So what kind of uncle should I be then?

Hi guys, happy Chinese new year, 恭喜发财! Today's blog post will be dealing with a rather tricky issue which I don't have all the right answers to - instead, I will be brutally honest about how I am dealing with a situation and I would welcome any kind of suggestions or ideas from my readers. It has been pointed out to me that whilst I do often talk about my nephew on my blog, I appear to have a rather distant relationship with him. One of my readers suggested that he would benefit from a closer relationship with me, that I could possibly mentor him as he is now an older teenager (he has just turned 16). Now that's something I had refrained from doing so far and I'm not trying to claim that my choice to do that has been correct, but allow me to offer at least my side of the story and perhaps, that would shed some light on the tricky situation and that would inspire some interesting ideas from my readers who have far more experience with this issue.

Should I be the back-flipping fun uncle or a stricter one?

For many years now, my parents would complain to me about how my nephew isn't being taken care of by his parents - some of those complaints are valid, whilst others are completely unjust. So let's take a simple issue of exercise: my parents would say that my nephew is not active enough, that he isn't doing enough sports and that's not good as he needs to be fitter in preparation for national service. That is a valid point of course, but when I try to suggest various things that they can do to ensure that my nephew has a more active lifestyle, they get very defensive and say, "we're only the grandparents, we can only make suggestions but it is up to his parents what he does at the end of the day." Also, I am more than aware of the fact that I don't live in Singapore so if I were to plant some idea in my nephew's head like he should go take parkour or tennis lessons, then it would be someone else who would have to find the right lessons, register him, pay for it and take him there regularly - it's very easy to be the backseat driver when someone else has to do all the hard work. Furthermore, I am only too aware of the fact that my parents are constantly nagging my sister that she should do so many things for my nephew in order to be a good parent, so right now she doesn't need one more person telling her how to be a better parent. Rather, she needs me to be a supportive brother who trusts in her judgement and will stand by her. I want to help reduce her stress and not add to it the way my autistic parents have done.

Besides, I have so little faith in my parenting skills and fear that I would only drive my nephew away if I took a more active stance in trying to nurture him. Let me give you an example from many years ago when he was very young and we brought him to Jurong Snow City to give him a taste of snow. The main activity you can enjoy there is sliding down a frozen slope on a big inflatable tube and he did it once and said, "it's scary, I don't like it." My sister than said fine, if you don't like it don't do it, go play with the snow. Now had it been up to me, I would have forced him to do it again because we had paid a lot of money for the activity and you're only going to bring up a timid child who's afraid of everything - besides, I believe in facing one's fears and conquering them, rather than running away like a coward the moment anything scares you. So I would have been the abusive uncle who would have forced a scared, frightened, possibly crying child to do something he was absolutely terrified of and yeah, most of you would have probably looked at me and thought I was an evil monster. The same thing happened when we went to Wild Wild Wet the water theme park, when he was afraid of going down some of the bigger slides. If I had tried to force my nephew to do something that he was afraid of, it would put me in the path of direct confrontation and conflict with my sister and my parents who would never force him to do something he didn't want to do. It is not an easy choice to make because I know that even if I forced my nephew to face his fears, he might end up crying and upset and the rest of my family would hate me for being a total monster who traumatized my nephew - I would have little to gain by getting my way if all it did was turn my family against me. That was all many years ago now and I do wonder if he would still be afraid of the same things today - I don't know.

Am I simply a monster who doesn't understand what is going on in an autistic child's head? Perhaps. I never claimed to be the expert on parenting 101 - I am not a parent, I have no parental instincts, I have no desire to ever be a parent. I am however, only too aware of the fact that my nephew is already 16 and he will be serving national service in about 2 years' time. Now let me share with you a story from my NS days on Pulau Tekong: we all had to do guard duty and the first time I was put on guard duty patrol, I was paired up with this guy called Goh (we called each other by our surnames back then) and what the sergeants would do is try to scare us. They would brief us about the route we had to take but then embellish the instructions with loads of ghost stories, "at the first junction down the road, you will walk past the abandoned building, if you hear some strange noises from there, be careful. Don't be a hero and try to check, that building has not been used in over 20 years but it is supposed to be haunted. Stay together, keep calm, don't run and be alert. The building is definitely locked up but just last week the people on guard duty claimed to have seen someone inside from the window facing the road which is just not possible. If you see something, just come back and report to me." Well, Goh simply nodded and said, "yes, thank you Sergeant." He kept a complete poker face and didn't show any emotion at all. I simply took Goh's cue and kept quiet; and of course, when we got to that creepy, old, derelict, abandoned building in the dark, I could see how one's mind can play tricks on you if you gave in to blind panic. So that's the kind of thing you have to deal with in NS - you can't just say, "it sounds too scary - please, I don't want to do guard duty tonight." No, you just have to deal with it much the way my friend Goh did - just keep a poker face and get on with it.

