Growing Up With Our Daughter: Our Parenting Practices
[A note from Jessica] I won the parent lottery with my mom and dad. The way that they raised me was very different from most other Asian parents. Their unique philosophy and practices taught me the importance of gratitude, responsibility, independence, and hard work. I owe them so much and am still constantly learning from them. This is a special blog post - a collaboration with my dad Simon Fan. I am glad that he was willing to capture these stories, and I hope that you will find them just as helpful and inspiring as I do (especially those of you who are new parents).
Click here for the original Chinese version.
Written by Simon Fan / Illustrated by Jessica Fan
Today is Mother’s Day. Yesterday, my daughter Jessica called me from Toronto to plan a surprise for her mom. We decided to buy her flowers and celebrate through a video call. When Jessica called today, her mom was delighted! Together we sang a few special songs, including one of our family favourites - “The Story of a Little Town” by famous Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng.
After the celebrations, Jessica and I talked for well over an hour, discussing many topics in-depth such as life philosophy and how to work through challenges. Eventually she asked me about the way her mom and I raised her as a child. She felt that it was an approach that was different from many Chinese parents and it has helped her grow up happily. She then assigned me homework – to write an article about our parenting philosophy since others might find it helpful. The following is my homework:
There is an old Chinese saying: a daughter is a cotton-padded coat to keep her father warm in winter. This describes the close relationship between my daughter and I well, formed over many years of positive and beneficial interactions during her upbringing. I am happy to share some of our personal parenting stories and practices developed over those years.
Being new parents: happiness and anxiety
Our daughter Jessica was born prematurely in a hospital in Edmonton by a C-section. She weighed only 6 pounds and 11 ounces. When I first saw her, she lay inside an incubator heated by infrared light. She looked reddish, tiny, and fragile. Upon seeing her, I had very mixed feelings: excited but nervous. Is this little one my daughter? Are we able to raise her?
Five days later, I picked up my wife and daughter using my old car bought for $1205. Not long after we returned to our student resident, we experienced our first emergency. Something blocked our daughter’s throat and she had trouble breathing! In a rush, I used my mouth to suck the object out and fortunately air began to flow again. To be cautious, we went to the emergency room that night to make sure that she was okay.
Growing up with our daughter
With the arrival of our daughter, our lives changed dramatically. Because my wife wasn’t able to produce enough milk for breast-feeding, we had to take turns to prepare formula to feed our daughter day and night. Financially, with the $1080 graduate assistant pay per month from my department, we had to pay for rent, tuition, and all the expenditures for a family of three. Although life was hard, our daughter still brought great happiness to our family. To make ends meet, we moved out of our student resident when Jessica was 5 months old. Our new home was a very old apartment in Chinatown. We worked as caretakers to reduce the rent. At the same time, we delivered fliers for Canada Post to make a little more money. At the age of two, our daughter could already help us prepare and deliver fliers. During these years, our daughter did not feel life was that hard and grew up happily. In fact, we grew up together with our daughter.
Being common people
Although we may earn a Master’s or a Ph.D academically, we always think of ourselves as common people. As common people, we must work hard to make a living and appreciate what we have. Half-jokingly, we would say to our daughter, “For the emperor of ancient China, if you want to eat something, it is made available to you; but for common people, whatever is available to you, you must eat. Since we are common people, this applies to us.” Our daughter was quite accepting of this idea.
One time when our family went shopping, we discovered that our daughter had thrown a few extra items in the shopping cart. We asked her why she picked up these items, and she replied with a smile, “Whatever is available to you, you must buy!”
Encouraging our daughter to manage herself
When our daughter reached school age, she became quite busy with a lot of activities: doing homework, practicing piano, learning drawing, attending Chinese school, watching TV, etc. Talking about watching TV, some parents might think it would interfere with their children’s study and try to prevent them from watching TV. We decided to take a different approach. We believed that some of the TV programs could help our daughter learn English and gain other useful knowledge. The programs that our daughter enjoyed the most included Mr. Dress-up, Under the Umbrella Tree, Mr. Rogers, and Mother Goose. To accommodate our daughter, we subscribed to full cable with all the programs she enjoyed.
The question was how to balance the different activities. Our solution was to let our daughter manage herself. With our help, she made a schedule, put in on the wall, and followed it strictly herself. This way, we avoided the potential conflict of trying to control her and she learned the skill of self-control. We built mutual trust and everybody was happy in the family.
