Baby Windsor and the ‘Twit’ of Auburn

The pregnancy announcement last month and, in particular, the news that Kate Middleton-as-was had gone into hospital for morning sickness treatment from “her main doctor and the royal gynaecologist” started me wondering about likely differences between my kids’ childhoods and that of the current-foetus/future-ruler. (It seemed my wife didn’t even have a ‘main’ doctor during the births, never mind the pregnancies… and when she had morning sickness she got off the train to vom, then carried on to work.) So, as and when note-worthy comparisons arise, I’ll cobble a post together.

Before I start, these aren’t “silver-spoon… look what they’ve got, aren’t they lucky?” thoughts. I certainly wouldn’t wish on my children the constant attention and long-range pixelated-boob-shots that the Royals have to put up with. I’m interested in the way different experiences shape people’s view of the world. I care very much about the opinions my children grow-up holding and I think we’ve all got a vested interest in how Baby-Widdleton turns out (even if you think it’s a purely ceremonial position, you’d surely rather avoid any future international embarrassment from, say, another Prince Philipish casual-racist).

[For complete transparency, it’s worth stating now that this Royals vs Suburbanites framework may not actually turn into a series. It might turn out just to be a one-off, purely used on this occasion to provide some structural credibility for a story about the word ‘twat’…]

Windsor child comparison #1: Appreciation of live sport

Prince William likes his sport. You often see him in the good seats at big rugby matches. And he did a great deal for our fruitlessly-uncorrupt 2018 football World Cup bid. So no-doubt he’ll be taking his first-born to his/her first game when they’re old enough. As I did. Though I doubt the experience will have much similarity...

I took my little girl to watch Huddersfield Town FC for the first time a few weeks ago. Away at Charlton Athletic. Everyone knows language can be a bit industrial at football but, for her first visit, she unfortunately experienced a perfect storm of swearing.

At kick-off there was a big argument around us between all the lads stood up behind the goal and all the people sat behind who subsequently couldn’t see. The bloke right next to me was shouting at the top of his voice, spit flying. My little girl looked at me, wide-eyed and exclaimed “Everybody’s swearing!” In the end it got to that point where even I - who believes that there’s some environments, this being one of them, where people shouldn’t be frowned-upon too much for dropping the odd sweary-bomb - had to ask the guy to tone-down his language… then, after half-an-hour, one of our players got sent off and even I was up on my feet effing! (I don’t want my daughter to think foul language should be encouraged, but he clearly got the ball).

All this didn’t concern me too much. Anyone who thinks they can protect their kids from hearing swear words once they’re going to school is dreaming. My daughter knows of “f*ck” and “sh*it”, but she knows they’re bad words and that, as she wisely pointed out to me during the game, “people shouting them look like idiots”. Unfortunately, she then learned a new word… a bloke behind us shouted “linesman, you ginger twat”. My daughter, not knowing what it meant but clearly liking the sound, jumped to her feet, pointed and shouted “ginger twat, ginger twat, ginger twat”. Everyone around us creased-up laughing (including the bloke next to me – credit to him for not asking me to tone-down my daughter’s language). I had to tell her it was a bad word. She was mortified – gasping and covering her mouth with both hands – which happily gave me some confidence that I wouldn’t soon be getting a call from her teacher telling me she’d dished out slurs to a crowded classroom (and so far, so good).

Anyway, the point is, you probably don’t get exposed to that language quite as much in, say, the hospitality seats at rugby union. But, on the other hand, you probably miss out on the occasional moment of highly-concentrated euphoria…

With 90 minutes up and the team 0-1 down, Huddersfield got a penalty right in front of us. (No one complained when everyone stood up at that point.) I picked my daughter up so she could see. She shouted “Kick it in the net”. Our player duly did. The stand erupted and my little girl repeatedly shouted in my ear, “YEEEESSS! I TOLD HIM TO KICK IT IN THE NET!!!” She was pleased as punch and I’m pretty sure she’ll never forget her first match - and the belief that she deserved an assist on the equaliser for her tactically-masterful suggestion.

Upon leaving, I could see the benefits of a Royal lifestyle. I was around the protocol lounge of the Olympic Stadium at the end of the Games Closing Ceremony* and saw Kate & Prince Harry being whisked away to their waiting escorted car. After her first match my little girl had the luxury of riding on my shoulders out of the ground, but then the luxury-lacking experience of waiting on a crowded platform to get on to a palpably overcrowded train.

