KambingBujang

Photo: iUnique FX

I know I should post this resolution last month, but January was a hectic month for me. My work at the office also needed me to planning and setting the goal for 2011. So I had to put aside other matters and concentrated to my office work for a while. For this month, I have all the time in the world to update my post, and I hope it wouldn’t be too late for the new year’s resolution.

Actually I have been planning inside my brain on December last year, then after that, I only have firm goal on mid January. I put my parenting goals on paper and hope to stick to it. The main objective of my parenting goals is to be a better parent who understand the need of my children in many aspects such as education, health, and emotion. I hope to attend more parenting talk, classes, discussions than I did last year.

These are the 7 parenting goals for 2011. I wonder whether I could achieve all the goals without getting past through big and heavy obstacles along the way.

1. Unleash Amirul’s Speech
I have bought one dedicated notebook to enlist all the words Amirul has been said for all his life. It doesn’t matter whether Amirul can pronounce properly or not. As long as Amirul point at something and say something German — that we couldn’t understand — it also considered a word. For an instance,  Amirul says EEUU everytime he sees crane, digger, and tower crane, and I have to write down EEUU as one of his word in the book. I hope Amirul can speak his own name, favorite things; tractor, cars, crane, train, favorite animals; fish, elephant, giraffe, favorite character; Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Kung Fu Panda, Toy Story, and, Despicable Me before my birthday.

2. Amirul Can Make Three Basic Sentences Before My Birthday.
I want my son to practice a full sentence when he wants something important to him especially milk; his essential resource for food. Another sentence that I want him to practice is to say he wants to watch his favorite cartoon. And the last one is saying “Daddy/Mommy, I Love You So Much”

3. Read and review more books about parenting maybe one book one months
Last year, I have bought several books about parenting at BigBadWolf because they sold the book at the very low price. I was tempted and felt I will lose my insanity if I ignore the deal and walk away. So I hurt my credit card balance so easy that I have to pay off two thirds the amount with my yearly bonus. Okay. I have succeded on buying the books on bargain last year. What I’ve failed was getting myself to read all the title. I have no time to read or I was too lazy too read or I deliberately didn’t put up any efforts to fuel up my reading habit. But this year, I want to finish reading one parenting book per month. This does not include reading the mountain of fiction novels worth RM300++.

4. Fully utilize ipad as a teaching tools for Amirul.
One thing that I love about iPad is it can be a powerful teaching tool. One significant improvement that I see is he can arrange puzzle (for kids) without much troubles. He also learn  to pronounce alphabet every night as it is interactive and fun. Most of the apps are kids-friendly and the multimedia presentations are attractive. I also follow iPadForKids to get news and tips.

5. Maintain 30 – 60 Minutes Of Teaching Amirul.
We have met the doctor on our latest speech therapy session, 2, 3, and the doctor gave me homework to do — learn to follow instructions, build lego imitation, and new nouns and verbs. So every I have teach Amirul — from Mondays to Fridays at least 30 minutes and up to one hour with many break because Amirul only can concentrate in short time.

6. Bela arnab.
Amirul loves watching animals especially chicken and fish. He already own the fish and I can’t effort to pet chicken: it needs hardwork to keep up the hygiene of the surroundings and I couldn’t stand the smell of the chicken’s drop. I have decided to pet rabbit instead.

7. Maintain My Sanity When Nursing My Children.
Ok, here’s my weaknesses: my voice becomes thunder of high octane, when amirul doing somethig wrong and naughty, or when he didn’t listen — intentionally or not — to my instruction. Ever since I became a father, my heart becomes easily broken when things don’t go my way. I’m so fragile that I lost my temper when my family member doesn’t follow my demand. If something happened against my will, I get angry easily. Or when I things went unexpected — like Widad cries all of the sudden without a reason — I lose my insanity. This year I want the dark side of me to be vanished and make changes for the good of the family. But somehow it is not an easy goal, and this is the biggest challenge: avoid the insanity.

Hope and Fears
Every slot of time is counted. Every positive progress leads to accomplishment of a goal. So I hope I could meet all my goals without many challenging obstacles. Although, it is good to experience challenging obstacles — they will make you a better man — but I’m afraid that I couldn’t carry on and stop the train in the middle of a railway before its destination. The only person that can catapult me further and further is my wife, with her enthusiastic mommy spirit — and her homemade brownies.