The power of a question

I read today a great Quora question.

How can one make the most of one's youth?
A response by Rizwan Aseem caught my eye.




In short, Rizwan says you should get in the habit of taking care of:

• Your body
• Your mind
• Your relationships
• Your finances
• Your communication

He gave some very practical examples. Simple right?

What struck me was his acknowledgement of habits. Habits are these things that take a long time to cultivate, but you reap the benefits of habits many years late. Habits have made a world of difference in his life.

I turn 31 this year. 

In the last 12 months, I've just begun to realise the power of habits.

Taking out the rubbish. 

Making the bed. 

Learning something new on the way to work.

With habits these do not seem like chores. But on their own, at the start, they are so hard to get going.

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For other electrical and computer systems engineers, it would be like discovering the embedded system in your brain. Once you have configured it right, debugged it, it keeps running and running in the background.

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Still, there is an assumed "good life" behind the above question.

What is the good life you refer to Rizwan? 

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Selective hearing at age 4

I thought Sam at a very tender age had mastered selective hearing.

Sometimes he would ignore us completely. 

Sometimes we'd say something, and he'd say "Huh?"

Did I model that to him? 

And then recently we discovered he could not really hear. Thankfully there was nothing wrong with the ear drum or the stirrups etc. 

It turns out the eustachian tube linking the ear and the back of the throat can get blocked up.

For children this is more common because the tube is less steep, and drains not so well, compared to the adult. 

So for the time being I've been given the lesson of patience. How great it is for character building.

I've been quite short with Sam, thinking he's just been blatantly non-compliant.

Sorry Sam.

A most dangerous place at the park

Went to the most dangerous park in a while today.

Frew park. 

You could fall, get hit, roll down. 

In the hour and a half I was there with Sam and Jimmy, Sam got hit. He got pushed over. But I pulled him up before he fell down. Yes, I chickened out.

He bouldered up some steps and was about to walk across a ledge, 2.5m high. 

I hesitated. Do I let him or don't I?

To let him would be good for his guts, build some confidence, but then the risk of him falling and say fracturing his vertebrae would be suboptimal. 

I decided I didn't know enough about his coordination, and I could not look out for Jimmy. So I called him back, and said "I'm not sure I want you to go across yet Sam." I tell myself I'll do it if I can catch him if he falls, until he gets old enough and I'm sure enough of his step.

Seriously, this park is extreme. Take a look at the slides. Kids can fall a long way. I'm glad they still make parks like this - is this a wave against the bubble wrapped childhood?

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So I bumped into a neighbour at the park. There with his family, including all his 5 kids. 

He mentioned that this was a regular thing. How so, I enquired.

Turns out one of the dads decided to make it a thing to cook new things, and invite others to bring stuff too. And they do this once every few weeks. 

Imagine if more dads did that.

What a dangerous idea.

The weight of gravity

Today my son just learnt about buoyancy and gravity. My heart sings!

So I was packing up and putting some old clothes downstairs in the storage room. 

I came across an old book of mine, it was a tiny thin book on "Space". 

So I brought it up. When we moved in two years ago I thought I would not pull that out until Sam was about 6. Close enough.

When he came past me he went straight for the book.

By the third page, we talked about gravity, and how Isaac Newton discovered it.

We talked about buoyancy. I brought out a little pot. We floated and sank toys and talked about why balloons didn't fall down like apples if we dropped them.

We talked about the escape velocity for Earth. I tried to work out how to describe to Sam how fast 11.2km per second is. 

Can you think of a place far from here?
S: China.  

*Quick math scribble*

S: Do you know that at that speed we can get to China in 12 min?
Wow. That's fast. 

Yes it is.

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It's amazing how kids are good at pattern recognition.

Sam found some pictures of space shuttles. He remembered seeing these in another book.

And then some pictures of the lunar module.

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I had to go to do some yard work. Sam had loads more questions for me. 

It seems a shame to have to leave the hungry child. 

Photographing silence

Today Chirs, Matt and I (at work) took a photo of a quiet refinery.

Normally refineries are very noisy, with pumps, compressors, boilers, valves emitting large quantities of sound.

Today, our refinery was quiet. 

The three of us, namely Matt, led the group up the oldest unit on site, "the cat cracker".

142 workers stood on the steel structure.

We took our photos. Lots of clicks.

Here's a bad photo of a print (sorry, it's the closest thing I've got right now).

