Category: Dad Life

Being a parent is hard. It’s also rewarding, fun, tiring, expensive, and I wouldn’t change it for the world!… but it can be really overwhelming to have so much responsibility. You spend every single day making decisions for this tiny human who has no conception of what he’s doing most of the time, he’s just having fun, or chilling out, or eating strawberries (but only the little ones!), or wrestling his Dad, or pointing at “a wee ant!”, and all the other things these tiny humans do whilst they learn how their world works. Meanwhile, if he farts and you giggle, you’ve set him up to think farts are funny. It’s a minefield!

We have been mindful of screen time with Jack as he grows up – it helps that he prefers being out and about rather than indoors most of the time – and, even when the TV is on, it’s mostly just background noise whilst he plays with his trains. He does love a Pixar movie though, which means that so far we’ve avoided CocoMelon and Peppa Pig… phew.

One day, when Jack was still a baby, able to sit up but not much more, we’d been watching TV and noticed he was starting to look at it, all the colours and movement no doubt catching his eye. Intrigued I started looking for something that might be better for him and stumbled across a show on Disney about a cartoon dog called Bluey.

And so it began.

I’d seen Bluey mentioned before in passing, no doubt on Instagram or Twitter, but hadn’t watched it. By the end of the first episode I was engrossed and as Jack has grown he’s started to enjoy it too. Interestingly his two favourites are….

Hang on, before I get into that, let me explain a little bit about Bluey for those who have yet to experience this wonderfully silly and sentimental show.

Bluey is a dog who lives with her sister, Bingo, and her Mum and Dad (Chilli and Bandit). The live in Melbourne. They have a house and a garden, and are (I’m guessing) a fairly typical middle-class family. The show centres mostly on the two girls as they play with their Mum and Dad, but frequently takes a little detour into the thoughts and moments their parents are experiencing. As a parent I can confirm that they get most of this stuff absolutely spot on.

Suffice to say that Becca and I have both shed happy, sentimental tears more than once. We have also laughed and giggled and right now it’s definitely in my top 10 TV shows EVER. It really is that good. Even if you aren’t a parent I think there is a lot to take from it, and most of the episodes are only 7 mins long so if nothing else it’s a nice way to slob through an hour or so on the sofa.

Anyway, back to my boy… there are two episodes he loves, neither of which have much in the way of dialogue or complex storyline. One is Handstand which focuses on Bingo trying to do a handstand, the other is Rain which has no dialogue at all. Both of them offer the same lessons though, to keep trying when you are doing something new, and for parents to forget about being the parent for a while when their kids are around.

They are wonderfully cleverly crafted animations, Handstand is a clever looping of events in the background, Rain is a much simpler idea beautifully sound tracked. There is a calming effect to these episodes, a simple focus that I really hope Jack is picking up on.

As for the rest of Bluey, the Dad gets things wrong and apologises, the Mum gets some much needed reassurance that she’s doing a good job, and more recently there was a 28 minute episode that makes me tear up just thinking about.

Of course the show isn’t a mirror to our own parenting approach but it’s not all that far from how we try and be for Jack. The show deals with large themes in smart and heartwarming ways, a lot of which the kids watching won’t even understand fully but you get the sense that even they will understand that there is some significance to the moment that passes between Chilli and Bandit when, during a ‘play’ the girls are doing, a balloon that is thrust up a t-shirt to act as a pregnant bump pops too soon.

I mention all of this purely because it’s a wonderful show that never fails to entertain me. I am also enjoying other TV shows – Ripley, Dark Matter, Palm Royale, The Bear – but Bluey is the one that is resonating the most as a father. There is a reason that there are so many mentions of the show on Instagram, with most of them being takes on ‘when you realise you are still watching Bluey even though your child went to bed an hour ago’.

Bluey, give it a shot, whether you have kids or not, I almost guarantee you won’t be disappointed!

Plus, “Aaah, Biscuits!” is the best non-swear swear I’ve heard for ages!

It’s early Sunday morning, it’s been a ‘night’ and my plans for Sunday were looking a bit rocky. I was up early, drinking a coffee and going over all this in my head. I felt conflicted, and a bit desolate as I couldn’t seem to find a good solution. It’s something I’ve noticed creeping into my thoughts more and more when it comes to pretty much anything to do with my son and my wife. I am old enough to be wise enough (which isn’t all that much) to know that there is rarely a clear path when life throws up the little hiccups it seems to enjoy.