Conclusion

I think it’s great that the wee Windsor is likely to appreciate sport and witness some great moments around the world. Always being in the expensive, non-partisan seats will probably mean he/she never quite experiences the atmosphere of a consistently unheroic team’s packed stand when, with only 10-men, they equalise in the last minute… but that’s just a cross they’ll have to bear. (Although, unless I somehow end up the kind of man who gets chauffeured away from things in waiting escorted cars, my daughter might also miss the odd last-minute winner in my later years when, as a grumpy old man, I decide I’d rather go 5 minutes early than plod slowly through the crowds.) 

While I like the idea of the future monarch being ‘one of us’ and having sat in the away end at Charlton or Millwall (or, quaintly, stood at Brentford), I don’t believe you miss a huge insight into society by not experiencing this – just occasionally watch the footy on mute with Shameless playing loudly on your laptop in the background.  

From watching sport with me, my daughter will probably grow up with increased patience in slow-moving large crowds, increased tolerance of being in close proximity to badly-articulated angry shouts and reduced fussiness about pie quality. I think these are solid traits… however, they probably aren’t that useful if you’re the queen or the king.

* “Oh fucking were you?”

Learned Wisdoms

#48: If you tell your mother-in-law a story about your daughter having used the word twat and she pauses for a moment then asks you, “What does twat mean anyway?”, I can confirm that - when giving an explanation that offers no escape from use of the word ‘vagina’ - going very red may be uncomfortable but feels totally appropriate

#49: If it becomes clear that your mother-in-law isn’t aware of the meaning of the word twat, in fact having thought it to be “interchangeable with the word twit” and having actually “been using it all over the village”, don’t assume this is amusingly uncommon. When you jovially tell your sister, you might be told “Our mum & dad thought exactly the same, I had to break it to them that it was swearing”

#50: Your wife will never give you a hard time about taking your daughter to the coarsely-languaged environment of a football stadium once she’s indulged their shared love of dance by showing her Billy Elliott, aware that it’s a 15 certificate, but having forgotten just how incredibley sweary it is

Musical Differences

I like music. (Yes... these are the kind of intimate truths I reveal in this blog. Hold on tight.) So do both my children. They dance a lot and both have distinctive and hilarious moves, so it's fun to have music on as often as possible. The problem is, what to listen to? Generally a 33 yr old seems to have quite different taste to a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old. And there's a very small sweet spot of tunes that they like to dance to that don't make me want to push my fingers into my ears until they touch.

The be fair, my default musical type is melancholic acoustic folk, which never moved a person to dance (other than metaphorically through a lonely, existential malaise) so I was always going to have to visit the outlying regions of my taste to find tracks that ticked all our boxes.

Similarly, my 4 yr old girl's natural bent wasn't helping our cause. JLS Breathe Again got a lot of airtime in our house before I just had to tell her that we couldn't play it any more. Because the boys who sang it were sad that we always had it and they never got to listen to it. (Don't judge me until you've listened to it ten times in a row.)

We've since hit on a pretty steady stream of tunes that we all like and which stimulate a bit of dancing fun. Unfortunately nearly every tune we agree on seems to contain some level of inappropriate content. 
Out of habit, respect for the way the artist intended it to be heard, or just because I subconsciously really like naughty words, I never remember to click on 'clean version' when buying. This has effectively sentenced me to ten years of hastily making-up similar-sounding clean lyrics and singing them loudly over the offending words. Every time. (Sooner or later, one of the kids is going to ask me why so many songs have a duck in them, or why tractors never get a mention yet people often sing about diggers.)

Here's just a small sample of our favourites from the last couple of years:

Mumford & Sons - Little Lion Man

-- Sample lyric change

"I really mucked it up this time, didn't I my dear?" 

