The Space - my children's book, free

One thing I do feel some 'Dad Pride' over is that I think I gave my boys a decent introduction to books, through our regular bedtime stories. Reading the classics inevitably gave me the idea, along with 99% of the population, that I might have a book of my own in me.

That book has sat in a drawer for years (and yes I have bought the Writers and Artists' Yearbook). As I have largely given up hope of having it properly published, I thought I would post it here so you can have it for free (although see back page about donations...)

Download for free from http://tinyurl.com/TheSpaceBook

I would be delighted if you were to download it, read it with your kids (you can print it, or the PDF actually works pretty well on a tablet or smartphone), share it...

And please let me know here, by email on jonmsutton@gmail.com or on Twitter @jonmsutton what you think of it. Some might say the plot makes no sense whatsoever... I prefer to think it leaves space for valuable parent/child discussion...

Free PDF download from http://tinyurl.com/TheSpaceBook
View on desktop, tablet or smartphone
Print
Share
Feedback
Donate?

Dad song #12

Inspired by a Father's Day viewing of the surprisingly funny 'Daddy's Home'…

My son calls another man daddy
He'll ne'er know my name nor my face
God only knows how it hurts me
For another to be in my place

"Stop telling men they're useless at childcare"

Others continue to pick up on the need for some 'Dad Pride': see this article from Andrew Watts in The Spectator.

I used to be on the receiving end of these comments quite a lot on 'Daddy days' when the boys were younger. Less so these days, but I think there's still a general sense if I am alone with the boys for a weekend that it's a miracle if they come through it unscathed. 

I maintain that many of the Dads I know are fantastic, and that many parents - Dads and Mums alike - inevitably have the odd moment they're less proud of. Incidentally, on that note, it's well worth listening to Adam Buxton's interview with Doc Brown where he talks about children's books, and in particular 'Not now, Bernard'. If you haven't read it, do: it's a splendidly dark exploration of parental neglect.

A celebration of Dad jokes

It seems it has been a year since I last posted, and another Father's Day prompts me to return.

I think my two young boys, now nearly 12 and 9, finally disowned me this Father's Day following an elaborate and protracted build up to the punchline 'Ghostlusters'. This reminded me that this whole blog could conceivably be a front for my continued obsession with Dad jokes, which will be familiar to anyone who follows me on Twitter.

So for the first of a hopefully more regular series of posts, I thought I would share a radio show that I took part in for last Father's Day - a celebration of Dad jokes.

"That's why he was fired from his job as a…"

Given that I set up this blog in response to the ubiquitous idea that Dads are a bit rubbish, it's odd that I’ve become obsessed by that celebration of Dad rubbishness, the classic Dad joke. A roll of the eyes, a groan, a tut, an ‘awww, Dad!’ – I’m in heaven!

I think it’s because I believe every awful joke I tell my boys is doing good. Just as Dads tend to push the boundaries in play and risk-taking, I like to think that’s what I’m doing with jokes. By telling jokes that are clearly pretty awful, I’m modelling how not to do it and by implication how to do it! I firmly believe my children are growing up being way funnier than I am, at least in part because I’ve shown them the ropes in a groan-inducing way. Children should simply be bathed in humour… As Roald Dahl wrote, ‘a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.’

Why do Dad jokes take the form they do? Well, consider genuinely good jokes. 

“I went to the library and asked for a book on Pavlov’s dogs and Schroedinger’s cat. They said it rang a bell but they couldn’t say if it was there or not.” 

Now there would be no point telling that to an 8-year-old. So lots of historical and cultural references are out, as are sexual innuendo (e.g. ‘How does Mr Miyagi relax? Whacks off’), or anything too rude or gross. What are we left with? "What do you call a nervous Jedi? Panakin Skywalker."

That’s not to say you can’t try to introduce them to new concepts and vocab in Dad joke form. My favourite joke, because I genuinely made it up (unlike all the others which I pinch), is this: 

"I had a dream the other night that I was going to get wet on a camping trip. Must have been a portent." 

You have to explain the concept of 'portent' to them, but surely anything that tortures a joke to within an inch of its life merely improves it?

But this post is mainly about a developing interest in another form of Dad joke – jokes about Dads. For example, there’s a whole genre of jokes that include the line ‘That’s why he got fired from his job as…’:

My Dad always said to fight fire with fire. That’s why he got fired from his job as a fireman.

