I wanted to have a family of my own. My husband has three other siblings and I really enjoy the close knitted family he has. As an educator, I also really enjoyed teaching children!

It is rewarding to be able to inspire children and help them to believe in themselves. So raising children of my own felt like the natural next step.

Losing my sense of self and freedom. I was actually doing well as a teacher but had to turn down an overseas professional development opportunity because I was expecting my son.

At that moment, it felt like I had to give up a big part of my life just for my child.

In addition, I had less social interaction with others since I was mostly at home with him – I felt really alone without any other adults.

Thankfully, I still hung out with my teacher friends who also took no-pay leave from work at the same time as me, and I’m so grateful to them for keeping me sane!

After my maternity leave, I went back to teaching as a part-time teacher. But I felt that I was neither here nor there; at school, I was not able to take up roles that I was keen on and at home, I was not always present to witness my son’s milestones. In the end, I decided to take a few months of no-pay leave to stay at home with my children. Those few months became a few years and I eventually quit my job to be a SAHM.

It was honestly a tough decision to make but I realised my kids are only young once, and I can always return to teaching when they grow up.

I definitely struggled as a SAHM. I experienced an identity crisis because I was then known as “mama” instead of “Ms Liew”. It felt like my life was all about my baby. It’s not that I didn’t love my son – I just wanted to do something meaningful for myself.

After becoming “mama”, I realised that I’m just not the kind of person who can sit and do nothing all day. That’s when I started to do what I’m good at – teaching! I engaged my son in simple play activities, read up about early childhood development, started the @ourlittleplaynest Instagram account, and connected with many like-minded parents. My son became the only student in my class as I curated simple activities to engage him.

The decision to be a SAHM also impacted the other areas of my life – my social life, financial freedom, personal development etc. Socially, it was hard for me to hang out with friends and I often had to leave gatherings early because my son was very attached to me.

On the other end, when I saw my non-mum peers doing well in their teaching careers, being able to travel and hang out late during outings, I often questioned if I made the right decision.

But I never regretted my decision to become a SAHM. My children and I are very close now, and I attribute that to my showing up for them during their formative years. Since I was there for my son, he has improved so much in his social-emotional development. It was also because of him that I learnt about positive parenting, educated myself, and started coaching other parents who faced the same challenges as I did.

Having been a SAHM myself, I know it’s so hard.

SAHMs are on 24/7 shift work. They can’t take leave as and when they want, have no proper lunchtime, and their efforts are often not recognised.

Some people also think that it’s a “waste” to be a SAHM, especially for women who are educated. However, I feel that they are in a better position to make decisions about how they want to bring up their children because they are educated.

Our Little Play Nest is a community and platform for parents to learn about research-backed positive parenting strategies so that they can build trusting relationships with their children without yelling and punishing them.

It started as an Instagram account to document the play activities I curated for my children. That was also the period of time when I had difficulties getting my toddler to cooperate. I hated that I had to yell and threaten to get him to behave, so I attended courses to learn about children’s development and equip myself with knowledge in order to better connect with my child.

Marrying my decade-long teaching knowledge with parenting experience, I simplified the learnings for parents and conducted physical and virtual workshops. In my signature course From Yelling To Connecting and parenting membership Sprout, I journey closely with parents who want to break generational cycles as they learn how to parent with calmness and confidence.

What’s the meaning behind the name “Our Little Play Nest”?

I thought of “Play Nest” because the nest is the safest place for me to nurture and play with my children – just like for birds. During the SAHM days, it was mostly just me and my son, so it was just us hanging out at Our Little Play Nest every day.

Parenting is hard, and parenting alone is harder. I hope the community of like-minded parents here can seek support from one another. I also hope that we can change the narrative about discipline; discipline is not about controlling our children.

Instead, the long-term goal of discipline is to raise confident, resilient, and emotionally intelligent children. And the way to do that is not to put our kids through punishments, shame, or blame.

Many of us forget that our children’s brains are a work-in-progress. We expect them to manage their emotions well, not realising that they don’t have the capacity to do so – this is because our brains take time to grow! While we cannot rush brain development, what we can do is to equip our children with skills to help them manage life’s challenges. For instance, emotion regulation skills like breathing or counting to 10 when their favourite ice cream flavour runs out.

The challenge I faced was to parent my sensitive, strong-willed boy because I did not understand why he couldn’t be adaptable. He got worked up over seemingly small matters. But I soon learnt it was not his fault. I was the one doing him a disservice by not understanding that every child has their own temperament and personality. He is the reason why I started coaching parents – I want to speak up for children who are “difficult”.

These kids are not giving us a hard time – they are the ones having a hard time!

How do you usually discipline your kids?

Connection before correction! I join their world to understand what they are going through, listen to their stories, and then teach them why they should or should not behave in a certain way. I will present the issue as a problem that can be solved and guide them to brainstorm possible solutions within the boundaries.

It is hard for couples to have the same parenting styles as we are all brought up differently. But what they can do is talk about their parenting goals and check if their actions are aligned with the goals. For example, if you want your kids to be empathetic, are you being empathetic to your children?

Different parenting styles will not confuse children because they are very adaptable – they know who they can go to if they want to watch screen time, they know who they can turn to when they experience big emotions etc.

What about grandparents who undermine parents’ parenting? 

It is unfair to expect grandparents to change their parenting styles overnight since they have been raising us in their own different ways. Grandparents had limited access to research then, so they did their best with whatever resources they had.

We can speak respectfully to grandparents who tend to undermine parents’ parenting styles. If grandparents are open to reading or watching videos, you can send some over for them to read and learn. During moments when they disagree with the parents’ parenting, we can also respectfully tell them, “I will settle this” or “I can take over from here”.

If they are not receptive, we can model how it’s done so that they know exactly what to say and do. A parent in my course shared that her mother-in-law used her exact words to get the grandchildren to clean up their toys.

More is caught than taught. We can model the behaviour to help grandparents learn how to gain cooperation from the children.

With social media, parents are bombarded with more information than ever. This also means it’s easy to fall into the comparison trap. Many of us tend to compare our behind-the-scenes to others’ highlight reels and it is not healthy for our mental well-being. We see other parents as seemingly “having it all” but we don’t realise that they are struggling at some point too.

I hope parents can be discerning about the information they receive, make time to read from credible sources, and also focus on real life – fill your own cup, focus on your child, and be fully present with the family.

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