Our different parenting style..

For our friends who know us well, most of you must think that Mummy Chan is the strict one who disciplines Renzo with frequent spanks and time-outs, whereas Daddy Chan must be the one who either handles him with loads of love and patience (just like how he treats Mummy Chan), or simply does not care too much.. Well, you are totally wrong then.

This is the conversation happened before Renzo went to bed last night:

Renzo: "Daddy, I want train train!!"
Daddy Chan: "No Renzo, it's bedtime, you need to sleep!"
Renzo: "Train Train, Renzo want to play train!!"
Daddy Chan: "No Renzo, it's too late, cry also no use, no train for Renzo!!"

Renzo: "Mummy!!!"
Mummy Chan: "Yes Renzo baby, don't cry, tell mummy what do you want?"
Renzo: "I want train train!"
Mummy Chan: "Okay no problem mummy get for you~"

Daddy Chan: Side Note: I have to admit, there was a bit of miscommunication because when Renzo was talking to Win, I was watching my cantonese show with my earpieces on, if I knew that Win has already rejected Renzo's request, I should have just let him handle our boy with zero interference, as we both agreed that consistency is important when comes to disciplining Renzo. But you get the idea about how Renzo's request will be attended if he were to come to me directly at first.

Win believes that spanking is absolutely okay as long as it is used sparingly and not abusively. And I believe that each child develops at their own level and each stage of development has its appropriate behaviors. So to Daddy Chan, throwing tantrums at "terrible two" stage is normal; but to me it is normal AND acceptable. And to Daddy Chan, if Renzo misbehaves, there needs to be some reinforcement in place to let him understand what he can and cannot do; but to me, I rather maximize his opportunities to play and explore in his own way, but minimize his chances to misbehave and get into trouble, so we don't even need to deal with the consequence. For example when Renzo wants to snatch Daddy's laptop, Win will tell him it's not the right thing to do as it is not a toy for him to play with, but usually I will rather that we don't even use it in front of Renzo if we know certain things like a movie or game on the laptop might catches Renzo's attention. So can you see the difference now?

We've exchanged ideas with other parents but it's never easy to find the most effective parenting style. And now we both are patiently waiting for Renzo to grow up a little, at least wait till he turns 3 years old.
Daddy Chan thinks that's an appropriate age to enforce some punishment for Renzo to learn self-control, and the difference between right from wrong.
Mummy Chan thinks that's an appropriate age for Renzo to understand the connection between actions and consequences and he might pick up good behaviours automatically.
Haha not bad, at least we do share some thoughts in common finally..