I didn't know much about Goh, but here's something that I used to have to do in gymnastics training as a child. If you had a bad fall during training, there was a rule that you had to get up and do the same skill again immediately without a moment's hesitation. You were not allowed to sit down and feel sorry for yourself. The rationale behind this rule was simple: if you stopped training the moment you fell, you would develop a fear of that skill - your last memory of that skill would be the bad fall and the next time you attempted that skill, you would recall that fall and be afraid before even attempting that skill. You see, if you allow any self doubt to creep into your mind before you even attempt the skill, you may as well give up on that skill - if you don't believe that you are capable of performing the skill, if you allow fear to cloud your judgement, then you are already defeated. It is a tough and merciless regime of course, but how else are you going to train up a team of champions who will win the gold medal? You have to be ruthless, there is no other option. I remember a coach once literally throwing a gymnast out of the gym because she wouldn't get back up to do a skill again after a really painful fall. He said to her, "I'll count to ten, if you're not back up on the bars by then, I want you to pick up your bag and get the hell out of here." Sure enough, when he got to ten, he walked over to her bag, picked it up and said, "come here and take your bag from me, don't make me throw it into the car park." Yeah, imagine that coach dealing with a frightened kid who wouldn't go down a water slide at Wild Wild Wet. No, I really don't think an uncle should be like that.

Let me share with you an incident where I truly doubted my own abilities to be an uncle: my sister had kindly arranged for me to have an outing with the family and had organized for a group of us to go have an Escape Room adventure. Unfortunately, we failed to escape from the room within an hour because of some silly mistakes and that didn't bother me at all - I have played enough Escape Rooms to know there's an element of luck to these games sometimes and there are no prizes even if you do succeed. Nonetheless my nephew got quite upset about our rather dismal failure. Could I have stepped in to be the uncle who would try to reason with my nephew at a moment like this? Perhaps, I have negotiated so many business deals - how is this any harder? Yet at that crucial moment, instead of stepping up and taking charge of the situation as an uncle, I just looked to my sister in blind panic and she was of course ready to step in to play that role she is so used to playing. Well, I knew what was happening - my nephew was upset that we didn't manage to solve the puzzles in time to escape and I suspected that he may have wanted to blame some of us for either not pulling our weight or listening to some of his good ideas (hey, hindsight is always 2020 when it comes to Escape Rooms). Sure it was a topic I could have dealt with here on my blog about coping with such difficult situations, but I was worried that I may be too harsh on my nephew leading to my sister being angry or upset with me. Thus at that crucial moment, I chickened out, took a step back and allowed my sister to take over. I just didn't have the confidence to take charge, sorry. I do wonder what would have happened if I did bravely step up and had that pep talk with my nephew. Would he have listened to me? Would I have come across as too strict like an evil gymnastics coach? Would my sister trust me to try to get this right?

But of course, I also have to recognize that my sister isn't running the training camp for the national gymnastics team - she's just trying to bring up a child like everyone else so the rules that applied to me in my training regime wouldn't be acceptable to her as a parent. It is quite different playing the role of the parent and the role of the teacher/coach. The teacher and the coach have the responsibility to instruct and teach, but the parent has to play quite a different role in terms of providing emotional support and fostering a good relationship with the child. A teacher may stay with a child for a year or two at school, a coach possibly a bit longer than that but a parent-child relationship is for life and thus very different in nature. I think the two do go hand in hand - parents and teachers often work together in a "good cop, bad cop" routine. The parent may be keen for the child to excel but is struggling to make the child work harder, so the parent can outsource that element of discipline to the teacher to be the bad cop to push the child so much harder than the parents normally would, but at the end of the day, they both have the shared goal of making the child excel so that usually works. So where does that leave me as an uncle then? Is the uncle supposed to be more like a parent or more like a teacher? To be frank, I don't really know - sure I had uncles growing up but I was never close to any of them. I hardly knew any of them and so I never ever had an uncle who played an active role in nurturing me when I was my nephew's age. I did have some family friends who were older and kind to me of course even though we weren't related by blood, but within the context of Asian culture, those relationships were still quite formal and respectful. I suppose this is why my relationship with my nephew has pretty much followed that model in that it is a lot more formal than you would expect.

