I Never Expected a Book on Parenting to Be My First One

I never expected a book on parenting to be my first one. Honestly, parenting wasn't even a subject I had imagined myself writing about. Mostly because... I had never really imagined parenting itself.

Before I became a father, I had opinions about parenting. The kind you have when you have never actually had to parent anyone. I thought patience was a personality trait. I thought routines were about discipline. I thought tantrums were something good parenting could somehow prevent. Then I became a father. And discovered that children have a remarkable ability to introduce you to versions of yourself you had never met before.

Then came the toddler years. And suddenly, every ordinary day contained enough material for several chapters. There were negotiations. So many negotiations. About food. Clothes. Baths. Bedtime. Leaving the house. Entering the house. And occasionally... whether the moon was allowed to follow us home.

There were arguments that made absolutely no sense to me... but complete sense to the tiny person having them. The banana broke. The blue cup was unacceptable. I opened the door she had specifically asked me to open. Her sock felt "wrong." I cut something that apparently should never have been cut. And somewhere in the middle of all this, I realised: Toddlers aren't irrational. Their world is simply very different from ours.

And then there were the emotions. Huge emotions. Inside such tiny bodies. Joy so enormous it could fill an entire room. Anger that arrived in seconds. Heartbreak because a biscuit broke. Fear over things I barely noticed. Love expressed through sticky hands around my neck. And suddenly I wanted to understand: What exactly is happening inside this little person?

But the more I watched my daughter... the more parenting started showing me things about myself. My patience. My impatience. My need for control. The things that triggered me. The expectations I carried without knowing where they came from. The strange guilt that arrives five minutes after losing your temper. And the promise you quietly make: Tomorrow, I'll do better.

Parenthood was funny like that. I entered it believing my job was to teach this little person how the world works. And then she started teaching me. How slowly children experience time. How intensely they feel. How quickly they forgive. How completely they trust. How much joy can exist inside bubbles, puddles, cardboard boxes and the same story read for the thirty-ninth time.

So I started writing things down. Not because I thought I was writing a book. Just because I didn't want to forget them. Questions. Observations. Things that made me laugh. Things that made me feel guilty. Things I wanted to understand better. Things I wished someone had explained to me before I became a parent.

And slowly, the questions changed. From: "How do I stop this tantrum?" to: "What is my child trying to tell me?" From: "How do I make her listen?" to: "Why is listening so difficult for her right now?" From: "What am I doing wrong?" to: "What does she actually need from me?" That change fascinated me. Because understanding changes everything.

Because somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing parenting as the job of controlling a tiny human. I began seeing it as the much harder job of understanding one. While simultaneously trying to understand yourself. And suddenly... there was a lot I wanted to write about.

So yes... I never expected a book on parenting to be my first one. But perhaps it makes sense. Because my writing has always begun with ordinary people, ordinary moments and the feelings hiding underneath them. And few things contain more of those than raising a child.

Somewhere between... the tantrums, the bedtime stories, the impossible negotiations, the questions, the messes, the guilt, the laughter, and the tiny victories nobody else ever sees... I started writing.

At first, they were just notes. Then there were more notes. Then pages. Then chapters. And somewhere along the way... they became something I never really planned to write. My first book. Apparently, some stories decide for themselves which one gets written first.

A note from Arjun

I never thought a book on parenting would be my first one.

Maybe because I never really thought of parenting as something I would write about.

Then came the toddler years.

The negotiations over food, clothes, baths, bedtime, broken biscuits, the “wrong” cup, the impossible logic, the enormous emotions… and all the small moments that somehow stayed with me long after the day was over.

So I started writing them down.

At first, just so I wouldn’t forget.

Then the questions changed. I stopped asking only, “How do I make this stop?” and started asking, “What is she trying to tell me?”

And somewhere between trying to understand my daughter and trying to understand myself, the notes became pages.

The pages became chapters.

And somehow… they became my first book. 🤍