I am a Failure as a Father, Already!

Posted on 15/06/2010 by

I’m not a proper dad.

Firstly, I’m not big on football. I don’t hate it, it’s just not an important thing in my life.

Like many kids, I got my lifelong indifference to football from my Dad. He didn’t buy me my first football the day after I could walk, and we spent many a happy hour not kicking a ball around the park. I fondly remember the first time he didn’t take me to see my first match, anxiously not clutching his hand as I didn’t look down in rapt wonder from the stands.

Also, I’m not that keen on beer. I don’t mind it, but I’d rather have a vodka and coke, thanks. Or a glass of wine. If I do have a beer it’s something not too hoppy and chilled to within an inch of it’s life. That’s just the way I roll.

I don’t play golf.

So really, I’m not a proper dad. Well, not by the standards of the Father’s Day Gift People. They’ve decided that all dads really want is a football-shaped beer dispenser. Or a beer-shaped football. Or golf-flavoured beer. Or whatever.

It’s all rather depressing. Unlike Jane (who has a rabid dislike of Mother’s Day – with good reasons) I kind of like the idea of Father’s Day. I don’t want to be waited on hand and foot, I’ve just never had a international day for me before and I want to milk it a bit.

But, if the Father’s Day Gift People have their way I’ll be getting a card with a joke about slippers on it, and a golfball-shaped opener for football-shaped beer bottles. Sigh.

I have it on good authority that Tom’s got me a little something though, and his taste is impeccable, so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Posted in Daddyblogging, Opinion | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

England!

Posted on 09/06/2010 by

England! Cream teas! The sound of Merlin engines over the South Downs! Cricket! And… what was that other thing? Oh yes! Football!

And, for a few weeks, we can hope that maybe, despite every sign to the contrary, our football players will play football much better than all the other football players; and we will win the football!

And what better way to show your support for Our Football Players than proudly displaying an English flag on your house, vehicle or face!

But wait… what if people don’t realise that the classic red cross on a white background is the English flag? What if they think you’re supporting First Aid or something? Why, you need to improve the English flag by emblazoning it with the word ENGLAND in big unfriendly letters across the middle! Now no-one can be mistaken about the fervour of your support of England and the only valid expression of Englishness, kicking a ball around a field!

I have heard that this masterstroke of design hasn’t gone unnoticed among the monarchy and government of this great country, and from next year a new version of the Union Flag will be launched to replace the existing, confusingly unlabelled one. Now you’ll be able to look up at Buckingham Palace and know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you’re in…

Britain Flag

The new flag of Britain.

Until the new flags are distributed, feel free to print out this version and iron it to your face.

Posted in Fantasies, Imagery, Opinion | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

I am Becoming My Dad (#1 of… probably lots)

Posted on 08/06/2010 by

It all started with Lego. As a small boy, I was obsessed with Lego. Just thinking about those countless hours digging through my Lego box for Just The Right Sixer Block makes me all misty-eyed.

Most birthdays and Christmases I’d get a Lego model. Starting with the basic building block sets, then the Space Lego sets with the fancy V-shaped wing bits, then the grown-up Technical Lego sets (you could tell they were grown-up because they had holes in).

I’d empty the bits out on the dining table. Lay out the immaculately-produced manual, and turn to the first page. Looking at the first diagram, finding the bits that matched the picture. Savouring the anticipation.

“Would you like me to help?” my Dad would ask. Innocently.

…

Twenty minutes later I’d be sitting, chin in hands, frustratedly watching my Dad make the model.

He wouldn’t get away with it for long. Mum would come in and say “oi! Let Simon make it!!” Dad would reluctantly relinquish the model.

I’d dismantle what he’d done and start again from scratch, silently vowing that when I was a Dad, I’d never barge in and monopolise my son’s toys.

No, I didn’t. Even writing that I realised I was kidding myself. I vowed that one day I’d barge in and monopolise MY son’s toys.