Let's not forget that I live in London, I hardly ever get to see my nephew in person - he has only visited London once and I go back to Singapore ever 1 to 2 years for about a week or so each time. The amount of time I've spent with him is very limited so there's a part of me that thinks that I've certainly not done enough to win over his trust yet - there's a part of me that strongly believes that trust is something you have to earn and I really, really hate the assumption that he should respect me or listen to me just because I am older than him and am a part of his family. That's bullshit man and that's a fucking stupid aspect of Chinese culture. I remember getting into a big argument with my father once when I badmouthed my good-for-nothing uncle (who is my mother's younger brother) - it's not that my father actually defended my uncle but my father felt that it was a line that I shouldn't cross, that I had no right to judge and criticize a member of my family who was older than me. Well I wasn't going to give in to my father and I said I was going to judge anyone I wanted to judge, nothing he could do or say was going to change my mind and that I have nothing but utter contempt for his culture. It was a really nasty argument because I simply refused to back down; since my father has done nothing to win my respect or trust so I wasn't going to listen to his idiotic bullshit. So there, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't apply the same rules to myself and no, unlike my parents, I'm not a hypocrite. Thus by that token, I don't think I've done enough for my nephew to earn his trust and respect and thus I'm not in a position to simply tell him what he should do. I hope that one day, I will get the proper chance to earn his trust and respect and for his sake, I certainly hope that he will expect me to do so too.

Here's the thing - whilst my parents may be very flawed people, I don't enjoy fighting with them or arguing with them. That's why living 8 time zones away from them is possibly the best arrangement for us to maintain some kind of peace. I do want to see them happy, peaceful and content and one thing is for sure: my nephew has brought a lot of joy into their lives in the last 16 years in a way I can never understand. I have this memory of my father telling me a story with no punchline - when my nephew was like 5 or 6 years old, my father recounted this story about how my nephew was given a bottle of water when he was out in the park, he drank half of it and then put the bottle in his bag to take home. When he got home, he placed that bottle in the fridge. There I was, waiting for the story to reach some kind of climax or for something funny or unusual to happen but no - there was no punchline. It ended with my nephew placing the bottle in the fridge and I thought, huh? That was a totally pointless story, why did you recount something that vapid and boring? It would normally make no sense to anyone who would have been told such a story, but what I took away from that episode is that my father genuinely derives such joy from simply being with my nephew, even if they are doing something as mundane as taking a walk in the park. My father recalled the little details like what my nephew did with that bottle of water the same way someone who was totally in love would recall every minute detail of what happened on their first date. I'm glad my nephew has achieved something I never managed to: he has brought so much genuine delight and joy to my parents' life when all I did was fight with them for 21 years, until I finally decided to get the hell out of Singapore.

That story about the bottle of water had no punchline, no plot and very little content.

I believe that my parents are a very negative influence on my nephew but that puts my sister in a rather difficult situation. Here's the problem with my parents: they have no real concept of what it means to be autistic. So instead of addressing my nephew's needs as an autistic child, they basically treat him as if he is completely retarded and incapable of doing even the most basic tasks - there's an incident that I remember which illustrates this point. We were in a Thai restaurant when the waitress brought a bowl of dipping sauce which was rather spicy - it was a potent mix of Thai spices, fresh chili, vinegar, fish sauce and soy sauce. Whilst it was rather tasty, it was decidedly hot as well as those little Thai bird's eye chili do pack a punch. My mother tasted the sauce and decided she needed to save my nephew from the sauce - she warned him that the sauce was very hot and my nephew did what any sensible, rational person would do. He tasted the sauce and said that it was actually really tasty, so he would put a little bit on his food but not too much. Any reasonable person would then accept that my nephew has evaluated the situation with the spicy sauce and has arrived at a very sensible conclusion but no, my mother repeated herself over and over again each time my nephew reached for the bowl of dipping sauce like a broken record because she clearly didn't listen to him each time he tried to assure her that he knew what he was doing. Here's the problem: my nephew is mildly autistic but reasonably intelligent and rational, whilst my parents' autism is off the scale and they are both extremely stupid. As long as my parents continue to treat my nephew as if he is stupid, there will be problems and conflict. Oh the irony - by that token, that makes them pretty lousy grandparents (they just have zero social skills) but what can you do then? You can't stop them from seeing my nephew.

