It's been a challenge keeping my temper in check. He is trying me everyday, each and every request is met with a resistant. "Taufik, put on your pyjamas now please." I hear the exasperation in my voice. I find myself repeating the request. I find myself sounding like a nag. And I dislike it so.

I am at a loss. What do I do? How can I change this vicious cycle Taufik and I are in? I need to be more patient, and at times I am most patient, I just need to be more patient consistently, persistently.

Mornings and afternoons, are drives from and to school are such a joy. My son is not running around, and refusing to do something. If there are any arguments at all, it's the two of us negotiating on the storytelling for the day.

Him requesting for a story to be told, me saying that I am tired. Or I would say, "just one story" to which he would happily agree. But now for some time, he has volunteered to tell me stories. It took a lot of encouragement, and it began since he first started school, last year in September. Two months short of a year ago. I coaxed him into telling me a story before I told him a story. In the beginning the story was just "There was a cat, and the cat died." But now we have to progressed to proper stories with plots, twists and character development. The fat old tiger, the hungry lion, the silly frog...fought, hit, killed, stabbed...yeah pretty violent stories. Inspired by the hunter killing the big bad wolf with his knife to get grand mother and little red riding hood out. Not to mention the terrible boiling big bad wolf had when he tried to clamber down the pig's chimney in three little pigs.

He tells me such colourful stories. Such imaginative stories. And I am happy to see all our story telling sessions and chats paying off. All that talking, has finally culminated in the imaginative child that Taufik is.