A quick summary then:

• Dad guilt: my son woke up on Saturday night at midnight and was wheezing and crying and threw up (a little, just cos he was coughing). He wanted his Mum, so she “slept” on the floor with him next to her last night. She was up at 5am to go to work. She was already exhausted, now this.
• Friend guilt: I convinced my mate to sign up to cycle 55 miles at Etape Caledonia. I got injured, couldn’t train, so he’s doing it solo. His first cycling event. Ugh.

The plan on Sunday morning was for my mother-in-law (AKA Granny Morna) to stay over and look after Jack while Becca is at work, so I can head up to Pitlochry to surprise my mate at the finish line. But if he’s ill, despite the fact he went back to sleep ok, he still lost a couple of hours of sleep so at best I thought he’d be a tired and grumpy, at worst he was getting ill again. The revised plan was to let him sleep as long as he needed and take it from there, and trust that he’d be ok so I should head off to Pitlochry. He normally gets up between 7 and 7:30, but we thought we’d let it go to 8:30.

My train was at 8:20am, so I would have to leave the house at 8:10 at the latest to get the train.

Now, I know mother-in-law can handle a tired toddler (she raised two kids of her own after all) but if he was ill then I decided to cancel going to Pitlochry. I wanted to be there to help.

My problem was that, if I wanted to get to Pitlochry in time to catch my mate finishing the cycle event, then I’d have needed to leave before he woke up so I had no way of seeing how he was when he woke. Becca was convinced he would be fine, but without seeing it for myself I knew I would just feel awful if I’d taken off and then it turned out he was ill.

After all, my plans were optional. It was going to be a nice thing to do for my friend (he’s one of the 3 I’ve had for 30 years!) and it would mean a lot to me to support him. Plus he didn’t even know about it as it was to be a surprise so I figured that while I’d be personally disappointed, my mate would’ve been none the wiser.

There I sat, going over all the scenarios in my mind (I know, I know) and then a noise from upstairs. Jack was awake! 7:20am. I went upstairs and he was sitting there, smiling at me as I knelt down next to him. I asked him if he wanted to come downstairs with me and he throw his arms up ready for me to pick him up. He seemed fine, he was fine! I made his breakfast, fed the dogs, Granny Morna came down and that got even bigger smiles from Jack and then, content that he was fine I announced that was going out (technically I said I was ‘going to work’ cos he seems to accept that when either one of his parents has to leave the house). He said ‘bye bye Daddy’ and we waved at each other through the window as I walked down the garden path.

On the train to meet another friend who was going to drive us up to Pitlochry, I sat and pondered how I get my head around making decisions when there doesn’t seem to be a ‘good’ one to make. Logically I can tell myself that sometimes making the decision is the only thing you can do, and then adjust to the consequences. Logically I can tell myself that the vast majority of the time, no matter what scenarios I think through, by and large things work out just fine. Logically.

But I still felt guilty. Guilty that Becca ended up sleeping on the floor, when it was me who went through when Jack first cried out. Guilty that Morna might not have a great morning with Jack and it would be a struggle (even though he seemed fine). Guilty that Becca would have Jack until I got home mid-afternoon and she does so much.

Logically, again, I can tell myself that I’m a good Dad. I do what I can, when I can. I spend time with him as much as I can. I work full-time but start super-early just so I can make it home in enough time to play with him after dinner, before bed. I look after him on Saturday and Sunday mornings when Becca is working, I love him more than anything in this entire world.

But that guilt, wow it weighs heavy. And whilst I know all of this will pass, and that whilst he has yet another ear infection and we will have another week or so of struggling to get him to take his antibiotics, that too will pass.

It’s probably been the hardest part of learning how to bring up our son. Always the feeling of doing more for him, doing things differently, learning and growing whilst I fumble from day to day. I’m bad for not setting time aside for myself but right now this is the most important thing I’ll ever do, so why do I need time for me? Why shouldn’t I concentrate every spare minute I have on our amazing child? Thankfully my wife keeps me in check but that also brings a level of guilt, that she is having to ‘mother’ me as well when she was so so much to think about all the time!

The title of this blog wasn’t an accident. I am very happy, and very aware of my imperfections, and whilst I don’t settle with them, I do sit with them, study them and try and find ways to improve upon them to at least iron them a little flatter, file the sharp edges a little more every day. It’s been my mindset for a long time now. And having Jack arrive in our lives brought it into sharp focus, all those little things I didn’t like about myself, not the big scary horrible things, but the ones I notice but let slide because they weren’t hurting anyone (else), suddenly become things that I could pass on to my son.

So I strive to be better, and yesterday that meant sitting with all those guilty feelings and understanding them. shrinking them down to what they actual were, feeling them get smaller and smaller until they disappeared.

