Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow | 2011

We all know that kids grow up eventually. There is pretty much nothing that can be done to stop the cycle. And there will be a time that our kids will ask for their independence in full. We get hints of it in the childhood years, and I'm sure I'll be hearing more about it when Jakjak hits puberty. But as a parent, how much independence would a child actually need?

Personally, I let Jakjak do pretty much a lot of things that kids actually do. On the back of that, there are rules and guidelines that we have set for him to follow (no violence, no lies, no porn, etc.). He's doing pretty good at it, and so are we (as best as we know). We call this, trust. We believe that we should give guidance for Jakjak during his formation years. We believe that we are helping him build his character, his morals, his spirituallity. And we believe that we should be doing this without being too restrictive or too strict. We opted to have a democratic family relationship. If happiness is the only indication of success, then we can all say that we are happy.


But happiness is not the only measure of success (in bringing up children anyway). It is, by our calculation though, a big factor but not the only factor. Happiness can come from a lot of things. But from where I stand, it's coming from contentment, peace of mind, harmony and a little bit of financial freedom. It's taking effort, it's not easy. But with everybody contributing one way or the other, it looks like it's going to be a good journey ahead.