I look at the adult world this way – those who succeed in life are those who dare to take the lead and make decisions. Those who hover around and cannot decide, continue hovering around, without making much progress.

And those who DO make decisions, do MAKE MISTAKES. But they MAKE decisions. And they know what they want in life.

Being decisive is also not being impulsive. The difference is that the former encompasses careful consideration while the latter does not.

Our children are growing all the time. Gradually, life challenges require them to make more and more decisions as they grow. I would like to think that most adults do pretty fine, but sadly some actually never grow up, still depending on their aged parents to help make decisions.

One major reason is due to the “well-intentioned parents” syndrome, where parents like us subconsciously shield our children from making decisions in every aspects of their lives, denying them the opportunity to sharpen themselves.

My encouragement to all parents is this, forget about the consequences of wrong decisions. Let our children make wrong decisions while they are young, so that they won’t grow up frozen, not knowing how to be decisive when it matters.

And so we have watched the movie, CARS 2, a Disney-Pixar production.  

What’s my thoughts?
1. It is not as innocent as the original CARS movie – the movie was laden with the themes of spies, gangsterism, “killing” other cars, sinister motives etc

2. The sub-theme seems like an afterthought
- In the first movie, there was a strong theme centering around how a selfish and boastful car was transformed into a humble, selfless and well-loved car.
- In this sequel, the sub-theme about accepting “accepting your friend as they were” didn’t fit too well into the story

3. The number of new characters seems overwhelmingly large
- is this a ploy to get kids hooked into buying all the characters?

At the end of the day, I can safely say most children under the age of 6 wouldn’t understand what the story was about. The only thing that kept them going was probably the idea of how many of the new toys they could buy!

There is something good about cartoon movie sequels…… the old toys enjoy a revival!

My son absolutely adored the characters (and toys) from the Disney Pixar movie CARS when I first introduced the movie to him about 3 years ago. Needless to say, within a short time we built up a rather huge collection of the characters (above photo probably makes up only a quarter of that collection). He would play with the toys almost everyday.

Alas, and naturally as time passed, new toys and distractions in the form of Beyblades and iPad took over. These car toys were then stored …and forgotten…until the launch of CARS 2!

We then excitedly watched the trailers on Youtube and naturally again, the pleas to get the new characters began. In a few hours time, we will be heading to watch the GALA premiere in Singapore. I can imagine the pleas will become louder and louder after that!

In front of my son, I frowned upon such desires to get all these toys. But privately, I can’t wait to get my hands on the whole new collection!

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My son is turning six in 2 months. And the world’s worry has already started to weigh on him….sigh.

This began when my wife gently told him about an ex-colleague’s death, and that she needed to go to the wake. From that moment onwards, he would repeatedly say he did not want to go to heaven. Sometimes in the car, he would turn all quiet, and then burst into tears. My wife tried may ways to explain to him gently, but none seemed to comfort him.

Thankfully we found a very good resource in a bible-based book called “Someone I Love Died” by Christine Harder Tangvald. It mentioned that once a child grasps the concept of death, it becomes one of their greatest fear in life. How true!

The book then helped break down the fears and answer questions a typical child may ask in a gentle and comforting way. From the experience, we as parents also learnt not to “run away” with “fuzzy-wuzzy” answers that children in this new generation could easily see through.

I wouldn’t say we have found a quick-fix solution, but my son is happier these days, having found out about things like “our soul gets to heaven faster than when we clap our hands”. Of course he still feels sad when he realised that we parents are likely to leave him first. But we rejoice that there will be reconciliation in heaven!