This is the 2nd Father’s Day for me as an entry-level junior human dad. Looking back on this 1+ year, I’ve come to realization that our daughter has effectively taught me more things than we have her, if I ever really taught her anything at all(since I don’t know even where to start to “teach” a baby that doesn’t speak human language at all, so I couldn’t really take much credit in all the 100 new skills she picked up).

Here are the things that I find most impressive by observing her growth. Among them, some I have known for a long time but only at a literal & superficial level. The rest are things I’ve never thought about at all.

1. Learning has to be messy

If you’ve ever witnessed a murder crime scene of baby foods, you know what am talking about. That happens with every new skills: before being able to turn herself over, her hands used to wake her up by slapping on her face during sleeps; before being able to pick up food and correctly “eat”, she would smash and smear them in all the places other than her own mouth; before being able to say even simple things like mama, she would scream at max volume that would choke her from time to time…and the list goes on.

But eventually she always managed to push through and master the new skill, on top of all the messes she created. Imagine if we didn’t allow all the messiness to happen, she would definitely pick up these skills a lot later, if ever. That got me thinking: sometimes, I was so concerned about creating things that are ugly, messy, dysfunctional, unpresentable during the process of learning a new thing, until deadline pushes me over this embarrassment(of nothing, really) and actually got my hands dirty. This is utterly stupid. Learning is supposed to be chaotic, messy, iterative before it’s no longer called “learning” again.

2. Emotion is a mandatory pre-requisite to enter problem solving

Due to (non-critical) issues my very own upbringing and education system at the time and all other reasons, I came to this realization very, very late, with the help of a great therapist. I have always took it as a sign of maturity to jump right into constructive problem solving and not letting my emotions getting the better of me. In a professional setting, it might be true(only partially). While in an intimate relationship, I’ve hit this wall a thousand times when I failed to comprehend how important emotion is.

As an infant, my daughter spelled it out for me – for everything she was capable of doing, she would fail dramatically if her emotion is not attended to. Hopefully this isn’t too little too late, and I still have the chance to do a decent enough job for the family so that they know I could be a good companion in getting them back to their best form instead of handling every “problem” for them and dwell in self-appreciation.

3. The biggest frustrations are self-inflicted

Out of all those emotional breakdowns, “growth sprout” is the common type where she got super fussy over a period of time, before she took a big leap in acquiring new skills. This happened during the last few days before she was able to flip over/control hands/sit/craw/stand/walk/sleep through the night, etc.

I really wish I could read her mind(then the first year would be 10 levels of difficulty down). On this topic though, I have 90% confidence that she was angry towards herself in not being able to to what she deemed capable of. Reflecting on myself, every time I charted some great plans for myself and only to find myself with a long list of unchecked boxes in the end, I became Mr. Grumpy even when other things have been going rather well.

4. Characters are built, not fixed at born

This is not a lesson taught in its final form, more like a thought I hold for now against the common belief where we couldn’t do much with our naturally set personalities. I do think we are born with certain characters and traits, but in the end the person we become could be very different – this is from talking to a handful close friend & family members about how they were at the beginning vs. who they are today. Some stayed roughly the same, some became the exact opposite, most others have some changes here and there, due to environment, people, incidents, etc.

In my daughter’s case, she made it loud & clear(literally) at very day she was born that she will not falter before she gets what she wanted. Polished well, this trait will be the flame that fuels her through all the difficulties to success when others give up; otherwise it’ll be the wall she keeps running into when pivoting of plan provides better alternatives towards the same goal in the grand scheme.

5. “Put on the oxygen mask yourself first before you help your kids”

It’s one of those things you hear very often, so much so that they become a background noise where people don’t take them seriously enough. What people like me didn’t realize is, this actually applies much more generally than life-or-death situation like a mid-air crisis. This is from the observation that for the same thing my daughter does, my reactions(mostly internal gut reactions) would be so different depending on whether I had a great day or going through some real mess at work or for other matter or if it’s the 5th time during a night where I have some important meeting in the early morning.

Luckily I have been able to keep my behaviour consistent at the surface(but I am sure a year later she would be able to tell the difference). This makes exercising self-care even more important. When things look good, we now deliberately refrain from pouring every ounce of our energy into playing with her or make her 4 star day a 5 star one, but rather doing something that “heals” us instead. Then when tough time comes inevitably, I can put no the face of a calm dad like rather than improvising it.

6. If you want to be lazy, be thoroughly lazy

Very likely to be inherited from me, my daughter is born a lazy lady – if there’s help she wouldn’t spare any tiny effort in doing herself. So there are skills she picked up considerably late than usual(like holding her own bottle when drinking milk), especially contrasting against some other areas where her development is way advanced than her peers.

To be clear, I don’t really mind about getting ahead or behind in development, so long as it doesn’t register any major concerns medically. But it’s interesting that being superficially lazy won’t save one much time and effort. Eventually she will need to spend the time and effort to learn those skills when help is not available and the frustration hurdle she needs to overcome will be much larger. When the times come, I have countless stupid story of myself to share on the topic of “proper lazy vs half-ass lazy” with her, and I couldn’t wait.