[Easy rhyme. Plausible lyric. No problem]

-- Typically-induced moves

Little girl: Soldiery-style marching at increasing pace; leads into frantic banjo-driven twirling & flailing

Little boy: Knees bent, leaning forward, feet rooted to the spot, clenched fists, doing a frantic 'the twist' motion with arms and bum

Katy Perry - Last Friday Night

-- Sample lyric change
"We went peeking in the park; 
lots of skipping in the dark; 
then had an apricot bar" 
[More challenging rhyming. Strange-but-believable-ish-when-you're-4 lyrics]

-- Typically-induced moves
Little girl: Non-stop spinning around. Falling down dizzy
Little boy: Knees bent, leaning forward, feet rooted to the spot, clenched fists, doing a frantic 'the twist' motion with arms and bum [Why change a winning formula?]

Nicki Minaj - Super Bass

-- Sample lyric change
"This one is for the boys in the polos; Riding their diggers in the moguls" 
[Easy-ish rhyme. Makes very little sense, but no questions have been raised as-yet]

-- Typically-induced moves
Little girl: One hand on hip, one hand in hair, gyrating turns
Little boy: Knees bent, leaning forward, feet rooted to the spot, clenched fists, doing a frantic 'the twist' motion with arms and bum [Doesn't work at all... at least he's enjoying himself]


Azealia Banks - 212
-- Sample lyric change
"I guess that bun getting eaten" 
[Doesn't rhyme with the original word, but solid lyric and scans fairly well. Has side-effect that we do now tend to buy more buns]

... by the way, admittedly I sometimes zone-out and 'enjoy the sound' rather than properly listening to the lyrics, but how did I not notice that this was in no-way child appropriate??
-- Typically-induced moves
Little girl: Lots and lots and lots of wiggling
Little boy: Knees bent, leaning forward, feet rooted to the spot, clenched fists, doing a frantic 'the twist' motion with arms and bum [Starting to worry about him a little bit]


Learned Wisdoms
#36: Just because the singer's got a Mickey Mouse t-shirt on doesn't mean absolute filth won't come out of her mouth. You should really notice this before your little girl has hit replay video for the third time.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Occasionally. Just Occasionally. I’ll be a bit jealous of the lifestyle my non-child-having friends enjoy. Both the flexibility and possibility of spontaneous-ism. And also the disposable income. 

Our combined salaries apparently put us in the top two per cent of UK households. But once you add time constraints and subtract childcare costs/all the things we buy for the kids/saving for their future education it results in 90% less ski trips, 100% more £5-limits on work-day lunches and infinitely less moonwalking-across-the-deck-of-a-yacht-moored-in-St-Tropez than I foresaw at these income levels.

However, human adaptability means we all get used to the patterns of our lives and quickly take things in our routine for granted, leaving evolutionary psychologists to say that happiness largely comes from "encountering unexpected positive events". So for Kanye West to feel sensationally happy he has to fly to Paris on a private jet full of Victoria’s Secret models. All it takes for me to achieve rapture is opening the kitchen bin to find I can drop my rubbish in it without having to first squish-down overflowing contents with my hands. Poor, poor Kanye West.

Plus fatherhood is getting more rewarding as the kids develop. My little girl is 4 now and is starting to be mildly hilarious (my little boy isn’t yet 2, but does a good line in facial expressions and energetic Scrappy-Doo-style assault). Conversations with other parents are also getting better. Where it was all monotonous patter about feeding cycles, behaviour-control techniques and how tired everyone is, there’s now lots of anecdotes about genuinely funny things that have happened. Ok, it’s not always as funny as days-gone-by chat with your friends about drunken antics/sexual encounters/accidental puffin slaughter, but it’s entertaining stuff. Recent examples:

- Friend tells us that her teacher called her to say there was a problem with her child’s language. Friend says “Oh bugger. What has she said?” Teacher replies “Bugger”

- Wife tells me to stop being facetious. Daughter gasps, lowers voice and says “Don’t say that. The police will get you. It’s a bad word… like f*ck-it or oh-sh*t”

- Sis-in-law finds 3 yr old son playing with huge kitchen knife. Goes spare at husband for letting him get hold of it. He later tells me that he walked past, saw tooled-up lad and – through a haze of pre-occupation, tiredness and just being very used to seeing both knives and his boy frequently (though separately) in day-to-day life – all that went through his head was “Huh. Nice knife son”

- Crackers and jokes over Christmas lunch. Family and both sets of grandparents. Daughter wants to join in but, being unable to read her cracker joke, has to freestyle… “Everyone. Why did the duck cross the road with only pants and no vest on?.. To get to the sexy cow” 

If we’d been able to ignore the uncomfortable fact that our tiny daughter/grand-daughter had just revealed her awareness of sexiness and, seemingly, beastiality, I’m sure that would have got a massive laugh rather than a stony silence. Family’s a tough crowd.