My Dad would never call a spade a spade. That’s why he got fired from his job in the casino.

Or there are jokes related to your Dad’s career path:

My Dad was a clown; those are big shoes to fill. 

My Dad’s a coffee taster for Nescafe. I don’t know how he sleeps at night. 

My Dad invented windowsills. Total ledge.

My Dad spends all day every day crushing fizzy drinks cans in the recycling plant. It's soda pressing. 

That kind of thing.

Why don't you tend to hear 'My Mum was a…' jokes? Is it simply down to traditional gender roles in terms of who is the breadwinner? Or is it to do with hapless Dads having the broad shoulders to take being the butt of the joke all the time?

I would really love to hear your thoughts on Dad jokes, and your own examples – get in touch on Twitter @DadPrideBlog and @jonmsutton

Want your daughter to become 'sexually unrestricted'?

I have two young boys. So I can only speculate as to what it is like to be a father of girls, notably at the point at which they become sexually active. And I speculate it may be rather like this superb story from stand-up comedian Phil Jupitus.

If, for whatever reason, you would prefer your daughter to have sex later rather than sooner, it turns out the key may be to remain engaged in her upbringing. According to this Scientific American Mind article, “Researchers have revealed a robust association between father absence – both physical and psychological – and accelerated reproductive development and sexual risk-taking in daughters”.

The researcher, Sarah Hill at Texas Christian University, explains:

“When Dad is absent, it basically provides young girls with a cue about what the future holds in terms of the mating system they are born into.” When a girl's family is disrupted, and her father leaves or is not close to her, she sees her future: men don't stay for long, and her partner might not stick around either. So finding a man requires quick action. The sooner she is ready to have children, the better. She cannot consciously decide to enter puberty earlier, but her biology takes over, subconsciously. “This would help facilitate what we call, in evolutionary sciences, a faster reproductive strategy”.

The researchers are the first to admit that the links between puberty and a father's presence are just associations. They do not reveal what causes these changes. The article continues:

'In the ideal experiment that would answer this question, we would assemble a group of families and randomly assign some of the fathers to abandon their families and others to stay. Obviously, this proposal is not likely to win approval from an ethics board. So what is the next best thing? Hill and DelPriore designed an experiment in which young women—some of them teenagers and others just past their teen years—were asked to write about an incident in which their father supported them and then were encouraged to write about a time he was not there for them. Then they were asked about their attitudes toward sexual behavior. If the researchers' hypothesis was correct, memories of unpleasant father experiences would lead the young women to express more favorable views of risky sexual behavior. Pleasant memories of their fathers should push them in the opposite direction.
And that is what happened. Women became “more sexually unrestricted” after recalling an incident in which their father was disengaged, Hill explained. Further experiments showed that father disengagement did not change women's views of other kinds of risky behavior; for instance, they were not more likely to ride a bike without a helmet. The effect was limited to sex.'

Not like riding a bike

There is plenty more of interest in the article, including the hypothesis that a father's involvement could have a different effect on sons, enhancing a competitive urge and spurring sons to achieve more when they grow up and leave the family. So do read it.

There's also the important point that 'fathers have been widely overlooked in scientific studies. For example, in 2005 psychologist Vicky Phares of the University of South Florida reviewed 514 studies of clinical child and adolescent psychology from the leading psychological journals. Nearly half of them excluded fathers.'

'When did being a good father become so complicated?'

That's the question posed by Alex Blimes in this rather long and slightly confused piece in The Guardian. I suspect the answer is 'when the broadsheets started paying people by the word to write about it'.

No doubt I risk accusations of pot-kettle-black here, but I don't think being a good father actually is that complicated, mainly because what's needed are the characteristics of a good person in general. You just need to take some time, be loving, set boundaries but have fun, and relax. I recognise that this is an ideal I don't always live up to, but this blog was intended to be more about celebrating the numerous examples I come across of Dads getting it pretty much right, rather than worrying too much about when we don't.

I'm sure Alex and I agree on many things. For example, when he says approvingly of his friend that 'He is not defined solely, or overwhelmingly, or even chiefly, by his child-rearing achievements and expertise', I agree that is desirable. Although retaining a decent chunk of your own identity in the face of the competing demands of work, marriage and fatherhood is not an easy task, it is indeed an important one.

