Who knew parenting was so tricky?
I used to pride myself on my… on my… on my… you know… my… collection of words… the ones I use.. when I… you know speak.
I’ve just Googled it.
I used to pride myself on my vocabulary.
Seriously I did.
As a society, we need to stop normalizing bullying. It’s not just banter, or a rite of passage, it’s a real problem and it ruins lives.
Read More Bullying. It has to stop.As a parent, I’d worked my way through all the stages that are supposed to be hell on earth: sleepless nights, teething, separation anxiety, having your shoes filled with sick… the whole gamut. And the thing was, that despite all the hype, none of these events was quite as bad as I’d expected. Like the worst type of film – all the best bits were in the trailer, leaving my partner and I feeling slightly underwhelmed to experience the supposed horror of the real thing.
It was with this (understandable) sense of over confidence that I greeted the my son’s (inevitable) turning from 1 to 2. It was simply a number, I told myself. A personality doesn’t change THAT much as the result of just getting a little bit older. What was the worst that could happen? After all, we’re just talking about a tiny tot.
HOW WRONG WAS I?
It had been a few minutes, three maybe. I looked at him, as encouragingly as I could, and spoke.
“OK, that’s good. It’s easy, just one, two, three and push.”
I’d tried to hide any stress (rapidly growing within me) from my voice.
My son looked back at me, seemingly unconvinced.
“Cuddle?”
“We can have a cuddle when you come down the slide.”
“Cuddle now?”
“Just go down!” chimed in a boy, about twice the age of my son – part of the growing queue for the slide forming behind my little one.
“He’ll go when he’s ready,” I said, once again trying to appear calm – reminding myself that empathy isn’t a skill kids are born with. “Just one, two, three and push!”
Still nothing.
It was going to be a long day.
It’s the odd thing about milestones, I just don’t see them.
What I mean is, I’ve never actually noticed a milestone at the time it happened. Rather I’ve only been able to see the moments that marked real, tangible, progression in my life retrospectively.
I think this may be a side effect of being busy. Actually ‘busy’, if I’m honest, doesn’t quite cover it. For the last 2 years I’ve been so manically active, so frantically ‘on task’, that ‘busy’ sounds like a rest.
And no, I’m not about to start moaning about how hard parenting is. We’ve all heard that a 1000 times before.
Parenting is hard.
But that isn’t newsworthy, there is no breaking story there.
It’s always been hard. It will always be hard.
That’s just the way it is. Sorry folks.
I’m keen, however, as my son achieves his second birthday, to look back at my first 24 months of fatherhood.
What have I learned? If anything?
Am I still out of my depth? It’s likely.
Do I continue to make points in lists of 3? Definitely.
Here’s Fatherhood: The Story So Far…
Read More Fatherhood: The Story So Far…