We're 1/6th into 2017 -- it's already March y'all -- and I'm finally embarking on my new adventure starting tomorrow! I say adventure because I'm a drama-mama, but really, I'm just exploring a new setting as a speechie and hopefully discovering new facets of myself as a person and a clinician and insya Allah as an expert.
I'm in a good mood,
which means my thoughts are running happily in my head
and need to be put down list-like:
*I was sitting having ice-blended coffee (by my lonesome -- something I find myself increasingly doing as I grow older) and a father-daughter pair sat down next to me. They were Caucasian (seriously, angmohs in Tampines are no longer a rarity). I couldn't help but generally be kaypoh, discreetly, of course. What struck me was not so much what was said, but how things were said. Father talked to Daughter like he would an adult, sharing thoughts and discussing points -- which means Daughter did not hold back in asking questions and bringing up topics; the one I remember her asking: "If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?" Father gave it serious thought and said, "Dog." apparently cause dogs are well-loved. (Oh, Father, you are a soft-hearted man.)
The whole exchange just brought to my mind a theme that's been running for months now in my work-life and extra-curricular life. That more than anything else, one's language environment, and specifically the parent-talk one receives as a child, determine's one's future success. The way parents and adults talk to children is so crucial, so important in the growth of a child, I don't think we can ever over-estimate its impact. To expound on how important would require several lectures or a book, to which I direct you to my current non-fiction read: Thirty Million Words by Dana Suskind.
This Father-Daughter exchange was perfect. We need more Fathers like this so that we hopefully will have more awesome women in the future. And I wondered, why don't Asian fathers do more of this with their children? I know I'm stereotyping and I'm sure there are Singaporean dads who talk with their sons and daughters in this manner -- but the general sentiment and impression I feel about parenting here is: DO DO DO, DON'T DON'T DON'T. Directive, instructive, prohibitive, if they even talk at all. It takes a very strong-willed child to bypass this and learn to be strong, independent, opinionated, and confident about leading their own lives as they grow up.
My own dad was more a jokester; a fun, benign figure we loved, teasing us as we grew up, who left it to my tiger mum to make sure we were in line with academic demands. Which means that I largely didn't grow up with thoughtful and fruitful conversations. My mum is an SJ and (I am biased but yes) one does not generally get thoughtful conversations from them. Life was structured and orderly. We were fed well, slept well, sheltered, and protected. Only in my later teens when somehow I'd miraculously grown an independent mind (I'm thinking now it might be my voracious reading and my RG background that did this) that I'd started to argue or bring topics up with my dad. Daddy, you should have talked to me more as a child.
*But failing a good language environment, READING is the perfect substitute once literacy is achieved. I will vouch for the power of reading till the day I die. Sometimes, the quality of a person who reads versus one who doesn't is almost tangible on the first meeting -- it's about nuance, it's about perspective, it's about depth of thought. Please everyone, read for your own good. It's very, very hard to develop these qualities otherwise.
*Honesty is always the best policy.
I keep returning to this. Because the longer I live, the more I see that presenting someone with your truth is according them the highest respect. When you're truthful with someone, you're telling them, I trust you, I believe you will understand my perspective, I believe you and I are both mature and intelligent enough to come to a compromise if not an agreement. True enemies are truthful and open with each other, it borders on a strange friendship -- classic fictional example: Professor X and Magneto.
We all gravitate to persons who are real, genuine, and sincere.
*But to be sincere and truthful requires courage. The prerequisite quality for many other qualities.
Pray for courage, S. Today, and every day.
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