Edward

If you’d asked me a few years ago, whether we could successfully play hide and seek in our home (apartment, unit, whatever you want to call it), I would’ve probably laughed and said “No way”. Why? Well, let’s see. We live in a small 3 bedroom place. Three bedrooms, lounge/TV room, and kitchen. And that’s it. Well, okay there are sperate bathroom and toilet, but that really is it.

So how could we play hide and seek and actually have fun doing it? Where would we hide? Surely finding anyone, even a 5 year old, would be easy, and the game would quickly be over. read more

The topic of overweight children and in particular obesity, recently came up when my son, Jay, came home and told us that one of his classmates is only as couple of kilograms lighter than me. Now to put this in perspective, I’m an average height adult male (just under 6 feet tall) and at the high end of the average weight range for my height. The boy on the other hand is around 7 or 8 years old. I haven’t done the math but I reckon he’d be classified as obese.

The thing is, here in Singapore they have a system set up to help deal with weight problems in children. They didn’t do this in Australia when I was a boy, but hopefully they’re doing something similar now. And I’m pretty sure there are other countries that do have similar programs to Singapore, especially with the obesity problems being faced in many countries these days. read more

I’ve been told that around 5% of children will develop a stutter that lasts more than 6 months. This is what happened to my son, Jay. To be completely frank, I’ll admit that I don’t recall when he started to stutter, but I can tell you that by the end of his first year of school it had been there for more than 6 months. In fact he had been stuttering for more than a year.

Being a loving father who believes his son is perfect in every way (even after threatening to sell him on ebay), I was in a little bit of denial as to whether it was really a problem. Fortunately (for Jay if not for me) my wife was more believing and convinced me that we should take him to a speech therapist to at least have him checked and see what our options were. read more

I’m sure that in this day and age we’ve all seen, or at least heard about, the prank videos on YouTube. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Jay decided to prank me, his father and best friend.

Before we get to the pranks though I just want to point out that I haven’t let my son watch the prank videos that you’re probably thinking of. No, the prank videos he’s seen are the ones where the prank occurs in the world of minecraft. On servers where several people play together it’s quite common for the gamers to prank each other, usually in non-violent ways like covering an entire area with slime blocks, or moving their entire house to a different place. read more

Recently SO (my wife) and I were talking about her nieces and nephews (she has 10 of them) and I was reminded of an incident that occurred shortly after we moved to Jakarta. For a little background, SO and I met and got married in Australia while she was studying there, and then moved to Indonesia shortly after.

Anyway, back to the story. H (name withheld to avoid embarrassment for H and any possible harm he may do me if he reads this) is now in his late teens and studying at university, but at the time he was around 2 or 3 years old. read more

One of the questions we need to answer when we adopt a child is whether or not you should tell your child they’re adopted. Each parent will answer this in their own way, deciding what’s important to them and how they feel about it. I don’t think it affects the way we treat our children, I know for myself I love Jay as much as if he was my own. But it will affect the child in some way or another.

If you adopt a child from a different country, or more specifically of a different race, the answer (I think?) is obvious. You wouldn’t fool anyone for long and the child would put it together faster than the latest Lego set. For children the same or similar to the parents though, it’s a question that needs to be asked. For my family, I’m white, SO (my wife)is Chinese, and Jay is Javanese, so we look as though he may be our biological son and many people actually think he is. read more

It seems an apt time, after last week’s post, to talk about how my son got me addicted to Minecraft. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, even if you don’t play, it’s one of the most popular games around now, being available on pretty much every electronic gaming device out there (eg. PC, MAC, Linux, Android, Apple IOS, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox360, Xboxone, and even the WiiU).

Like so many others though, I’d never really considered playing it. It wasn’t the sort of game I’d played in the past, and what I’d seen of it (it’s just big square blocks) it didn’t look at all interesting. And so, when Jay first asked me to get it for him, I brushed him off saying I’d think about it. Which in Daddy Speak means “we’re not getting it”, and I tried to dissuade him from wanting it whilst I was “thinking about it”. read more

Disappointment is one of those things that we all go through as a child. Whether it be a small thing or large, we’ve all been there and gone through it. As an adult though we see it in a different way. A lot of the time though we’ll brush it off as something insignificant, but for the child it could be devastating. And when you’re close to your child seeing the look on their faces, as the lips tremble and the eyes well up, it can break your heart.

One such occasion happened to my son Jay just this last week. read more

Our family is what one may call multicultural, my wife (SO) is ethnically Chinese, our son is Javanese, and I’m a plain old regular white guy. On a day to day basis these labels are irrelevant to us, we are a family and that’s all that really matters.

Occasionally though something comes up to remind us that we are, in some ways different to each other.

One such occasion came up a few months ago when SO was dying her hair. Being Chinese her hair is, of course, black, but she’s starting to get a few grey (white?) hairs coming through. As such she’s taken to dying her hair every few months. read more

This is a question I think most parents ask themselves at one time or another, especially in what we call the electronic age. What effect does early exposure to these gadgets have on a developing mind? Does it prevent an active lifestyle? Should our kids spend more time running around outside playing with their friends like we did? Or do the benefits that using these things early in life bring outweigh the negatives?

I’ve owned and played with computers for almost 30 years now. I had a Playstation 1, and Playstation 2 and now have both a Playstation 3 and Playstation 4. Both SO (my wife) and I both have smart phones and our household has 3 iPads, and iPad 1, iPad 2 and iPad Air 2. read more