Growing up with five younger siblings gave me an early start in thinking about parenting. As a teenager, I began reflecting on how I would raise my kids, closely observing my parents’ methods and forming my own ideas. Over the last decade, I've further refined my parenting philosophy through reading various self-development, leadership, and parenting books. Interestingly, principles of good management often overlap with those of good parenting; both involve fostering growth, independence, and critical thinking.

My key pillars when it comes to raising kids:

• Develop executive function (decision-making and self-regulation)1

• Guide with advice, but allow space for independence

• Make the right thing the easy thing

• Encourage effort over innate ability

• Limit screen time (for the kid AND in front of the kid)

• Prioritize and build literacy skills (reading, speaking, writing)

• Model positive behavior

• Allow safe, natural consequences for learning

Many of these pillars you may have read about or heard about already if you have spent a lot of time reading parenting books or hanging out with parents. Today, I'll dive deeper into one specific pillar: prioritizing and building literacy skills.

In today’s digital world, where misinformation and distractions are everywhere, critical thinking and reasoning are essential skills. Literacy skills are foundational to developing these abilities. Toddlers have remarkable neuroplasticity2 —the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. Think of this like the compound effect of money: the sooner children learn to read, the more their skills and knowledge can grow. Early reading skills not only enhance vocabulary but also encourage a love for reading, which in turn develops stronger comprehension, writing, and critical thinking skills. As I’ve seen in my career, these skills are crucial for success in life. I would argue they are the most foundational of skills (along with motor skills).

Let’s use my (just turned 3 this past weekend!) daughter as an example on how we live this pillar. We parent her by doing the following:

• Early and Consistent Exposure to Language: We’ve been singing and talking to her since before she was born and consistently read books to her since she was a newborn. We also played audiobooks aloud, exposing her to as many diverse words as possible. Research shows that early exposure to both the quantity and quality of speech leads to greater vocabulary development.3

• Multilingual Environment: We expose Ayla to English, Cantonese, and Vietnamese. Bilingualism offers cognitive benefits, especially with languages that are structurally different.4 She recently started at a Mandarin-immersion Montessori preschool, which we hope will further enhance her language skills as she grows.

• Structured Phonics Learning: We started teaching Ayla the ChildrenReadingLearning Phonics Foundations Reading Program when she was around 2 years and 7 months old. Since young kids have short attention spans, we keep sessions to about 10 minutes daily (that said it is easy to miss a day or two from time to time though). It’s easiest to incorporate it as part of a routine, such as her wake up routine or her bedtime routine.

• Purposeful Screen Time: Her primary form of “screen time entertainment” for the past year (which we didn’t start until she was about 2) has been Khan Academy for Kids. We actively engage with her during these sessions to ensure she understands the activities. It's an excellent tool that she enjoys and finds challenging. Honestly, I am a fan. I am currently reading Salman Khan’s new book Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education.

It’s only been three years, so it’s hard to measure our success definitively, but we’ve noticed several positive signs:

• By 18 months, Ayla could say 150-200 words, far above the typical 20-50 words most children know at that age.

• By her third birthday, she knew all the letter sounds, could read some basic sentences, and often read words she encountered around her. For example, we went to Firebrand Bakery and she saw the TIPS jar (she didn’t know what tips are) and she successfully, on her own initiative, sounded out the word and correctly said it. Last night, she was working on QU words and she was able to read “squint” without assistance on her first time encountering the word. She can read some sentences too like “I just had a quiz.”. Even more amazing is watching her curiosity as she tries to read words she encounters in the wild, whether it’s on a can or on a book or on a sign. I definitely recommend ChildrenReadingLearning for any kid that’s learning to read. It’s old school but it works! The testimonials are pretty raving. There are kids reading at a 5th grade level by kindergarten after starting the program around 2.5 years old.

• She speaks cantonese regularly with her grandmother and english with everybody else (I have failed at teaching her vietnamese…. T_T )

We hope that by nurturing her love for reading early, Ayla will develop a stronger vocabulary, better reading comprehension, and critical thinking skills—factors that will enhance her learning ability and success throughout life.

Raising Ayla has been an ongoing journey of learning and adapting, much like any management role. I’m excited to continue sharing what I learn along the way!

Some of my recommendations for books and toys if you have a little one (will dive deeper in a future post):

Books:

How to talk so little kids will listen

Brain Rules for Baby

The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language

Usborne Phonics books (To read to the kids)

Programs and Toys / Play Kits:

ChildrenReadingLearning phonics program

Khan Academy for Kids

Lovevery Play Kits

KiwiCo Kits

I used to blog starting back in high school, whether it was via my personal xanga, via Facebook Notes or via Tumblr, or even my school newspaper (I wrote for both my high school and college school newspapers), writing publicly isn’t new to me. That said, it has been many years since I have posted to the wild and I’m excited to get back to it.

My first topic is introducing you to myself: Who is Sol Tran.

I plan to follow up with some of the following topics:

• My Engineering Management philosophy

• Building a software engineering career in the age of AI

• The Compounding Returns of Intelligence (a 3 part series:
  1. As a software engineer 2. On myself 3. On Parenting)

• Code Reviewing: How to review code effectively

• A Changing of the Guard: How boomers retiring is creating opportunity in SaaS

• Engineering Leveling: What I look for in each level

• Succeeding at becoming a Tech Lead

• The Cheatsheet for the first time Engineering Manager

• The 1 on 1. How to use this meeting to maximum impact

• The many flavors of Staff Engineer and the path to them

• Mistakes I have made as a Software Engineering Manager

• How to execute on a long roadmap as an EM

• Ship Fast and NOT breaking things (how to use monitoring to ensure things don’t stay broken)

• Building a robust Job Framework that supports today’s engineering infrastructure needs

• 7 Fundamental beliefs that I hold that guide my life

• Parenting in the upcoming age of AI

  Some topics I want to cover that just would be fun to, but I probably won’t get to for a while :)

• How to become an Airbnb Superhost and why I quit

• Being a Landlord: How it’s been like for me and what flavor of landlord are you

This list will continue to grow, even as I write more because the topics to write on are endless. The world is dynamic and always changing. Most of what I write will be software engineering related, but it’ll expand into parenthood (given I am a father), personal growth, and more. I am a huge sports fan and also follow the markets, so you may see some thoughts on those fronts as well.

So who is Sol Tran. There’s many flavors to man. High level, I have been in Software Engineering for the past 11+ years, managing engineers in 4+ of them. I have managed individuals across the spectrum from EMs and Staff engineers all the way to new grads and interns. My career has spanned from being a Founding Engineer/first hire at ShipHawk to architecting the API/UI layer of a transition to a new cloud platform for Rubrik to being Director of Engineering at the premier NFT company in the world (Yuga Labs, aka the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club).

You can say I have experience scaling up startups, particularly in the SaaS and web3 space.

What am I up to right now? I am exploring opportunities and looking to discover the next chapter of my career. I am also tinkering on some startup ideas, particularly around SaaS and exploring generative AI.

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