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“How was work?”: a father-son journal

Syauqi started his own Fly Guy book. Halfway, it became a notebook where he and Daddy wrote to each other.

Syauqi, our eldest, has never liked writing storybooks. He doodles all the time, everywhere, but rarely finishes a piece. This little book is one of the few he kept going with, and one of the rare journals he and Daddy shared.

He loved the Fly Guy books, so he started his own copy, in his own words and his own pencil drawings. It is fan-made, his own retelling, made at home. The book itself is the blank backs of used printed sheets, taped together and tied with a piece of plastic string. On the cover he wrote "Prince Syauqi Muhammad", with a crown.

Half a story, half a journal

The book ended up as two things at once. On one page Daddy wrote: "Assalamualaikum, this is daddy. Write a message for me here:". Syauqi answered in red: "How was work?", dated Thursday, 12 September.

Daddy replied the next day with a cartoon of himself striding from the Singapore flag to the Malaysian one, a bus on the road behind him. Beside it he wrote that work was "ok and fun, running up and down malaysia and singapore is also fun but sometimes tiring", and asked Syauqi to tell him about school on the next page. Syauqi did, and that page stays in the family.

In the Fly Guy half, Buzz finds a name for his fly, gives him a hot dog bun for lunch, plays with him and takes him swimming: "It is swiming time. Fly guy enjoed swiming."

We think this was 2013, when Syauqi was nine.

A worn home-made booklet tied with a plastic strap, with a crown and the owner's name written in purple pen.

A journal page: a child's question in red pen and Daddy's reply in blue pen, with Daddy's cartoon of himself striding from the Singapore flag to the Malaysia flag.

Why we kept it

We try to raise our children from their strengths, and without judging. Syauqi did not want to write stories, so we worked with what he did enjoy: a book he loved, and drawing. Notes like these, along with the talks we have out loud and the doodles we leave for each other, are also how we check on how each child is really doing.

A parent can try this with any notebook. Write a short question on one page, sign it, and leave the next page empty for an answer.

Fly Guy is a picture-book series by Tedd Arnold. Syauqi's pages are a child's fan-made copy, shown here as his work.

Half a story, half a journal

Why we kept it

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