So over Christmas, while Facebook was telling me that a friend “can’t wait to go skiing” and another  “is spending a 3rd straight day on the beach”*, I was jealous but only fleetingly. Who needs exotic locations when you’ve got increasingly comical chat? (And future challenging conversations about the birds & the bovines)


Learned Wisdoms

#35: If you read back on the child-related things that have amused you over the festive season to find they’re mainly to do with swearing, sex and danger, just try not to think about it. Nothing to worry about. That’s probably fine.


* In the Southern hemisphere. Not North Yorkshire. 

The Good, The Bad & The Snuggly

While it’s not totally illegal (see Learned Wisdoms #33) to hit your kids in the UK, it’s certainly heavily frowned upon. Rightly so… If you’re disciplining your children for fighting, it’s probably a bit confusing to tell them that physical violence is unacceptable and then give them a massive smack.
That said, I do imagine it was a pretty good deterrent of naughtiness back in the day. And with the behavioural issues we’ve faced with our kids to-date, the disciplinary techniques left at our disposal have had varying levels of success…

Frequently Encountered Bad Things:

- Not sharing with other kids / snatching / hitting
- Name calling & using naughty words. My favourite example of this was when I told my daughter she shouldn’t call people names. She paused then said, “Ok. You’re not a stupid bum-bum head face”
- The vindictive saying no to every question phase
- Lying! This one caught us off guard. “Mummy – daddy hit me” What?!? No I didn’t. “Daddy – the child-minder bit me”. Questionable. (Making stuff up was one thing. When she started planting forensic evidence and bribing cronies for false alibies, it got beyond a joke)
-Acting-totally-spoilt-with-a-massive-sense-of-entitlement-and-crying/whining-anytime-what’s-wanted-isn’t-got.  Grrrr

Disciplinary Responses:
Reward good behaviour. Ignore bad behaviour:  The ignore bad behaviour bit can be difficult. Especially if it involves super-loud whining in public. Or hitting me with a broom. But kids like attention and hate being starved of it - this seems to work. Our 4yr old is now always keen to dress herself/wipe her bottom/make her own breakfast, knowing she’ll get a big cuddle and be made a fuss of. And at times now she’s so proud of not hitting her little brother back that, rather than moving out of the way, she’ll call out “Daddy, look – I’m not even hitting him back!” while he’s still lashing at her. 9/10

The naughty step: Everyone knows the naughty step. It’s a natural extension of the ignoring bad behaviour idea. Actually being isolated from the rest of the family and starved of attention for a short period is pretty effective. Though we did have to scrap this technique for a short period while our little girl had a phase of always wanting to play on the stairs. 7/10

Shouting: Doesn’t really work. Makes you look like an idiot. Similar to the smacking-for-fighting paradox, doesn’t make a lot of sense if you’re disciplining your kids for making too much noise. Innocent bystanders are often caught in the crossfire – any time I’ve shouted at my little girl for being naughty while her little brother has been in earshot he’s got scared and burst into tears [#makesmefeellikeadick] 1/10

Take a toy away: Bad thing has a non-violent, non-shouty consequence. Explain what’s going to happen if bad thing doesn’t stop. Two warnings then, if bad thing still doesn’t stop, something gets confiscated. Like the naughty step and the reward-good/ignore-bad, the key is consistently following-through to ensure it’s understood that bad things always have consequences… and with the added bonus of making me feel like I’m some sort of hostage-taking mafia overlord (“I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse. Perhaps you stop snatching your brother’s toys for the next two days and perhaps you may one day see your Rapunzel doll again, eh?”) 8/10

Super Sneaky Special Counter-Moves:
All was starting to feel in control, but - in the same way there’s a constant race between the performance-enhancing drug producers and the anti-doping screening organisations - the kids are swiftly adapting to our techniques. Largely with charm offensive. When my little girl is in trouble she’ll act all sad and cute, say sorry and try to kiss me; if my 23 month-old boy clocks me round the head with a plastic horse, he’ll instantly smile and try to cuddle my head… turns out I also like the attention and it is tough to discipline them at that point.  
Manipulating me already. And they're, only 4 and nearly-2. The next 16 years might be difficult...