And then, when we were done, some were slow to come back down.

It turns out that people were enjoying the moment. Some were deeply reflective. The unit had been running for 50 years. Now it will be scrapped.




What started out as a documentary exercise has proved to be much more.

What kind of a man knows Rain Man

So Sam's hearing got better.

For a week or so, it was so nice to not have to shout everything.

And now, since he's had the cold in the last week, his hearing has gone down again.

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I watched Rain Man for the first time last night. (My wife fell asleep during our "date night". Yeah, we don't have  real exciting dates much these days, especially when she's preggers.)

The story starts out an estranged son Charlie (Cruise) discovers he has an autistic brother Raymond (Hoffman) after their father's death. The story unfolds as Charlie 'kidnaps' Raymond in order to get his share of the $3M inheritance. 

It was confronting to see how we treat people with disabilities in such a cruel and dismissive way.

In some ways, the autistic brother, Raymond, is much more gifted than Charlie is.

Also, I was uncomfortable seeing the frustration that Charlie showed to Raymond, who has these needs he cannot articulate. He has routines, and they result in quite specific requests:

Raymond: 12:30 is lunch. 

Charlie: What do you want? 

Raymond: Wednesday is fish sticks. Green lime jello for dessert. 

Charlie: You want another apple juice? 

Raymond: No, orange soda. Uh oh, it’s 12:31.

I was incredibly frustrated with Charlie's character at the start. What a self centred, impatient prick he was!

Susanna: You use me, you use Raymond, you use everybody. 

Charlie: Using Raymond? Hey Raymond, am I using you? Am I using you Raymond?Raymond: Yeah. 

Charlie: Shut up! He is answering a question from a half hour ago!

If you have been reading my blog for a while you would guess what I might say next...

It was not long into the movie before I got that sinking feeling. I am so often like Charlie. Short. Impatient. Self centred. In a hurry to get somewhere.

On a bad day, I realise I can fail to listen to Sam's needs. I think he's disabled in almost everyday when compared to me or others around me, an adult, and forget that he is probably much more gifted in many other ways. Like being happy. Being creative. Not seeing limits. Not having negative thoughts. 

All this comes from arrogance and ignorance.

Having Sam have a temporary disability like hearing degradation is good for me. And it has been good for me to learn to be gracious, to be kind, to empathise.

Here's an example when Charlie lost his temper with Raymond and pulled Raymond's head. 

Now imagine if your child kept a list like that. What if involuntarily, subconsciously, they did? Or someone did?

Charlie: What are you writing? What is this? “Serious Injury List”? Serious injury list? Are you kidding me? 

Raymond: Number eighteen in 1988, Charlie Babbitt squeezed and pulled and hurt my neck in 1988. 

Charlie: Squeezed and pulled and hurt your neck in 1988?

James and his vocab

It's hard not to observe the differences in our two boys.

Sam has always been about average or slightly above average in his language development. Kindy has helped HEAPS in his language development. We are so thankful for his Kindy.



Jimmy on the other hand learns like y=x^2.

He picks up on sentences really well.
His mandarin skills are probably superior to Sam's at present.
He surprises us from time to time the phrases he can churn out at 2 and 1/2 years of age.

Jimmy's got a few things going for him.

1. He likes to repeat things
2. He is determined, very determined to get answers. No problem repeating questions 20x.
3. He has Sam, who likes to teach him things
4. He has a relatively gifted head size for his body size
5. Sam has helped guinea pigged and weeded out some of our ineffective teaching practices

Walking with Emilysaurus

I'm a sucker for dinosaurs. 

I'm a sucker for kids and endless play.

Had a great time at Emily's 4th birthday the other day. 

It was a windy day but the afternoon sun beamed through the foliage.

Jimmysaur chomped through the cookies and all the other sometime foods.

Sammysaur ran after Emilysaurus and the rest of the herd.

For a moment time the sun didn't set.

For a moment we didn't have to hurry to grow up.

Often we wait til Friday, but that's kinda a way to hasten the kids to grow up. 

Why would you want to do that.

Switching modes

Nobody likes to be interrupted.
Particularly me.

Once I start something, I find it hard to put something down.

I recall once when I joined my mates in hunt for scrap copper after school one day. We were going to sell it at the markets and make enough money to buy gunpowder.

Yes, this was China in the 1980s.

It was dark when I got home. I got a big smack for not telling my parents where I was.
For some reason the thought of interrupting my adventure to tell my parents my whereabouts - it did not cross my mind.

