Since I was a teenager, people always told me that my life would change when I became a parent. So when I had Fighter I went in with the expectation that my life wold change. The change I experienced far exceeded my expectations. Not just that… being a parent taught me many things too and here’s a list.
1) There is much more to life than money or career.
We are always chasing one main goal all our life until we become parents. As students we were chasing the best possible grades we could get at exams and enter the best universities. In our early working years we’re chasing money and promotions and career success.
When you become a parent though things change. Chances are most of us haven’t reached what we consider career success yet when we first become parents. Yet at the same time, we have another goal in life. Which is to take care of the cute little baby we have in our arms. To provide for him and to raise him (or her) to be the best possible person ever. That’s a long-term goal and a struggle in itself… but it’s something that take so much focus.
For the first time… we no longer have one important thing to chase in life. We have two… or three.. or however many kids we have
2) Time becomes a lot more expensive.
Time is something we all have in common. Whatever our job, whatever our status in society, however much money we have in our wallets… we have the same number of hours each day: 24. Not a minute less. Not a minute more.
As young working adults we balance time between work, spending some time with family and your own personal time be it with friends or in your own hobbies or fitness.
Then comes along your first child. Suddenly you have something that you want to commit more time to every day. Something that makes you dread leaving in the morning and makes you look forward to coming home after work. In fact once you’re home, you sometimes don’t even feel like going out to meet your usual friends anymore because you want to maximise with your little one.
Time becomes a lot more precious to you because you have a lot more demands for it each day but still the same amount of supply as you’ve always had. Time becomes more expensive to you.
3) You can survive with a lot less sleep than you thought.
One of the war stories new parents would tell me was the sleepless nights they would have. When I first became a parent I experienced that full on. Of course it gets better when your child gets older and can sleep more on his own… although he still kicks me in the middle of the night sometimes and wakes me up.
The funny thing is that I always imagined myself being this groggy parent that got around my working day like a zombie. But the surprise is that we somehow… get used to waking up 3-4 times in the night and sleeping less.
My wife used to sleep in late on weekends and told me that if she didn’t she would feel really sleepy by the end of the day. Now she wakes up early and she’s fine all day.
4) Sometimes you just have to make the hard decision and say NO. Or it’ll come back and bite you.
In life we often shy away from saying no. Perhaps it’s a culture thing where Asians are a little less confrontational.
When it comes to kids though saying NO has never been more important. Each day your child will test a new limit to see what he can or cannot do. Each time you say NO he knows his boundaries but when you don’t, he expands it. It comes to a point where you know the cost of not saying NO when it’s appropriate will be paid later down the line.
5) Life goes on even after you’re not around.
The one thing that having a family made me really think about is how they all depend on me. Whether you play the mom or the dad, your contribution to the family is huge. It’s a little morbid but it made me think that if anything happened to me, life goes on. My family still has to find a way to survive without me. So it’s my responsibility to provide them with succession or estate planning and financially provide for them best as I can if I’m not around.
Shorty was telling me that she read about this story on Dayre. Of how the dad of the writer died when she was really young but had planned everything for them so they could manage everything after his death whether financially or emotionally.
Of course we hope these bad things never happen and that we’ll all live to old age to see our kids grow to independent adults. But life is uncertain.. and just in case… we need to prepare ourselves.
6) There’s a lot of advice out there. You just need to find what suits you.
In life we get a lot of advice on all sorts of matters. But nothing will have us receive more advice ever than having kids. Everyone has a different way of having kids. Some say let kids play in the mud to build their resistance, some say don’t. Some say let the baby cry it out, some say don’t because that will make the baby feel insecure. Everyone has a point of view and it can be really confusing.
So when being bombarded with this overwhelming flow of information… we gotta decide then. What do you think is best?
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space