Learned Wisdoms
#33: If you’re unsure whether smacking children is illegal and so google the subject, you’ll find articles containing the following information/quotes:
- In the UK, spanking or smacking is legal. However, parents in England and Wales who smack children so hard it leaves a mark face up to five years in jail under laws passed in 2004. In Scotland since October 2003 it has been illegal to use any implements when disciplining a child
- 2004 reaction to law:
NSPCC boss Mary Marsh: "There is a risk parents may choose to hit children on parts of their body where injury is less visible”
Head teacher of the Christian Fellowship School in Liverpool, Phil Williamson: "The law doesn't say how long the mark has to last for. It also ignores totally black children who don't mark and don't go red. It's just a ridiculous law,"

… if you have something of an enquiring mind, this may lead to these follow-up searches:
- On which parts of a child’s body is injury less visible?
- Most popular implements for hitting Scottish kids
- Totally black children
- Does black skin mark when hit?
- How do you completely delete your search history forever?

#34: When your daughter has fallen in the playground and got her first little black eye, if you’re subsequently out with her in public and a shopkeeper looks at you disapprovingly it’s best not to react. What you absolutely shouldn’t say is “What? You think I did that? Are you kidding? Look at the size of her. She can’t even defend herself. If I’d have hit her, half her head would be gone”. That doesn’t make anyone more comfortable.

 

Colour My Life With The Chaos Of (Double) Trouble

It was my wife’s birthday party the other weekend. I was up with the kids the morning after. Feeding them, dressing them and playing with them… whilst trying really hard not to lie down, moan and pass out. It made me think back to how different things were when we only had one child…

Getting pregnant the second time meant there would be a sibling for our little girl. (Plus it was nice to know everything was still working after another couple of years of keeping a mobile phone next to my genitals.) And I figured that, once you’re used to the lifestyle-restrictions of having one child, throwing another into the mix would probably be easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. I was wrong. It's difficult-difficult lemon-difficult.

Within hours of our little boy being born we got the first sign of trouble. My wife and our new-born had to move wards through the maze of hospital corridors. They were pushed in a wheelchair by a busy porter. I had hands-full carrying  all the gear we’d brought to the hospital. And our little girl was riding a scooter that the new baby had given her (see Learned Wisdoms #28 below). She soon decided that following was a bit rubbish and shot off down a random corridor. The porter was too busy to wait and carried on with wife and baby boy. I couldn’t chase her while carrying all the gear and had to drop it to run after her. Once the fugitive was detained, it was hard enough finding our way back to the bags, never mind to the rest of our family, and we spent 15 mins walking the hospital corridors like a father/daughter version of Hansel & Grettle. (Equally breadcrumbless, but with Grettle - still high from the thrill of the chase - repeatedly trying to bolt in random directions.)

This was symptomatic of the biggest challenge in transitioning to a state of multi-childdom. During their waking hours, unless you’re in a heavily-padded confined space, you both need to be on duty all the times. For example, we recently went to Cyprus... Every morning we’d go out to the pool and set up our loungers. Within ten seconds the kids would both walk off in different directions. I’d head after one, my wife the other. By the third day we didn’t even bother laying our towels out properly - we certainly weren’t spending any time lying down.

When one’s contained, e.g. strapped in a push-chair, one of you can switch off. But the kids need/want to roam around so, unless those remote-control electric-shock dog collars turn out to actually have positive physical & psychological effects when used on humans, pool-side holidays with multiple toddlers will continue to involve tailing your allocated kid(s) while they attempt to stumble into the deep-end of the pool / eat soil / commit minor acts of inflatable-toy larceny.

Also on the trips & holidays-front, as soon as we had our second child we were back to travelling heavy. It was a squash to go anywhere in the car with all the gear. And I'll never forget the first time we tried to get through airport security with a load of bags, two children and no knowledge of the fact that you actually have to take the baby out of the buggy and put it through the x-ray machine*. No-one's got enough hands for that.

In the hungover-morning situation, with one little child there’d probably be a nap-break at some point (when I’d take the chance to lie down, moan and pass out). Even if there wasn’t, it’s a lot easier to look after and engage a single kid. With two, you're dealing with demands at pretty-much every given moment. And while I (like a chump) remain able only to be in one single place at a given time, there’s always the potential peril of chaos erupting in two parts of the house simultaneously… while one’s nearly choking, the other’s hiding your keys; while one’s weeing on the floor, the other’s throwing milk-drenched breakfast cereal with unerring accuracy at your laptop.

I guess, if you want multiple offspring without having to deal with a prolonged lack of relaxy-time, you could wait until the first one’s big enough to be a bit autonomous. But there’s a lot to be said for having siblings of a similar age. And, the fact is, we're probably only facing a couple more hard years until they’ve both got a bit of self-sufficiency (though no-doubt there’ll be other challenges as they get bigger). 
We are definitely done now though. Two is enough for us. (I’d never be comfortable relying on zonal marking. I need the comfort of reverting to man-to-man when things are tough.) 
This has, however, led to another thing that I didn't have to worry about when we only had one child... the looming prospect of The Vasectomy. Shudder. More on that another day…

Learned Wisdoms

#28: Having the new baby 'bring their older sibling(s) a present’ is a nice tip to limit the initial animosity and jealousy. It’s pretty unbelievable though. And, if you do leave a big gap between your kids, you’ve got to worry that there’s a point where cognitive development doesn’t allow it. Not sure what age that’s at. All I can confirm is that a 26 month-old doesn’t have any problem with the idea of a woman giving birth to a baby that comes out bearing a nicely wrapped scooter.

#29: If you’re the first-born of three children, you will suffer a bit from being the one that’s most-able to be left alone. This is particularly notable when looking back over those photos you get from rollercoaster rides... your dad & your younger sister waving; your mum & your little brother screaming with delight; you, fighting G-force to lean away from the creepy & unhygienic-looking stranger.

* The buggy, not the baby. Obviously.

All These Things That I've Done

I’m pretty clued-up on the parenting techniques. I’ve read some of those books they have nowadays. I know my naughty steps from my reward charts. I‘ve got solid game.

But occasionally - when I need just a second in-amongst the constant questioning and play-demands, or if I’m in a situation where I urgently need to quell crying and get the kids to do/stop doing something – then, just occasionally, I have done the odd thing that Supernanny or the Baby Whisperer would frown upon.

I’ve listed some I can think of off the top of my head. I’m pretty sure we all do this sort of thing occasionally*.  And seeing my list of rogue moments might make you feel less guilty if/when you take the odd naughty (but entirely human) shortcut…

1. Trying to get out of the house in the morning. Made promises of future fun, contingent on doing-as-told now. “We’ll do xyz tonight if you get my phone out of your mouth and find your shoes”

2. Subsequently relied on the forgetfulness of tiny heads to avoid having to do xyz tonight

3. Used the promise/threat of Christmas presents to drive good behaviour. (And, with a little girl’s birthday in November, Q4 is generally a pretty easy stroll)

4. To avoid making a stop, used the old classic, “I’m afraid you can’t have an ice cream. You hear the van’s playing that music? It means they’ve run out”. (Was subsequently asked what a zooming fire engine had run out of)

5. Played hide & seek. But, as allocated seeker, sat down and read a magazine for the 5 mins it took the hiders to get suspicious

6. After dealing with the third set of wet/soiled pants in a 30 min period, left a potty-trainer roaming naked while I watched the early-Sunday edition of Match of the Day. Was only alerted to the pool of wee wee on the wooden floor by the loud crash as little feet ran into it and slipped over

7. Bribed crying child with sweets to subdue a public scene

8. In a rush, agreed to the bargain that toilet would only be sat on if hands did not subsequently have to get washed. (At least negotiating the counter-point that little hands be kept on head away from sticky zone during entire procedure)


These are rare** occasions, but still… Bribing with unhealthy food? Allowing non-hand washage? What’s next??
“If you stop crying/do xyz, then you don’t have to: wear a seatbelt / learn to read / avoid operating heavy machinery after alcohol”

The fact is, we all try to deal with our kids the best we can. But it's important for your own sanity to accept that you can’t do everything perfectly all the time, especially with the time-pressures working parents live under. (Just don’t ever make/read a list of your shortcuts. It really hurts your virtuous self-image)


Learned Wisdoms
#26: When your kids are very small, in the rush to get them out of the house in the mornings without tantrums, you may resort to the odd white lie (“We can’t watch TV now, but we’ll watch a whole film tonight.” “We can’t play dancing now, but if you’re good I’ll get you a… a giraffe.”), knowing they’ll have forgotten later. Be aware that your empire of deceit will crumble much sooner than you expect. After ~30 golden months, a little person will tell you, “No Daddy, I’m not going to bed. We’re staying up to watch Monsters Inc… why do you never get my giraffe?"