I’ve tried to deny it. When Tom got a lovely set of building blocks for his birthday, I tried to let him learn to play with them at his own pace.

It didn’t last long. I thought I’d just help a little.

Tom, quite rightfully, was having none of it.

Posted in Daddyblogging, Imagery | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

One

Posted on 05/06/2010 by

It was Tom’s first birthday today. One whole year of having him in our lives. In some ways, it’s gone really quickly. For example, it seems amazing to think he spent his whole first six months in a cot at the end of the bed. That went by in a blink of an eye, so much so I can barely remember it now.

But because there have been so many changes over the past twelve months, the year also seems to have lasted a lifetime. Which, I suppose, for Tom it has.

He got some nice presents, my mum and dad were particularly generous with a set of Brio building blocks and a Brio “Walk-On” trolley to cart them about with. It’s all very well made and has a bit of a “designer baby” feel.

Tom showed his appreciation by performing his first ever “non-human-assisted” walk. He even managed a bit of freestyle standing at the end!

Posted in Daddyblogging, Imagery | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Predictability

Posted on 04/06/2010 by

Tom (11.99 months old) is getting to the stage now where he’s starting to combine things, to see what happens. There’s all kinds of fun to be had. Wooden blocks clack together, but don’t stick. A ball placed on another ball falls off, but a ball placed on a large plastic ring (or on the donut-like opening of my computer’s sub-woofer) centres itself and stays there in a very satisfying way. So satisfying in fact, that it seems essential to take it out and put it in again… and again… and again.

That’s how babies minds work, I think, they thrive on discovered predictability. It’s not enough to try something once to see what happens, you have to do it again to see if what happened still happens. Then do it a dozen or so more times just to really be sure. While I watch Tom doing it, I can almost hear the little neurons in his bonce strengthening by repeated use.

Tom’s at an age where he’s still learning about the basic physical properties of the world around him, and predictability is important. Balls bounce, wheels roll, blocks stack or tumble.

One of Tom’s Christmas presents was an electronic activity centre. The V-Tech “My First Steps Walker”, a baby walker with a panel on the front featuring an electronic cornucopia of lights and buttons for little fingers to press. I’m a gadget freak, so it’s actually to my surprise that, where toys are concerned, I’ve become a bit of a Luddite. Because for all its electronic wizardry, the My First Steps Walker isn’t predictable, and that makes me question its value as a toy for very small kids.

Press the blue circular button marked with a “1” and a friendly lady’s voice will say “one!”, but press it again and it says instead “blue circle!”. So is the little tyke supposed to learn that blue circular buttons say “one”, or that buttons marked “1” say “blue circle”?

It gets worse than that; flip the wings of the yellow plastic butterfly and the whole gadget changes function. Now it’s not “teaching” about shapes and colours and numbers, it’s teaching about “music”. The blue circular button doesn’t say “blue” or “circle” or “one”; now it says “rock and roll!”, and launches into the least rock-and-roll bit of music you’ve ever heard.

Now, I know eventually Tom will need to learn that things aren’t predictable, and that most buttons on electronic gadgetry do different things at different times. Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, he’ll work out that a computer can do an infinite number of things with just a few dozen buttons. But first, I think, he needs the predictability. He need to press the blue circular button and for it to say “blue circle!” every time, so that he delights in the fact that he predicted it was going to say that.

I wouldn’t take the V-Tech walker away from him, because he enjoys bashing away at it, particularly the spinny cogs bit. But I don’t think it’s really teaching him much yet, and I’d much rather he spent an instructive 5 minutes repeatedly dropping the same ball into the same hole. Unpredictability can wait.

