The Book of Life

Cliched as it may sound the past 1 year has been spent unraveling the book of life. Preparing to being a parent and being a parent has been the most intense experience ever, changing so many perceptions I had about myself and others. The last 6 months were spent on getting the physicality of it all in place, from being scared to pick up my child I am today at a place where I don't get overwhelmed by the biology running that little body. I thought the learning had happened, till yesterday some discussion on pre-schools with friends happened and people presumed the kind of school I would send my child to basis some random jokes I had made. But Freud does say there are no slip ups and nothing is random.
That set me thinking what kind of parent I wanted to be, to be fair I had thought about that earlier but they were just hypothetical thoughts without an idea what the subject would be like. Now all of them seemed null and void. I definitely did not want to be the parent whose 2 year old runs havoc at a friend's place because that is me disrespecting the friend. But I did not want to be the pushy, authoritarian disciplinarian who throttles creativity, curiosity and free thinking. 12 hours of intense thinking and I have a few guidelines and intentions:

1. Teach my son to be respectful not submissive or reverential but treating everyone with the respect that he expects.
2. Expose him to as many things that I can: Sports, culture, places, people, music, art, books, horse riding, deep sea diving, puppetry etc etc etc, things I did not know existed.
3. Teach him to take responsibility of consequences: He needs to learn that every action has a reaction and there is no escaping the consequence
4. Letting him know that he is loved, that I love him more than anything else and together we can figure anything out. Building mutual trust.Having what I have with my parents, he needs to know that sharing things with me will make it better.
5. Not letting his natural curiosity get doused out because I feel lazy or under some pressure.
6. Being Courageous: This is a raw nerve he needs to learn to be courageous and stand up for what he believes in
6. Finally I am his role model, I can have all the guidelines possible but he will do as he sees me do, so everything I do and say moulds my son to be the person he will become.

Since this the blogonbooks, I am searching for a few books that may help me. Will keep this space updated on that.