Try Everything

"Close but not too close" is the motto for our children's development.

This is what I learned after reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way for Parents. I bought this book at the Art Gallery of New South Wales last month.

There is hardly a greater gift to us than finding a book with a theme of cultivating a child's creativity. Now that I look back through my way of upbringing my daughter, I realise that I might have intervened too much, inserting my own buried dreams into her path. I wish I could say I follow the wisdom of Julia Cameron. Stated simply, our job is to clear a path for them to discover their own means of self-expression.

As parents, it falls to us to encourage and praise the child's efforts - and not much else. The child does the rest.

What could be better for Jasmine, we thought, than a "creativity corner" in our home? That's what we did. A corner with assorted items for inspiration - toilet-paper rolls, glue, tapes, beads, boxes, yarn ... And so, she makes her (almost) daily pilgrimage to that corner to begin her projects. As I write this, she has just created a smartphone keyboard out of used cardboard, with the confident smile of Steve Jobs on her face. "Objets d'art," I told her.

Book

Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, once wrote, "Never go anywhere without a book under you arm."

How true. So many of us spend time idling on commute time and standing in line. As a matter of fact, the U.S. News and World Report reported that, over the course of our lifetime, we will spend five years standing in line. I repeat, five years in a lifetime.

Is idling a must? Not necessarily. Is the waiting a waste of time? Probably not. Is it an opportunity to take a break? Who knows? But one thing is certain: I enjoy reading at the same time of waiting in line. I cannot tell you how many books I have finished on the road, and how many of them I wouldn't have been able to cover if I confine my reading habit to that in a study or library.

To this day I keep the habit of carrying a book wherever I go. In the words of John Dryden, "We first make our habits and then our habits make us."

Upstairs

The most acclaimed teaching of Daniel J. Siegel is about mindfulness. I bought his book The Whole-Brain Child in Melbourne nearly half year ago, and read about children's ability to stop and think instead of hurting someone with their words.

In more straightforward lingo: our primitive downstairs brain is less sophisticated than the upstairs brain, but there is nothing wrong with using the downstairs brain and feeling upset. At times, of course, we need the upstairs brain to tame the downstairs tantrum. Upstairs brain is the yang to the downstairs brain's yin. According to Siegel, a well-integrated brain circuit means a timely flipping the lid from downstairs to upstairs brain, even in small children. Tonight, I noticed something magical happening to this flip in my six-year-old child.

Jasmine needed a haircut. The trouble, for novice like my wife, is that what is meant to be a trim can turn into a scream (in front of the mirror). My daughter's new hairstyle didn't quite turn out as she was expecting. Yup, it has a Japanese name “age-otori” - the feeling of looking worse after a haircut. We could see her downstairs brain running amok. "Ah, I'm afraid my classmates won't recognize me when the new school term starts tomorrow."

"Huh?"

"Seriously, mum, I don't want to go to school like this."

Long silence.

I thought my wife couldn't have been more upset. I felt the need to give my daughter's new haircut a compliment, the voice inside telling me to do something - and quick. I took a good look at my daughter's hair. Her face turned white, and through tears of frustration, she said, "I'm so sorry, mum, and I shouldn't be that rude. I'm as much as I hate myself, making you feel bad. Sorry, mum."

All this happened before I could step in. I realized that my daughter had already switched to her upstairs brain. Her reaction is, to my eye, an incredible leap forward, and upstairs.

Birds of a Feather

The headache of finding travel buddies is exemplified by the title of an article published in the Lonely Planet: How to travel with friends (and not want to kill them).

When it comes to travel companions, the surest thing you can say is that they're as difficult to find as kidney donors. Well, you will need good matching to avoid rejection.

In case you're wondering whether full-match travel buddy exists on this planet, the answer is that we just connected one during our Sydney visit. Going on holiday on our own - three of us in a nuclear family - worked well during our first half of the trip, but there's no denying that we love the second part more. It's all about meeting Jasmine's old best friend and her sister. They knew each other in primary school, and then her friend's family moved to Malaysia. In an attempt to meet again, we planned the Sydney trip.

Everything went well. The kids met, chatted about this and that, playing till the cows come home - oh, and did I mention their parents were as tired as dead cows by then? When I say "play," I mean playing wildly. And when I say "playing wildly," I don't mean any wild idea - I mean those wildly crazy ideas like forward roll gymnastics exercise, anywhere and anytime, on the road.

The children preferred to shoehorn three of them into the back seat of our car. They snuggled up at night even it's not the comfiest way to sleep in the same bed. It looked as if they had to grab every minute before it's time to bid farewell. During the week together, there wasn't a single day when I didn't hear their clapping game "A Sailor Went to Sea." Ditto for their heartwarming laughter. And their parents' laughter, too.

The holy grail for travel buddies, I think, is being able to find kids with similar temperaments - and similar parents.