But maybe where we diverge is when Alex writes:


When did being a good father get so complicated? Is there any middle ground, or must one either go full Wet Wipe or be a lazy, incompetent, dinosaur? Is it still possible, as it certainly used to be, to get away with the occasional omelette, some skewwhiff shelves in the spare room and, once in a blue moon, a full day with the kids so your other half can go out?

I know the answer to that last question. It's no, probably not. The expectations of fathers have changed. More is demanded of us.

You can't make an omlette without reading a 3000 word article
about whether or not you're doing it properly

I'm not sure I agree with that. Of course there's still a middle ground, occupied by the vast majority of Dads. And if expectations of Dads have changed, I'm not convinced that pressure comes from the Mums or from Society in general, I think it's largely internal. Perhaps more Dads are realising that no, it's not acceptable to do a half-arsed job when it comes to something as important as raising your own children. Surely that's no bad thing.

No doubt many of us are still wrestling with how to juggle the various aspects of our hectic lives, just as many women are. And no doubt that will lead to endless hand-wringing and troll-baiting in the liberal broadsheets, on radio phone-ins and on blogs like this one. But at the end of the day most Dads I know appreciate they are not and never can be perfect, but that as long as they love their children and show them that through what they say and what they do then they're not going to go far wrong.

The last word should surely go to this great New Yorker piece from a couple of days ago: 'A recent study has shown that if American parents read one more long-form think piece about parenting they will go fucking ape shit.'

Dad dancing – 'like an apple going brown'

While it's on the BBC iPlayer, you have to listen to the feature on BBC Woman's Hour about 'Dad dancing'. It starts at 12:15.

'They call it Dad Dancing,' says the presenter. 'It's when a man jerks and jiggles to the music and his children shriek at him to stop because it's embarrassing. Dads… seem to feel they are not the greatest dancers, so they hang back or just shuffle a bit.'

This, the presenter goes on, is despite research from Goldsmiths which shows that more men than women can recognise a beat accurately, so men should be better dancers than women. Guest on the show, the wonderful Dr Peter Lovatt, says that 'data tells us that men are born to dance', and as they get older they tend not to because they are self-conscious, they feel they haven't got any motor co-ordination, they feel they don't know what to do.

I wouldn't disagree with that, having been in an audience of hundreds at one of Peter's talk where I was literally the only person not joining in (the rest were students). I'm sure there are, as he says, social and psychological reasons why men don't dance. But I do have a few points to make.

Firstly, although I do tend to have prohibitively dodgy knees when it comes to a conference Ceilidh or some line dancing at a wedding, give me Andy Weatherall in the DJ booth or a 90's indie disco and I may well be tempted out of retirement. As the salsa teacher on Woman's Hour said, 'when they relax after a few classes' – I heard 'glasses'.

Secondly, I'm not so convinced 'Mum Dancing' is that different. 'Show your wrists' anyone?

Thirdly, I had to laugh when Peter came to the possible evolutionary psychology explanation. 'If dancing is part of the human mate selection process, like an apple going brown is meant to put people off eating it, perhaps middle-aged men dancing in this uncoordinated way might be signalling to women that they are not the right people to mate with.'

I don't need dance to send that signal! I'm well aware that I'm now past it... if I was labouring under any illusions they were shattered on a 'Dads night out' in the Peak District a couple of years ago. Freed from parenting duties by our other halves, we had a great pub crawl round Castleton, ending in a lock-in where we found ourselves chatting to some younger women – pretty much as equals, we thought. We would never, of course, have dreamt of performing any mating rituals, but I suspect some of us thought that in a parallel universe it might have been an option. Until, that is, one of the young ladies in question uttered the immortal line 'You know, you've really restored my faith in the older generation.'

So I think most 'Dad dancing' isn't about sending unconscious messages from some primordial past... we know we're the brown apple, and we're celebrating by dancing like nobody's watching. Because nobody is.

As with all evolutionary psychology though, this should lead to testable predictions. Peter, what of it? Do Dads dance worse than married non-fathers, and worse still than single men of the same age? Do they know they do? Do they in fact dance their worst when their kids are watching, because embarrassing them is fun? Do married men with two kids and a vasectomy dance worse than anyone else? It would be nice to have an excuse that's backed by science…

Dads on holiday

Having just booked my first ever proper, foreign, all-inclusive family holiday, I am very hopeful that the effect on me will be something like this.