The Two-Bag Theory
Building up self-control and self-management is a gradual process. Obviously, a newborn cannot do self-management, so we invented the Two-Bag Theory.
We can imagine that there are two bags. One bag is on the parents’ side and the other on the child’s side. All the work to do can be imagined as balls in the bags. For a newborn, all the balls will be on the bag of the parents’ side, and hence the parents will be quite busy with a heavy burden. As the child grows up, some balls will be gradually transferred to the child’s bag. When is the best time to transfer the balls? Birthday!
After each birthday, we would sit down with our daughter and check which balls could be transferred to her bag. This practice applied to all sorts of work, be it as small as putting on clothes, or as big as a life plan. For example, when our daughter was young, I would comb her hair every day before sending her to school since her hands were too small. After one birthday, I found that her hands were big enough to hold her hair and this ball was then transferred to her bag. This way, when our daughter went to high school, almost all the balls were in her bag and we as parents only needed to serve as her chauffeur.
Connecting to our Cultural Heritage
We hoped that our daughter would be able to connect with her Chinese heritage even though she was growing up in Canada. In addition to placing her in weekend Chinese language school, we did our best to create a bilingual micro-climate at home. We introduced her to Chinese poetry and stories from a young age and took time to help her understand the meaning behind them. This had a deep impact on our daughter and over the years, she developed her own interest in Chinese culture. She would trade Chinese dramas with her friends and learn Chinese songs at karaoke. When she was older, she even went to China for several months to improve her language skills and support a professor at a university there.
We are happy that she has learned to speak Mandarin fluently and has so much interest in our culture. It has allowed her to be much closer with her relatives in China and has also opened up many wonderful opportunities for her.
Going to university
After graduating from high school, our daughter went to university to study engineering. From selecting the university to selecting the specialty, she made all the decisions herself. All we did was to encourage her to go to a different city to attend university so that she could learn to be more independent.
Two years later, she realized that what she studied was not what she wanted. To be honest, I feel that it is very hard and unfair for a high school graduate to know what to do for the rest of her life and make the correct decision right at the first shot.
Searching the internet during the summer, our daughter found a program that she was truly interested in - user experience design! After finding what she wanted, she immediately contacted that university and got accepted. When she wanted to switch universities, we first thought that it was a pity to quit the first program half-way and tried to convince her to finish the first degree and then make the change. She convinced us by saying that it would be more waste that she spent another two years doing something she did not like. Since she was so determined, we decided to support her, with only one condition of course: no more switching before finishing the degree!
Exploring different ventures
After switching to the new university and getting used to studying design, our daughter decided to add a another major to her study: business administration. In her last 8 months of study, she was accepted into a startup accelerator where she was provided generous support from experienced entrepreneurs to start a new business. After graduation, our daughter found internships at Google and Adaptive Path (a design company in San Francisco). She then went to Tsinghua University for half a year to support a professor on a sustainable agriculture project. In a few short years, our daughter explored all sorts of opportunities and was involved in creating three companies. Throughout her adventures, we chose to whole-heartedly support her. We think that young people should be encouraged to try many things so that they will eventually find what they really want.
Now our daughter is working in a global consulting company, doing something she really enjoys and helping better the lives of many people. Her rich experiences in different areas have proven to be very helpful in all her projects.
The role of parents
Parents play an irreplaceable role in the life a child. For us, besides providing the necessary living conditions, it is much more important to provide a happy and cozy environment for the child to grow within. We are not only our daughter’s parents, but also her reliable friends. Sometimes, my daughter will call me just to say hello. She will say something like: “I am now happy and I’m calling just to let you know!” How wonderful to get such a call from my loving daughter!
Other times, my daughter will call me and talk for a few hours, discussing some tough issues in depth. To my daughter, I often say something like this: “I would love to be your friend for life and I can be your free advisor for life.” In return, my daughter trusts me deeply and this is very moving to me. I also say to my daughter: “You may treat me like the help button on your computer. Whenever you need my help, just click it and I will jump out to help you. If you do not need me, I will not jump out and ask if you need any help!”
Above are some of our family’s stories and practices. Admittedly, we do not have anything extraordinary to show off to the world, yet we successfully cultivated a healthy relationship with our daughter who turned out to be warm-hearted, ever-ready to help other people, down-to-earth, healthy, and happy. We are glad to share this article with parents who have similar values.
On healing in the darkness