Parenting Lessons (Feb 25 | Part 1): Slow Down to Figure Out

This is part of a monthly series where I share parenting lessons I learned each month.

There is just too much to share for February 2025, hence, I will break this post into two parts. Stay tuned for Part 2! 🙂

I took some time to figure out the title, and when I did, I thought the title was a good reminder for me, and for that matter both young and old who are still figuring out life. In a fast-paced and efficient society like Singapore, we are shaped to expect quick solutions. But life isn’t like that. We need to daydream a little to think out of the box. Meander and fall a bit to reach our heart’s desires. It’s okay to slow down a bit, to veer off the standard path to find our own path. The fastest and shortest route is not necessarily the best for us.

This is something I need to believe in and do so that my children will have the space and time to figure out life too. 

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Patience: Slowing Down to Figure Out

I was revising Math with my daughter and I got so frustrated because she couldn’t see the answer I was seeing. She was taking her time to figure it out when I blurted out the answer and taught her the method to derive it. Then I went to the next question to test what I taught her and again she didn’t get it.

So when I saw this video about parenting, especially the part from 41:10, it struck a chord with me because it reflects how I was teaching her Math. It’s a good reminder that I shouldn’t teach her how to do life like I do in Math.

I shall translate and paraphrase the part that spoke to me from the video because it would serve as a written reminder to me as well:

“The parents in this generation have a unique trait and challenge, which is your age. Usually, parents are in middle age (older when they give birth), which means they’ve been through many things. Your generation of parents has a lot of wisdom and you have answers to many things. AI is also the biggest challenge to the relationship between parent and child. Because now it’s about fast, ruthless, accurate/precise (快狠准).

• Fast (快) – Your patience becomes thin and you start to be impatient when things are slow.
• Accurate/Precise (准) – Everything must be accurate. That’s because answers are now easily available, unlike in the past when people took a long time to figure out answers. Hence we don’t allow our children to waste time to go and figure out the answers because the answer is just there.
• Ruthless (狠) – Then you expect perfectionism (标准) and don’t allow mistakes (in line with what I learned about failures during Jan 25).

However, the future will see many big changes. For the 3-year-old, how would you know what the world will be like when he’s 30 years old? We wouldn’t be able to tell him what he has to do now to be successful in future. That’s because you wouldn’t even know what professions there will be in future and how he is to survive in that world.

But because we have lots of experience, we will tend to tell our children what they can do now to avoid this and that in the future. But will this and that going to happen in the future? So do we really have the answers? The biggest challenge is when we don’t have the answers.

The children and parents now have a sizeable age difference – and thus parents have answers, but children don’t have answers. That’s why our children might feel the pressure. They need time to find the answer, and experience failures to know who not to believe in, and whose words cannot be trusted. They have to accumulate their wisdom and find their own answers. But because we are fast, ruthless, accurate/precise (快狠准), we like to give them answers and ask them not to try. But if we don’t give them difficult problems to solve, they won’t learn how to solve and get answers.

Future is about team spirit, flexibility in thinking and the ability to endure setbacks (团队精神, 弹性思考, 忍受挫折). Nowadays, parents want to help children avoid failures and ask them to concentrate on their studies and not care about other things. They will also ask their children not to care about other people, and as a result, the children will lack empathy, which is a trait much needed in the future.

The child doesn’t need to graduate from a super good school but he needs to know how to be a cheerleader to cheer his team on during setbacks and have them cooperate and push on – that’s how to be the future leader. Education is not so important, but the child needs to know how to be flexible and live happily. That’s the challenge for parents today – to nurture children who can live in the future world and have the ability to do so.

You need to let your child know that your love is there no matter what he faces in life. In this way, his attitude is going to be based on your upbringing even if you can’t help him to prepare for his future specifically. Parents can definitely help children for the future by influencing and moulding the children on how they can react and respond to what they face in future and how they see themselves.

My thoughts: In a way, we don’t help them to fly, but we teach them how to use their wings so that they know how to fly high in the future. Don’t swoop in to peel off the cocoon, but let them struggle out so that their wings can be strong enough to fly like a beautiful butterfly.

Fail to Figure Out

Interestingly, as I wrote this piece in March 2025, a podcast I was listening to also discussed a similar thread as above and the role of failures in a child’s life, as in my previous post.

Excerpt translated and edited from 12:18:

“This is also why I encourage my children to try new things and tell them not to be afraid of doing it wrong. If there’s something wrong, I, as the father, will be behind them to help them.

You want to tell the children the right way of doing it, but if they have never done it before, they wouldn’t understand. Even if you tell him it’s wrong or it’s not done like that, he will still not know why or how to do it. For example, if the student copies the correct answer, he’s only copying your solution and never really learning (how to solve it). So the child should go and do it first, even if he makes mistakes along the way, that’s the way to learn.

Let the children take up tasks and learn responsibilities. Instead of dictating them on how to do it, let them try by themselves – they might even do it differently from us. And don’t think the children are doing things too slowly, let them slowly figure out because it will help them in growth development.

My thoughts: Letting children take action and learn from mistakes is better than giving them answers and expecting perfection from them. Learning is a process and it can sometimes take time. Let go and be patient.

That’s about it, thanks for journeying with me on this parenting journey. Before you go, you might want to check out my other posts on parenting. Leave your parenting tips, comments or questions below. Love to hear from you. 🙂

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