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.
This wasn’t a gap. It was 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 — because 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, but 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 educational initiative inside any organization — and it’s where the warmth in this résumé comes from.