Posted in Daddyblogging, Opinion | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Where it Began (I Can’t Begin to Know When)

Posted on 02/06/2010 by

There’s a place I remember, it’s jumbled and indistinct because it’s on the very edge of my memory. It’s made up of chunky jumpers with crazy zigzag designs, sandpits with toy boats floating on a sea of coarse orange builder’s sand, and door curtains of colourful plastic ribbons that waft in the endless summer breeze. Everything is tinged slightly Polaroid brown, and songs by Neil Diamond play on the radio all the time. It’s a place where laughter and happiness linger, because sadness hadn’t been invented yet and pain could be wafted away with a kiss and a Mickey Mouse sticking plaster. It’s the place that is my earliest childhood memories.

I was playing with Tom at the weekend, bouncing him on my knees in time to the Glee sountrack album I’d bought (my current Gleekdom is a subject for another post!). Tom was smiling and laughing, and Jane was standing at my shoulder taking some pictures. The song playing was a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, and as some songs can, it immediately transported me back to when I first heard it, back to that Polaroid-tinged place and time. I could taste the happy memories.

And, like the hugely soppy fool I am, I realised I was crying. Big happy tears. On some level I sensed that a huge circle was being completed, and by having my own little family I was getting back to a place I’d left 30-odd years ago. The setting is totally different, and I’m playing a different part, but it’s the same.

My son’s too young to start having permanent memories yet, but when he does I want them to be memories like those. Aimlessly happy random memories that ring with laughter, music and wonder. I want for him to never have to grow up and learn all the bad things that happen; and simultaneously I want for him to grow up and learn all the things he possibly can. Maybe even one day sit with a small child on his knee and be transported back to those JPEG-tinged (or, whatever) days of the mid 2010s.

He’ll probably be as soppy about it as I am.

Posted in Daddyblogging | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Ignorance = Bliss

Posted on 27/05/2010 by

With nearly a year of fatherhood under my belt, I feel I’m now in a position to dole out sage advice to new fathers. My first piece of advice is this: don’t take advice from other fathers.

Actually, it’s okay to listen to advice from other fathers, as long as you remember that:

  • 75% of it won’t be relevant to your situation.
  • 20% of it they will have made up just to frighten you.
  • 5% of it will be true, and relevant, but so scary you’re better off not knowing until it happens.

Definitely, whatever you do, don’t buy a book on fatherhood. They’re just not worth the stress.

My wife went through a spate of buying books about pregnancy and motherhood. She found them reassuring, because she’s one of these people who takes comfort in knowing as much as possible about what to expect and what can go wrong. I’m of the opposite camp. The Ignorance is Bliss camp.

(Actually we don’t really have a camp, it’s more of a muddy hole in the ground covered in a tarp. None of us fancied going to the lecture about making proper camps.)

The trouble with books about parenthood is the information they impart basically falls into two categories: Things That Should Happen, and Things That Shouldn’t Happen. The first category is stuff like “crawling, talking, breathing”, the latter stuff like “turning green, smoking, head revolving Exorcist stylee.”

“By month eight,” a parenting book cheerfully announces, “your child should be reading small books of French poetry, occasionally looking up to exclaim sagely ‘ah! so true!’ and gaze wistfully out of a window”.

I look over at my son (who’s engaged with opening and closing the wardrobe door, each time with a yelp of surprise that, even after the 500th repetition, it still contains The Inside of a Wardrobe) and feel more than a little like a failed parent.

They do say in the book that these developmental milestones are just for the “average” baby. But I don’t want to be told that my son is below average in anything! It just makes me feel bad.

The other problem with reading the milestones is that, for me, they totally ruin all the surprises. I want to be totally amazed every time my son does some little new thing, I don’t want spoilers.

Then under the “Things Your Child Shouldn’t Be Doing”, the books delight in doing stuff like listing the symptoms of all the myriad rare genetic diseases you should be looking out for. This merely induces in me a state of hypochondria by proxy… what if that mark above his eye isn’t a scratch, but the first signs of the onset of a horrible skin wasting syndrome named after the only two people who ever had it?!

It’s all rather upsetting, and I’d much rather be safe back in my muddy hole under the tarp.

