Staying Close to My Boys — A Father's Quiet Promise
This is not a post about technology or education. This is about something I think about late at night, when the house is quiet and the boys are asleep.
How do I stay close to them?They are growing up fast. The years when they would climb onto my lap and ask me to read the same story five times — those years are already behind us. Now they have their own friends, their own interests, their own world that I am not always part of.
And that is how it should be. But it does not stop me from wanting to be there.
The Kitchen Table
In Singapore, homework time is one of the few hours when a parent and child still sit together. Not watching a screen, not rushing to the next activity — just sitting side by side, working through problems.
I know some parents dread it. The arguments over careless mistakes, the frustration when they do not understand something you have explained three times. I have been there too.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing it as a chore and started seeing it for what it really is — time together.
My older boy does not tell me much about his day anymore. He is at that age. But when we sit down with his maths paper and work through a problem, something opens up. He lets his guard down. He asks questions. Sometimes, between problems, he tells me about something funny that happened at school.
Those moments are everything to me.
They Will Not Need Me Forever
I know there will come a day when my boys will not need my help with their schoolwork. They will figure things out on their own, or ask a friend, or search online. That is the goal of parenting — to make yourself unnecessary.
But I am not ready to rush there.
Every evening I spend going through their mistakes with them, every explanation I help them understand, every small victory when something finally clicks — those are deposits into a relationship that I hope will last long after the homework stops.
I do not want to be the father who was always busy. I do not want to be the father they remember as a voice saying "Go ask your mother" or "I will look at it later."
I want to be the father who was there. At the table. Patient. Present.
Why I Built Something to Help
I built Lion City Scholar because I wanted our homework time to be better — not shorter, but better. Less frustration, more understanding. Less "Why did you get this wrong again?" and more "Oh, I see — you confused this with that. Let me show you."
When the AI explains a mistake clearly, it takes the tension out of the room. I am no longer the one telling them they are wrong. Instead, we are looking at the explanation together. We are on the same side.
That shift changed everything.
My younger boy used to shut down when he got something wrong. Now he photographs the mistake himself and reads the explanation before I even sit down. He comes to me and says, "Papa, I understand already, but can you check?"
He still wants me there. He is just not afraid of the mistakes anymore.
What I Am Really Building
People ask me about Lion City Scholar — the technology, the AI, the business. And those things matter.
But if I am honest, what I am really building is more evenings at the kitchen table with my boys.
I am building a reason for them to come to me. A way to be useful in their lives, even as they need me less. A bridge between who they are now and who they will become — with me walking beside them for as long as they will let me.
To Other Fathers
If you are reading this, and you have young children, I want to tell you something that I wish someone had told me earlier:
The homework is not the point. The sitting together is the point.One day, they will not need help with fractions or science diagrams. But they will remember that you were there. They will remember that you were patient, that you tried, that you showed up every evening even when you were tired.
That is the legacy I want to leave my boys. Not an app, not a company — just the memory of their father, sitting beside them, helping them learn.
And if a piece of technology can give us a few more of those evenings — a little less frustration, a little more connection — then it was worth every line of code.