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Often I'd ask Sam to stop what he's doing and listen to me.
Sometimes, he wouldn't hear me at all.
Sometimes, I hold back my dissatisfaction. That my child shows his father so much contempt. An instruction has been issued!

Sometimes, I don't.
I raise my voice.
Or worse, I get angry at my little man.

At the end of a long day it's possible to forget the world does not revolve around me.
It's not hard to turn a desire for my sons to be obedient, into a story about me and my needs.

I am well capable of it.

To tame the savageness of man

Some hailed this the greatest speech of all time.

No, not about his own dream.
No, not about going to the moon.
No, not about a new phone.

It's about how we move forward when dark forces pull us backwards.

Some days ago in Australia, we too saw a display of force. Against injustice. We saw a divide in our peoples.

To reclaim Australia?

On our streets our people showed this "savageness of man", to protest savagery and other injustices, at times with savagery.

Before today I have not seen this clip. Here are my immediate reflections:

1. Oh have we got something to learn about history?
2. True leadership comes at a great cost
3. Where is a leader like that, for our country? Please stand up.

What does this speech do for you?

Sammy and the shell

Stradbroke Christmas 2013

Sammy was scared of the crabs. He had it in his mind that they have claws. And they could nip him real bad.

Totally emotional response. Totally not founded on fact, right?

Caloundra 2015

Sammy was still scared of the crabs.

And then, Sammy was not scared anymore.

I don't know exactly what changed.

Was it the amount of these we found together around the rocks?

Was it how these hermit crabs were smaller than the other ones?

Was it that I casually caught them, and these critters were so timid they hid in their shells?

Apparently according to Kerry Spackman, some parts of our brains wire up at different speeds.
The part of our brain capable of emotion and movement get wired in first. And then in later years, the frontal cortex wire in later.

So if a child is particularly emotional at the time, they may associate a particular negative event with something else totally unrelated.

Given the severity or stickiness of that emotion, the experience may be burnt into a child's mind, well into adulthood in some cases.

This is a reminder to me as a parent to not thrust our logical understanding of the world and expect the child to perceive it in the same way.

How isolated and confused must Sam have been when I told him to "Harden up! It won't bite!" all those times.

Sorry Sam.

What's got more energy (Part II)

So I promised to write about me going to Sam's kindy.

Sam was so happy to have me there.

He helped me pass around the props. 

He had lots of questions. So many that I encouraged him to ask me afterwards.

He liked me sitting at the table with his best friends.

We ate raw broccoli, carrots and snap peas. Yup.

As for the presentation - well, I did it. Yup, kept their attention for 45min! Yeah, I wound up my talk when the kids started yawning.

Maybe they didn't remember that oil was a form of energy. Maybe they couldn't explain why the sun had E=mc2 next to it. Maybe they won't understand why the motor related to energy. Maybe they won't remember why they should recycle. 

It doesn't matter. Sam's dad showed up. He gave us green balloons. 

And the kids remembered not to touch the power outlets. 

Job done.

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Man what I'd give to be back in that room when the kids are singing and laughing during music. 

The world is so big to them. 

Children, Growing Up and the Climate

Was talking to another dad today about our kids, and the power that their friends have on them.

So who influences the peers of our friends?

Shall we blame the media? Schools? Government? Movies? Other parents?

Is it like the resolutions on Climate Change. Most agree that something needs to be done. Yet we wait for someone to do something first.

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I've been reading a great book.
Actually, I've started reading a great book. Like most things I do, I tend not to finish them.

It's called, Growing Yourself Up.

The main idea I've picked up so far is a systems view of relationships. Duh(!) you say, relationships require someone to relate to.

Yet how often does our model of understanding simplify a conflict or an exchange to simply us and them. Or, even simply about ME.

It's very easy to blame others, and neglect the idea that waves bounce back and forth from us and towards us. Do we stir up the wave? Or does it stop with us?

I remember a time when I was getting up Sam for not putting away the toys. He was around two and a half. He had been dawdling and playing, quite ignorant of his duties. When he eventually obliged, he first thing he grabbed an object that was on the floor.

He came to me and said innocently, "Where does this go Daddy?"

It was my shirt.


Now if you're married, I wonder if you have ever wondered,
"Why won't my spouse ... A/B/C"

A = be the first to apologise
B = think about my needs
C = get out of the bed to stop the crying

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