Because that's what it's like, isn't it Dads? Before the holiday, you tend to arrive home at midnight, never speak to your family, break everything you touch and generally groan under the weight of your hideous deformities. It's a wonder you don't literally eat those children. But once you get on holiday, you slowly begin to participate in life, culminating with a sequence where your horns fall off (but you still manage to frighten the life out of a hotel maid), you stagger with your last ounce of energy into the sea… and then you emerge as a new man, a hunky fella whose family are happy to jump on, possibly including your wife (all these ads tend to hold out the hope of more sex with your wife).

Even though it's yet more 'Dads, eh? What are they like?' advertising, I'm not annoyed by the ad... I'm more annoyed that it's pretty much true (apart from the sex with your wife bit).

Big lies to tell small children

As we approach Christmas, the topic of lying to your children seems apposite.

Lying to your children is great fun. I'm not talking about 'I'm not your real Dad' type lies... just daft things that one day they will have a little chuckle about and then use on their own children. This is our folklore… if we no longer wrestle bears, we can at least pass on stories and knowledge around petty wind ups from generation to generation.

There are some standard classics. For example, if the ice cream van goes past with the music on, that means it has run out. I'm pretty sure that one featured first in a stand-up routine, and I think it's become something of an urban myth that all Dads in the 1970s used this one. (Incidentally, ice cream vans are a good prompt for lies and humour in general. For example, when my 7-year-old recently saw an ambulance flash past and called out 'You won't sell many ice creams going at that speed!', I knew that my work here was done.)

In fact, you will find books full of great lies to tell small children. Many revolve around food and drink, for example 'Beer makes Daddy clever', guacamole is chopped up lizards, dry roasted peanuts are just normal peanuts that have been nibbled by maggots, or that Twiglets are actually baby giraffe legs. There are also websites: I particularly like 'If you don't eat your dinner, Buzz Lightyear will die'.

There are interesting cross cultural aspects. This infographic shows some interesting national differences... For example, if you don't go to bed in Spain, Portugal or Latin America, a cloaked man with red eyes called El Cuco will eat you.

I'm also interested in whether lying to your kids is gendered... in other words, do Mums do it anywhere near as much or in the same way? Apparently they often lie to other parents, but my guess would be that Mums' lies to their children aren't half as common, persistent or evil as us fellas. I could be wrong, and I would love to hear about research or personal experience on this topic. But I think lying to your children could be seen as a form of risk taking, you're pushing the boundaries and taking the chance that your children will grow up thinking you're a dick at best and completely untrustworthy at worst. Us Dads actively take on the role of 'spiritual guide to the dark side'… 'stick with me, kids, I'll show you how everybody lies so you can be on the lookout for it when it matters'. Maybe that's a bit of a leap from Twiglets being baby giraffe legs, but then I am a psychologist.

I'll try to think of more of my own, but for now I would love to hear yours and I will leave you with the thoughts of Jack Handey:

"One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. 'Oh no,' I said, 'Disneyland burned down.' He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting late."

Dad song #11

Today's Dad song is 'Father and son' by Cat Stevens.

It's a well-known song, with many cover versions over the years that don't compare to the original (step forward Ronan Keating, who should never be allowed to record another cover after changing the lyrics to Fairytale of New York). Perhaps less well-known is that it was originally written about a father pleading with his son not to join the Russian Revolution.

In its broader interpretation, the lyrics can apply to pretty much any Dad not understanding their child's desire to break away and form a new life. I thought of it this week on seeing Tom Daley's YouTube video where he announced he is dating another man. My heart goes out to the lad, and I wondered – as Tom acknowledges, many people will be thinking this – what his Dad would have said?

Unfortunately we'll never know, but from the outside they seemed to have a really strong and loving relationship. Despite the mixed reaction he has received from some family members, I suspect that as he says his Dad would have simply said 'As long as you're happy, I'm happy'. That would be the 'Dad Pride' way, and I'm sure most Dads can identify with that.

Any Dads that are more resistant might react along the lines of the words in Cat Stevens' song:

It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

But if they do, they can expect the son's reposte:

How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
It's always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

As ever, listening and learning from your child – and not treating every interaction as a chance to teach them a life lesson – has to be the key to good parenting.

Incidentally, Tom Daley's video also reminded me of this story from earlier in the year. As the quote at the bottom says, "The fact that it has been shared by so many sadly means that this kind of acceptance is both too rare and deeply craved by LGBT people so used to being rejected by families."

A moving issue

Hi all, apologies for the lack of recent blogging activity. Let's just say I've been having a rough time… but the upside is that I have been seeing a lot of my boys and – however much of a cliche it is – realising what's really important.


