Background
In March 2016 I made a decision most people don’t: I left full-time work to become my child’s primary caregiver. For the next three and a half years the household ran on side income, 20+ band performances over that period, and custom drip-coffee gift boxes for companies and individuals at the Lunar New Year, Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn festivals.
These three years weren’t a gap. They were the most thorough go I’ve ever had at the thing called education.
What I did
- Studied three parenting systems that don’t agree with each other: the scheduled-routine school, attachment parenting, and Waldorf’s view of developing body, mind and spirit. I didn’t rush to pick a side. First I worked out what question each one was answering, and when it applied.
- Distilled a principle of my own: put the child’s development across body, mind and spirit at the centre, with loving presence and setting an example as the foundation. What actually transfers to a child is only what you yourself live out.
- Treated every day’s meals as a project under continuous iteration: a hundred-plus non-repeating family recipes over three years, adjusting prep, nutrition balance and plating each time, photographed into a complete portfolio.
- Kept the side business running: fitted band performances and coffee roasting into the gaps around childcare, so household income never stopped and I stayed connected to the outside world.
Outcome
Three and a half years of full-time presence, from newborn to pre-school; a hundred-plus recipes as a visible record; and the principle of “love and example”, which became the thing I trust most in management: rules govern behaviour, and what actually changes a person is how the people around them behave.
Leading a team and raising a child come down to the same levers in the end: patience, and what you yourself are like. This chapter is the private version of my belief that HR is the largest piece of education inside any organization, and it’s where the warmth in this résumé comes from.