Actually, I’d much rather be totally clueless, but handily have a wife who’s read all the books and knows pretty much exactly what to do. Which luckily is what I have. Ignorance with instant knowledge on tap, that’s true bliss.

Posted in Daddyblogging, Opinion | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The Great Toddler Bedtime Book Conspiracy

Posted on 25/05/2010 by

I’ve noticed something about books for small children. It’s something so insidious you may not have spotted it, even if (like us) you already have an extensive library of picture books to entertain your wee ones.

There’s a covert propaganda campaign being fought. A campaign which, despite all its subtlety, has a very clear message: go to sleep, sleep is good, bedtime is the best time ever.

Now, like most parents of small children I guess, I value the times my son is asleep. It’s nice to have relaxed periods when your little bundle of joy is inert and not careering headlong from one deadly hazard to the next. So I’m all for gently persuading children that sleep is a good thing. I just think that maybe the publishers have gone way overboard in pushing the bedtime agenda.

Tom has several books explicitly about the bedtime ritual. Maisy’s Bedtime and How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? are two examples, and they’re great books too. But then bedtime seems to crop up at the end of nearly all his other books too.

I think it’s partly because the books are designed to be read at bedtime, and the authors think perhaps if they put in lots of stuff about yawning and brushing teeth and kissing goodnight before drifting quietly into slumber, the child being read the story will take the hint and obediently nod off too.

But partly, I think, the reason why so many picture books end with the main character going to sleep is that the authors couldn’t be bothered to think of a proper ending.

They tend to go into so much detail, too. Just to fill space. Nitty gritty about brushing teeth, and picking favorite teddies, and being read bedtime stories. I mean what’s the point of reading a bedtime story about reading a bedtime story?

It’s something you never see in books for grown ups. Sure, characters go to sleep, but I can’t think of any novel where the last chapter has been all about the protagonist getting ready for bed.

I mean, it would really bugger up the end of Jane Eyre…

Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had. That very evening we returned to the manor house, and having carefully brushed our teeth, washed our faces, each chosen our favorite teddy bears and changed into our night attire, retired to our beds and fell blissfully asleep.

F I N I S

See? Rubbish. And yet we expect our children to put up with it.

Anyway, rant over. It’s time I went to bed.

Posted in Daddyblogging, Opinion | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Persistence of Bananas

Posted on 19/05/2010 by

One of the things that I was really looking forward to with having my own children was the chance to see a mind be created. To me this has to be the ultimate miracle of nature, that something so intricate and complex (the most complex thing in the universe, as far as we know) can be made, effectively, from nothing.

The trouble is, once you actually have a child, you realise that you don’t have much of a chance to sit back in rapt wonder as your progeny’s intelligence unfurls before your eyes. You’re too busy at the coal face, helping, teaching (or at least trying to) and cleaning up the mess afterwards. Great leaps in understanding either pass too quickly to catch, or too slowly to notice.

The only real way you notice how things have changed is when you take your child’s current intelligence and abilities for granted, and then they suddenly and effortlessly exceed them.

Take the other day, when Tom learned about the Persistence of Bananas.

Little babies live in the naked now. As far as they’re concerned, things that happened then have nothing to do with what’s happening now, or what’s going to happen. Objects only exist only while they’re within their field of vision, and after they’ve gone they might as well never have existed.

Until they develop the concept of persistence. The idea that things like mummies and daddies and balls and teddies can go away but still exist to return at a later time.

It’s hard to know when Tom started to twig this, but he has. Especially with bananas.

The other day I was feeding Tom a banana, taking small lumps off with my fingers for him to delicately take between thumb and forefinger and then indelicately shovel into his cake-hole. About half way through he lost interest and merrily crawled off to find something to creatively destroy (as is his wont). I assumed that he’d had his fill of bananery goodness for that day and, without much thought, polished the rest of it off.

A few minutes later he crawled back again, and clambered up my knees, grinning. I grinned back, and as I still had it in my hand, showed him the empty banana peel.