#27: If, while considering yourself a good and caring father, you write a whimsical post about the occasional shortcut you take with the kids and then read it back to find that listing all those things in one place suggests you’re actually (at best) a pretty lazy dad or (at worst) criminally-negligent, then it’s probably shrewd to imply somewhere that it was all exaggerated for increased amusement. Yes, it was a work of semi-fiction. That’s right.  Of course. [Single bead of sweat rolls down forehead]


* He said. Uncomfortably aware that “we” might not actually do this kind of thing at all. In fact, this might be the kind of thing that drives “we” to pitchfork-wielding angry-mob formation.

** ish

Temper Trap

We’re going on holiday soon. Abroad. I should be happily looking forward to a bit of sun and a relax. Instead I’m slightly stressed thinking about in-flight child-containment strategies.

At home I have no problem with our kids making a big din in the name of fun. And if there’s a tantrum to ignore, I’m your man. (My in-built noise-cancellation technology has evolved to the point where I can totally screen it out.)

But in a confined public space it’s a different story. I’ve never been a massive fan of other people’s crying kids imposing themselves on my ears, and I’ve always felt hugely awkward when mine have gone loud in the restaurant/book shop/Trappist monastery.

There is a lot to be said for avoiding ‘scenes’ and keeping your life easy while they’re little. To minimise our instances of being the most-disliked family in earshot, we made a few guidelines:

- Timing is everything. If you’re eating out, get there early so that food arrives before your kids have got really hungry (as opposed to ordering when they’re already hungry and having to endure ravenous screams for the duration of the wait)
- Unconsciousness is your friend. If you want to do some shopping straight-forwardly, do it when they’re due a nap and can fall asleep in the pram
- Don’t force it. If the kids are tired or having a bad day, it’ll most-likely be very stressful eating out. (And no-one wants to be the person who snaps and drops the C-bomb in Pizza Express on a Saturday afternoon.)
Do it another time. Or get a babysitter and do it when they’re in bed.
- Swiftly analyse your environment. Jason Bourne walks into a diner, “The first thing I'm doing is I'm catching the sight lines and looking for an exit. I can tell that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs 220 pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the grey truck outside.”
I walk into any café/bar/restaurant, “The first thing I’m doing is I’m looking for a quiet place to change a nappy or put on a meltdown-calming puppet show. I can tell that our waitress knows where to get crayons and that the group on the next table won’t see the cute side if our daughter wanders over and verbally-freestyles on their physical appearance. I know the best place to look for a chocolate-based distraction is the newsagents next door”

All that is great for short-term situations where you’ve got the fall-back option of taking the kids outside if they kick-off. Long train or plane journeys are a different matter. It’s all about temper control. And the children have the strongest negotiating position. If anyone’s got any different tips, I’d love to hear them, but so far the only solution we've found is just to drop all the usual rules on use of treats, TV, Rohypnol, etc.
... My holiday hand luggage will contain stickerbooks, a laptop, various Pixar & DreamWorks DVDs and a heady cocktail of crisps, chocolate, Calpol and sweets.

Learned Wisdoms

#19: A good way to overcome your fears is to face them. If you’re often embarrassed by the somewhat anti-social actions of your children in public, wait until your daughter is old enough to walk and to operate basic mechanisms like, say, the lock of a pub’s disabled-toilet-&-baby-change-room. Then leave her free post-nappy-change while you use the loo. Once she’s opened the door, walked out and left you standing, mid-stream, in-front of a table of eight interested elderly folk, you’ll be effectively embarrassment-proof for the rest of your life.

#20: Before you’ve got children, when you see a parent shouting at their screaming kid in public you think “Oh, what a terrible parent. That poor little child, living with such an aggressive bully”.
Once you have children, you see the same scene and think more along the lines of “What horrible thing did that mean little f*cking little kid do to push that poor, poor adult over the edge?”