Over the weekend, I was helping out at a friend’s wedding and happened to chat with her photographer, Jim Liaw of Jim Liaw Photography fame. If you have not already heard of Jim and his wife Ning, they are professional wedding photographers who have won many awards internationally and come highly recommended for their services. Their work of art is truly amazing and I was glad to just watch them in action, paying attention to even the smallest details.
Anyway, throughout the wedding we had some pockets of time where we chatted about camera, photography and even parenting tips. Jim is great with all these tips and I learned something new and valueable from him.
Jim encouraged us to train our boy in making decisions from an early start. The way to do this is to let him make his own choices. If we were to feed him a fruit, let him decide which it will be, whether an apple or a pear. If he wants a bedtime story, let him choose the book. This way, he starts making up his mind from young and he will get use to doing this as he goes along. This method was apparently adopted from the corporate world of the Germans who believe in training leaders, not managers. I like this idea, because in today’s world, I find that many people aren’t good decision makers in life, be it about their personal life or work.
The very next day, we put Jim’s advise into practise. We were walking in a mall and baby decided to head todays a toy shop (he was walking on his own two feet and turned to walk into the toy shop!). He was captivated by some soft toys that came in variations of a giraffe, tiger, lion and monkey. We picked one of each and placed it before him. Then we asked him which one he wanted. Without any hesitation, he happily pointed at the monkey. And so that’s what we bought him.
I’m very glad that we actually involved him in choosing the toy because if we did not put him up to decide, I would’ve decided on his behalf and I would have bought him the giraffe without knowing that the monkey is his preferred choice. And if I did that, I wouldn’t have seen how much he loves the monkey, hugging it to bed so tightly and possessively.
This step of letting the child make his own decision seems to simple and straight-forward, and yet we as parents have missed it. Most of the time, we feel that our little boy is “too young” to know what he wants but I think he has proven us wrong. He has time and again showed us what he wants but we just didn’t notice it. When he wanted to be carried instead of being seated in his walker, that was a conscious decision. Now, when he prefers to walk than to be carried is also another decision. Why didn’t we realise this?
In any case, it’s never too late to start and we’re glad we’ve been shown the way to improve ourselves as parents to nurture our little one.