There will be more times like these, but I am more and more confident of being able to navigate them, of showing up and dealing with them with an assurance in my own mind that I will do the right thing most of the time. And when I don’t? I’ll apologise, learn, and it’ll be better next time.

Not easy but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

It was probably a few months before he was born that I really started to read up on the various aspects of what being a parent would mean. We bought books, read them in-depth, made notes and held study sessions so ensure we absorbed every morsel of information we could.

Except we didn’t do that. We did attend a couple of courses – hypnobirthing (which wasn’t what it sounds like), and an NCT ante-natal course – all online of course as we were still in the end days of COVID. I did read a fair few articles as I tried to get a grasp on what being a Dad would be like though, with the aim of mentally preparing myself, particularly because I’m an older Dad and I wanted to get some shared experiences if at all possible.

One thing that we both, naturally, gravitated towards was the idea of gentle parenting.

As a child I was spanked once, I think. I don’t remember it, but it was talked about in semi-hushed tones with my parents for years as it was such an outlier. That said, I was brought up in the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ world so a lot of my behaviours were to be still and quiet, rather than act out and be wild. It likely explains why my ‘go to’ as an adult is still to be quiet and alone.

For our son we were both keen to make sure he was brought to up to understand his own emotions, to be able to process them and have some tools to deal with that himself. That is what we think of when we discuss ‘gentle parenting’. It doesn’t mean we aren’t strict, we hold boundaries where needed, and it doesn’t mean he gets to do whatever he wants, we have worked hard to get a good routine in place around eating and sleeping, and we are proud that he’s growing well, eating healthily, and sleeping consistently well. It has not been easy to get here but this was part of what we were aiming for.

For me, a feminist bringing up a boy, gentle parenting was especially important as I want my son to understand his privilege and help him learn how to conduct himself appropriately. I’ve written about this before and taking the approach that gentle parenting embodies was key in helping me understand HOW to raise my son to be a good man.

There are many definitions of gentle parenting but one of the early exponents of the phrase itself, said this:

“Gentle Parenting is a way of being, it is a mindset. It’s not about how you wean your baby, or what type of education you chose. It’s not new, it’s not trendy. Gentle parents come from all walks of life, all ages, all ethnicities and most don’t even realise that their style of parenting has been given a new name, it’s just the way they have always been.”

Sara Hockwell-Smith

Becca and I, when we were discussing the types of things we’d have to handle as parents, quickly realised that we were both of a similar mind and, without even having heard the term, were destined to be ‘gentle parents’. That’s likely as much to do with our upbringing and world view as anything, but it means we are able to be consistent with Jack as he grows, that we have empathy for everything he is going through (all the new things he is learning, so much going on every single day!), we respect his feelings and moods (some days he just doesn’t want to go out, so we don’t), we do our best to understand what is going on for a boy his age and factor that in to our thinking, and we hold boundaries through the routines we’ve worked hard to implement (he always brushes his teeth before he has his bath before he goes to bed each night).

It’s not always been easy, but we are determined to give him the best start to life that we can and we believe giving him the emotional capacity he will need as he grows, will give him confidence in himself, and he too will be able to show empathy, understanding, respect and hold boundaries with others when needed.

Throughout this amazing past 2 and a half years, I’ve learned so much about what it takes to be a good Dad, and more importantly I’ve learned so much about myself and all of that is down to gentle parenting. I know I have always been empathetic to others and saught to understand and respect other people but the depth of those emotions have grown since Jack came along and, I think, the more I can understand those feelings within myself, the better an example and father I can be.

And THAT’S why I believe in our gentle parenting approach and, so far, the proof is in the pudding and we have a thoughtful, kind, silly, curious little boy who likes hanging out with his Mummy and Daddy. We have tantrums that we deal with, we have behaviours (hitting) that we calmly assert aren’t acceptable and then ask why he’s hitting, and we talk about all of our feelings, sadness, happiness, love, and don’t shy away from any of our emotions as a family.

When I read about people saying gentle parenting is ‘soft’ and ‘taking it easy’ on the child, I’d suggest they think about how hard it is to remain calm, and consistent, every single day. How much effort it takes to figure out and understand what my toddler is going through, and how it translates to a boy who loves snuggling and cuddling, rather than a terror who is kicking and fighting when he gets tired.

Gentle parenting is hard, it is tough, but I firmly believe it’s the best way to raise a child, to give them a grounding that they can take with them as they grow and mature, into adulthood where the hope is that they’ll be able to handle themselves and their emotions in what is becoming an increasingly negative and hated filled world.

We give our son love, we make sure he knows he is safe and cared for, in the hope that he will expouse those simple virtues to everyone he comes into contact with as he makes his way in the world.

That’s our gentle parenting. What’s yours?