control and sense of responsibility. We want them to feel that we trust them as they aim to keep themselves as trustworthy individuals. We want them to trust themselves.

How can we do these? By believing in them and respecting them as much as we believe and respect ourselves.