I’ve never seen anyone’s face sink so fast or so far. He immediately burst into tears. Even a fresh banana couldn’t console him.

My little boy had developed a Theory Regarding the Persistence of Bananas, and had confidently wandered off, safe in the knowledge that the banana would still exist. Only to return and cruelly be proved wrong. I felt really awful.

But, at the same time, amazed and proud. It was a tiny insight into a brand new mind forming. The most complex thing in the universe, tenaciously wishing itself into existence.

And there’ll always be more bananas.

Posted in Daddyblogging | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Great Apps for Babies

Posted on 17/05/2010 by

Ever since Tom has been old enough to use his hands, he’s been fascinated by my iPhone and Jane’s iPod. It’s amusing to see how blasé he is about the technology involved, especially the touch screen, which he picked up in no time at all. In the same way that young children now expect to be able to see a photo on the back of a camera a moment after you’ve taken it, Tom will grow up expecting gadgets to have touch screens, anything less will seem horribly antiquated.

While it would be nice to keep his banana-smeared mitts completely off my expensive gadgetry, but Tom is remarkably persistent, and I’m basically a big softy, so it seemed easiest to track down some iPhone apps that were suitable for well-supervised baby play. Here are some of the best that I’ve found.

Bab Bab Lite
The “lite” represents the free version, the full version has more features but I found the basic functionality of the lite version perfectly adequate.

Bab Bab basically turns your iPhone into a baby rattle. Three shapes float around the screen, and shaking the iPhone makes them fly around, sparking vibrant patterns and musical chimes when they collide. The shapes can also be moved with a finger, making it a fairly tactile experience as well.

Everything about Bab Bab is delightfully Japanese, from the cutesy graphics to the bamboo-like clunking sound of the shapes colliding. It’s too simple to be entertaining for very long, and I’d question the sanity of letting a baby really shake an iPhone which is liable to be bouncing off the pavement a few seconds later, but it’s a great way to distract a little baby for a short while.

Bab Bab Screenshot Bab Bab Screenshot Bab Bab Screenshot

Peek-a-Bouncer
This is the iPhone version of one of the many baby games available on the excellent Kneebouncers web site. The Kneebouncers are a collection of friendly looking animals, all rendered in saturated primary hues. The idea is very simple, touching the screen causes it to open like a pair of curtains, revealing a random Kneebouncer who says “peek-a-boo!”. Releasing the screen closes the window again.

Great for babies who like playing peek-a-boo, but I found that Tom had trouble holding the iPhone in a way that wasn’t touching the screen somewhere, thus keeping the window permanently open. It would be nicer if the app used the iPhone’s multi-touch functionality to work out what the babies hands were doing and react accordingly.

Peek-a-bouncer screenshot Peek-a-bouncer screenshot Peek-a-bouncer screenshot

Talking Carl
This isn’t really an app designed for babies, and I actually downloaded it for my own amusement but found Tom loved it. Talking Carl repeats back everything you say to him, in a squeaky high-pitched voice. It took Tom a little while to work out what was going on, but now he has little shouting competitions with Carl, each trying to out-squeak the other. Tom also likes the way Carl reacts to being prodded with a finger; different animations such as Carl laughing when he’s tickled and crying “OW!” when you poke him in the eye.

Talking Carl Screenshot Talking Carl Talking Carl

The Little Red Hen
One of the first apps I downloaded for Tom’s sake, this little animated storybook is very well executed. With The Little Red Hen, you can choose to have the story read to you (by a cute-sounding little girl with an English accent) or you can read aloud yourself. Each page has a limited amount of interactivity; click the hen and she clucks, click the cat and she meows, etc. Nothing ground-breaking but just the right level of interactivity for a little baby to understand and enjoy.

Little Red Hen Screenshot Little Red Hen Screenshot

Posted in Daddyblogging, Geekery | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments