Here are my thoughts and tips on Parenting Literature:

1. It is good to read up before your first child arrives, and during the first few years you will find them a useful reference.
2. Read a variety of subjects. Some important ones include nutrition, growth, sleep issues and illnesses.
   

I feel that there is nothing wrong in being the master of just one language; and that while there *are* advantages in being "multi-lingual", IF one is master of none, then there are also disadvantages too.

Increasingly I find that in work, people who have a weak grasp of English, who cannot write to save their lives, hamper productivity and creativity. How can a person innovate if he can't express in complex/abstract/poetic/metaphysical terms what he's trying to invent? I have realized with increasing worry that project documents are often being dumbed down to the point of irrelevance because people don't know how to articulate complex ideas.

Have you ever watched two people with poor English argue a complex issue in English? (eg. it could be a Malay with a Chinese). You will get what I mean.

No offense or judgment meant on anybody, but it is useful to see things in perspective:(Sorry ah, here goes another slice of "different perspective", sashimi style).

People who have good things to say about themselves will always be louder than those who do not. (Again, no offense intended; nothing morally apprehensible about this).

Likewise, the news media likes to report on individual "successful entrepreneurs", smiling faces and all; but for every one reported, there are 30, 50, maybe 100 failures out there whom you will never hear of. Even funnier is how some of these successful entrepreneurs go down the drain after a couple of years (cf. dot.com crash).

The reverse is also true - bad news makes great news, to the press.

I think there are two ways to build a child's - a person's - capacity to handle adversity in life. Both deal with the creation of personal understanding. One must understand adversity in order to be able to deal with it.

One way is the really bad way - personal suffering. How to understand hunger and poverty? Experience it yourself. How to understand the disabled? Lose an arm yourself. How to understand death? Lose a loved one yourself.

The other way is much more desirable, but it escapes many. It's called empathy. Many people today can't handle adversity in life because, quite simply, they never cared about it before. They never thought about it. They couldn't care less if others suffered. So when they themselves suffer... they have no understanding of it at all, including how to get over it.

1. Your kid's childcare centre calls you first instead of your wife/MIL.

2. When the childcare centre calls you at the office, you talk about HFMD in a loud voice so everyone around you can hear.

3. You use "My kid couldn't wake up this morning" as an excuse for coming in late at the office.

4. When colleagues ask how come you can afford the 8-megapix camera phone, you say "I need to take photos of my daughter on the go mah."

I'm going to ramble a bit, please forgive me....

I'd like to share my thoughts on the topic of working parents.  Besides there seems to be very few fathers represented in this discussion!

When we had our DD, from the beginning, I was all for my wife becoming a SAHM. I have no doubt whatsoever of the value of parenting our own child ourselves. Also, we are and still are TOTALLY AGAINST the idea of having a maid take care of our kid. As such, I myself committed to being a hands-on father as well as a sole breadwinner.

It is my opinion that Vitamin C is the MOST OVERRATED supplement.

My family used to take it regularly, and honestly I don't think I've ever seen it make a difference to our health. It certainly did not convince me of its reputed powers when my wife and kid would take turns falling sick every other month, sometimes lasting for weeks.

After some experimenting and observations, I've come upon a "formula" that has done wonders for the health of my family, esp. my daughter.

Honey + Cod Liver Oil + DHA supplement - my daughter takes a dose of this everyday.