"Parenting" - Accompanying Children to the Future - Wong Mei Mui, Editor-in-Chief of Preschool Monthly

Let's start the new year with a foreign story for those of you who care about your children.

There was a father who took his child to a prestigious college, and this father wanted his child to take shorter classes than others. He said to the dean, "My son will never be able to take all the classes, and I want him to graduate quickly. The dean responded, "Oh, yes! Oh!" The dean responded, "Oh! He can take a crash course and you can mold him the way you want him to be. It takes God a hundred years to make an oak tree, but it only took Him two months to make a pumpkin."

Regardless of the value of trees and pumpkins, it is obvious that "how you harvest is how you plant", but in this era of rapid change and globalization, it is difficult for parents to see what their children's strengths will be when they grow up. What is trendy and popular now, but will it be useful in the future? Are you happy when you have a specialty but not an interest? What should we do when the quality of our living environment is repeatedly challenged? In the future, when cooperation and competition are not only for our own growth, how can we communicate with others or show our own characteristics in order to achieve something? These are complex questions that even trend experts are careful to update and revise, and naturally, parents can't just pave the way for their children's future with a quick fix and then rest easy.

In order for children to be competitive for future survival, it is necessary to be prepared and yet maintain enough flexibility. The direction of preparation depends on how much the parents know about the surrounding environment and how broad their vision is; on the other hand, it depends on their own attitude towards life and what they expect from their children. From the interviews of many professors, we have come up with a fundamental answer: Bring your children to read and live well from a young age! In reading, children will be able to construct their own answers to life's questions and learn to face the society they will live in.

I am reminded of something I read - Alexander the Great once asked the philosopher Diogenes what he wanted as a reward. The philosopher, an advocate of frugality, said casually, "Move over, please, and give me some sunshine! When raising a child, accompaniment and letting go are always two sides of the same coin. When you are trying to manage your child's future with the best of intentions, first look at what is the sunshine in his eyes!