7. Expectations leads to reactions

If there is one thing I could buy with money during her 1st year, I wouldn’t not hesitate to trade any non-essential spendings for hours of my sleep. Ironically, I think this will be the same for my daughter, though she’s the innocent culprit of all the sleep deprivation in this family. Only lately have we been able to “train” her to sleep on her own, after many trails & errors.

The most important observation I could make is expectation setting. Eventually the key is to make her realize “I am capable to sleep on my own”. But to get there without communicating in human language, it’s about telling her “we are not leaving you” “you don’t really need mid-night milk” “you are capable of doing it” in a gradual manner so that she wouldn’t expect otherwise.

This also echoes with point no.5 above. Often times, we would want others to treat us well when we are out of battery on the emotional capacity, regardless of whether the other side is a baby or a god. This sounds stupid and “duh?!” but is an expectation issue we would often get into.

8. Do not assume

This has been stemmed from my approach to do everything by the book since I have 0 experience raising a kid and I don’t want to f up. Therefore I have a lot of assumptions from various sources about what my daughter would need, be it “X ml of milk per Y hour”, “number of hours for sleep/nap required”, or timetables. Those practices are not useless per se, but they should not trump observation and understanding, even at this age where my daughter isn’t capable yet to clarify with me about what she really wants. After tuning down the rigor and really learn from my wife to read the baby’s thoughts, my good intended offers finally don’t trigger my daughter with furious anger. Phew.

9. Fears are taught, and can be unlearn

When we are young, the things that we fear don’t make much sense, at least to adults. In my daughter’s case, she fears everything new that she hasn’t seen before, including funny things like my belly when I inhale and inflate it. Amongst almost all of those things, she would stop fearing them once she learnt there’s nothing she should be afraid of.

That got me thinking about all the fears I have, and if I think them through they all come from some sources that rationally should not be something I cannot overcome(I don’t have much biological phobia against certain things). Hence “fear is the worst reason not to start doing something” really speaks to me and it’s amongst the top quotes I remind myself constantly.

10. The “growth mindset”

I’ve received training about this topic multiple times, yet I still find myself falling into the “fixed mindset” category when am facing this young human being growing at light speed. For instance, when she was tired but refused to sleep, I used to be able to just carry her in my arm and walk back and forth in my home for about 10mins which would guarantee drowsiness. However, not many weeks after my proud mastery on this technique that would bring us peace, it suddenly stopped working. In fact, quite on the contrary, it would make her 10x fussier if I stubbornly insist in trying again and again.

Same thing happened with feeding, weekend ritual, things to play, etc., where she kicked me out of whatever parenting comfortable zone time after time. Thanks to that I now have a more developed mental sensor regarding things that will change inevitably no matter I like it or not, and when it comes to growth it’s definitely a good thing. Also this applies to literally everything and everyone I interface with, myself included.

11. Be present

To my daughter, there is no concept of chronology in terms of what happened 2 mins ago or what will happen in 1 minute, because she’s still developing her sense of time. This is tough for parents because I cannot yet say things like “remember X so Y” or even simpler things like “I will come back in 10 seconds to grab a new tissue box, don’t cry as if I will leave you for good!” To her though, it’s more of a blessing because she would throw whatever that has annoyed her out of the window upon the next distraction, and laugh as hard as she can as if she just woke up for the day.

It’s undoubtedly important to learn from the past and plan for the future as adults, but my ability to enjoy the present has been greatly overshadowed by my regrets and paranoia(even though for good reasons for the majority). It’s a good time to practice this muscle again and learn from the best(no sarcasm at all).

12. First time is always tough

The first year on a new role is tough for everyone, it’s the same for every one here in the family, our daughter and pets included. This is just a simple reminder that new changes and mastery takes time, effort, failures, blood, sweat, tears. There is no easy way out, at least no easy way that would not end up costing you much more like a loan scam. But in the end it’s all worth it when you look back. So be mentally prepared and give yourself a pat on the shoulder when you’re half way there.

13. Control(in relationship) is impossible, and boring

First time I had this epiphany was more than 10 years ago, when we just adopted our dog and there were certain misbehavior(as a result of miserable life prior to the adoption) we would really like some “correction” on. The temptation to use intimidation, power and punishment reinforcement intensified rapidly as my patience ran out. Luckily my guilty flooded in time before I took any regrettable action back then, followed by the acceptance of the fact that she might never change to “normal” because of what had happened to her. Turns out that acceptance became the foundation of relationship where the entire family felt much more relieved and happier since we found out other ways(using creativity) to work around the misbehavior issue.

Thanks to the experience above, I now have very little incentive to forcefully make my daughter behave in certain way(other than dangerous/irreversible matters like when she’s running to the hit the road, or if she’s bullying other kids). Moreover, now I also cannot imagine how boring it would become – even if I had the perfect plot for her and she lived exactly according to that script. It’ll be the same feeling as following a play-through guide step-by-step for a game that centers around exploration and adventure – you’d be better off just save the money and watch someone play that on Youtube in 4k.

At this moment, the bandwagon is fully stocked and the wheels have started turning. I, for one, cannot be more excited to head wherever the road will take us to.