Growing Up

Hi! This is Matthew's blog. It's always fascinating what 3 year olds can do. Most of the time, it's the mesmerizing questions we come up with that makes you wonder what goes on in our little minds. Well, actually it’s very much bigger than most adults (measured by imagination, rather than physical size). And like most parents, you’d probably have recordings of our first words, singing, learning new tricks – all of which you had to painfully try to coax us to perfectly re-enact so that you can archive a collection of records of those precious moment – which later, we are the only ones enjoy watching over and over.

In this blog, I wanted to shed some light on the things we do, and why we always seem to like to do things our way. And of course, to help you try and understand those important questions…why can’t they just go to sleep? Or how can I get them to keep quiet for 3 minutes?

Wait! Actually, I doubt we could answer that here since this is not a research-backed scientific journal or medical/science publication. In case you are concerned, this is really not a 3 year old on the notebook, but rather the father of a 3 year old. In my attempt to record those precious moments of my son’s growing up experiences, I wanted to also write about the interesting, peculiar things I observe – and hope to figure out (as much as possible) in adult sense what they meant – or not at all.

“But Why?”

“You need to eat your vegetables”
“But why?”
“Because vegetables are nutritious”
“But why?”
“Your body needs the nutrition to grow and be healthy”
“But why?”
“So that you can grow up and be like your daddy”
“But why?”
“Just eat your veggie”
"But...

The famous 5 Whys’ used in cause-and-effect problem solving was probably observed from a 3 year old (please don’t quote me on this). It seems for the 3 year old; even the 5th “why” would never satisfy, except when your explanation is followed with a louder tone of voice. And I wonder if they really think we are highly intelligent when we try to explain to them the sun is out of gas during the night (as opposed to the rotation of the planet around the sun explanation). In raising our children we encounter so many questions, both from them (our children) and from ourselves. Sometimes I’m even left bewildered when my son asks why I do certain things (which I’ve always done before...and always seemed right…before he asked). I think I have never really found out the answers to all the questions so far and I am dedicating time through this blog to overcome that.

Contributing to this blog

Watching our children grow up and learn new stuff is fun. You are welcomed to contribute your thoughts, ideas, feelings, experience or even research (if you have). But this blog is intended to be for personal consumption and to share experiences – the adult sense translation; the blogger(s) and those featured in the blog(s) cannot and will not be liable for any misrepresentation, damages or harm that (may) arise from the use of this blog(s)/writing(s)/idea(s). You really need to read the Blogger Terms of Service if you have any doubts http://www.blogger.com/terms.g

Stay tuned for more...