I get the feeling my parents need to feel like they are doing something useful, so they have this vision in their heads that my nephew is totally stupid and useless and that justifies their intervention and makes their efforts heroic (rather than downright idiotic). After all, what my mother did in the Thai restaurant is bizarre if not irritating if my nephew was a perfectly rational and sensible teenager - her actions would only have made sense if he was a complete idiot who would do something as irrational as continue eating something like a very spicy sauce which he did not enjoy. Good grief. I remember when I was in Georgia, a stray dog came up to us when I was having lunch one day and we had too much food, so I started giving the dog various things I couldn't finish ranging from meat to bread to salad. Even a stray dog knew how to avoid the items he didn't enjoy and only eat the items that he liked - that makes me wonder just how stupid and irrational my mother actually is, did my mother think that my nephew is less rational or intelligent than a stray dog? I don't think so - my mother wants to appear caring and helpful but simply doesn't have the social skills to portray those qualities at all so unfortunately she usually ends up coming across as annoying and stupid. I want to empower my nephew by giving him the chance to make decisions like an adult - that's how you help someone like my nephew grow up and nurture him but instead, they treat him like a retarded toddler and make most decisions on his behalf so that's really counterproductive. When I was a teenager, I knew how to tell them to fuck off and make my own decisions - but that's just not in my nephew's nature. He is so obedient and compliant, he is so respectful to my parents and that's the way he is. So how can I even begin to start to resolve this messy situation then without making my parents hate me even more?

So my sister is stuck in a very difficult situation - she knows that my parents take great joy in their interactions with my nephew, yet we all recognize that my parents are deeply flawed and even though they are motivated by love, well they often act with stupidity and they can't help it. So what do you do in such a situation, when you don't want to upset my parents? I don't know but what I do know is that me wading in, upsetting my parents by trying to tell them to back off would simply upset them in a way that just would create even more problems. So there's a part of me that thinks, okay I grew up with those parents and somehow, I managed to survive their stupidity and go on to adulthood in one piece - my nephew isn't stupid like my parents, surely he can figure this out the same way I did and perhaps learn something from the process. It is a big ask to expect my nephew to figure it all out without me interfering, but then again, did I have a kind uncle to try to save me from my autistic parents back in the day? No I didn't, I had to fight my own battles back then and at least my nephew has wonderful parents - he just has to deal with his grandparents that's all and perhaps it is awfully selfish of me to take a step back from this process, but I reckon this is one issue I'm not going to get involved in. He has to make up his own mind about how he feels about his grandparents and how he gets along with them - I'm not going to let my poor relationship with my parents colour his judgement about his grandparents. I do hope I'm doing the right thing.

Right now, I think that my sister and my brother-in-law are doing a great job as parents - they are not perfect but I think they're making an incredible effort. Quite frankly, the last thing they need is an uncle meddling, telling them what they ought to do or what they should be doing instead - that will only be annoying and unhelpful. No, I need to take a step back and recognize that they know what they are doing, trust them completely and be supportive if and when they do ask me for help. Heck, I remember this incident years ago, this was when I was coaching a gymnastics lesson - this idiot came up to me and started challenging me about what I was teaching - he was trying to tell me what to do, what I should be teaching instead. I had to very diplomatically tell him to fuck off, that I knew what I was doing, that I'm a former national champion who knows far more about gymnastics than he ever will - I was the expert and he was the amateur and even if he doesn't like what I am doing, he doesn't have the right to challenge me like this. Yeah, that's just how very annoyed I was - so imagine if someone went up to my sister and started telling her how she should be parenting her son. Oh boy, can you imagine just how much offence that would cause? I love and respect my sister enough to know when not to meddle, when I should simply trust her and take a step back. My sister has been a parent for 16 years and I am not a parent, so she clearly knows a lot more about parenting than me - so whilst I do have some ideas about what my nephew ought to be doing in order to, for example, nurture some of his social skills which will help him in the working world, I feel that I just don't have the right to start telling my sister what she should be doing. No, no, no. Thus I choose to back off (until the time is right) and no, it may not lead to the perfect outcome, but I think it is definitely the right decision.

I want to help but I don't want to upset anyone.

So that's it from me on this topic, thanks for listening and allowing me to get this all off my chest. What do you think? What kind of role should aunts and uncles play in the lives of their nieces and nephews? Is that role different from that of a parent and if so, in what way should it be different? Are you an aunt or an uncle and how involved do you get when it comes to nurturing your nieces and nephews? Do you ever worry that you're too harsh or that you're doing too little? How can we find a balance between the two? Can an uncle or aunt be more like a teacher or a coach or is that completely the wrong way to do it? What kind of mentor should an uncle or aunt be? Do you have an aunt or uncle that you look up to and have a great relationship with? Or perhaps you are an aunt or an uncle who has plenty of pearls of wisdom to share with me please? Leave a comment below and share your experiences please, many thanks for reading.