Donald Tan is a business consultant and adjunct lecturer who spent 15 years of his career in the corporate world looking after and travelling around Asia. When his daughter started Primary 1 in 2008, he decided to leave his corporate job to spend more time with his kids.

What/who influences your parenting style?
The bible provides the basis on how my wife and I raise our kids.

Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it

How do you develop close relationships with your children?
By spending time with them and doing things together as a family. There is a lot of laughter in the house as we learn to laugh at our own silliness. The kids recognise we are not perfect parents and we are here to journey with them, learning and growing together.

What is the best piece of parenting advice or guidance you have ever received?
“Give a child a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a child to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

We will not be with the kids forever, so the best way is to equip them with knowledge and impart values that will help them be a better person when they grow up.

What are some of the biggest challenges you face in parenting? How do you deal with them?
Kids come with no instruction manual and each child is unique. What works for one child may not work for another. Kids grow up really fast and each phase is a new challenge. The beautiful part for me is the continuous discovering of each child as they grow up and helping my children to discover themselves.

As a parent, what is the one thing that you want to do better or be better at?
Definitely to be a better dad and to continuously provide them with an environment where they can learn, grow, discover themselves and have fond memories of.

What advice do you have for parents who have kids of the same age?
Don't be over-protective and let your child grow up. Be firm when it is needed and treasure the moments because they grow up really fast. Enjoy parenthood 🙂

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Elizabeth Ann

Community Ambassador; as someone who was raised in a rather privileged family, I hope to address the inequity in educational outcomes based on the circumstance of birth. Bounced around between Australia and Singapore a fair bit.