Whatever happens we are stronger than ever as a family, but as a Dad I'm having to deal with the impact of uncertainty on my two sons, aged 9 and 7. This came to a head last night with my 9-year-old in floods of tears at 10pm over the possibility that we might have to move away from the area. 'I'm scared', he kept repeating… 'I love Leicester' (somebody's got to), 'I don't want to leave'.

There's not much I can say in response other than whatever happens we'll be strong. But it got me thinking: what research is there out there concerning the impact of moving on children: psychologically, socially, and in health terms?


Anecdotally, everyone I speak to says that for children home is where their parents are, and they will quickly adjust and even completely forget their old neighbourhood. They make new friends, join new clubs, life goes on. But does the empirical evidence back up this rosy account?


There seems little doubt that the impact on children is as varied as their personalities. One study finds, unsurprisingly, that the social impact is greater on the introverted or neurotic child. Other research considers age at the time of the move: this study suggests that moving house more than twice during the first two years of life is associated with greater internalising problems (actions directed towards the self, such as depression and anxiety) at age nine years. There was no association between increased residential mobility in other time periods and internalising behaviour, or mobility in any period and externalising behaviour (such as aggression towards others). There was no effect of lifetime number of moves, or of an upwardly or downwardly mobile housing trajectory. However, continuously renting a house was associated with an increased externalising behaviour score. 

Home is where your parents are?

Other research suggests moving could be particularly stressful for adolescent girls, I would presume due to the intensity of the friendship bonds at that time. Perhaps this effect is lessening as it becomes easier to keep in touch… my guess would be that the vast majority of childhood friends lose touch completely within two years, however easy it would be in technological terms to maintain the relationship. 

Some research, for example this study, considers unusual health effects, finding that moving house is associated with the subsequent development in childhood asthma, possibly due to exposure to new allergens or stress. I'm fine with that as my eldest is already allergic to everything, and my youngest is altogether more robust.

The Daily Mail, very much a 'glass half empty' kind of publication, suggests that moving regularly in childhood is linked to dying younger. The NHS Choices website has a much more reasoned take on what I think is the same research, concluding that a higher risk of poor health outcomes is associated with frequent moves in childhood, but that the only significant association related to illegal drug use and that the reasons for the move (e.g. financial problems or seeking a better job) are clearly important.
Then I came across a study linking frequent moves to an increase in attempted suicide, and I thought I'd stop looking! But it's important to emphasise that's frequent moves rather than a single change. And I suspect that it's difficult to research the impact of moving on children as there tend to be so many other factors involved: often a marriage break-up, a change in income status etc etc, so it's not just about the effect of a new neighbourhood, school and friends (which in itself is quite a lot of factors). 

There's a fair amount of advice out there, most of it emphasising communication and some kind of bridge between the two homes. But as ever, it's useful to back up the data and existing advice with personal experience, so I would love to hear of any more research but also the thoughts and experiences of my readers on this topic. 

In particular, I would like to hear from Dads. Some academics suggest that moving is more stressful for women, but what are the particular considerations for men? How do other Dads out there juggle the responsibilities of (often) being the main breadwinner (therefore going where the work is) with a strong wish for stability for their children (therefore staying put)? I imagine this can lead to personal compromise… but then that's what being 'we' rather than 'I' is often about. 

A load of bollocks?

Could there be a link between the size of a father's testicles and how active he is in bringing up his children?

A new study reported by the BBC has found that men with smaller testicles were more likely to be involved with nappy changing, feeding and bath time.

Researchers at Emory University in the States studied 70 men who had children between the ages of one and two. The research is based on evolutionary theory about trade-offs between investing time and effort in mating, or putting that energy into raising children. Larger testicles, linked to the hormone testosterone, are thought to suggest greater commitment to creating more children over raising them. In the animal kingdom, it's the males with the biggest nuts who tend to mate with the most partners.

In the study, men at the smaller end of the spectrum were more likely, according to interviews with the man and the mother, to be more active in parenting duties. Presumably those with balls like spacehoppers just shoot their load and are barely seen for dust.

The researchers also found differences in brain scans of fathers looking at images of their child, linked to testicle size. Those with smaller testicles tended to have a greater response in the reward area of the brain.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects is that MRI scans showed a three-fold difference between the volumes of the smallest and largest testicles in the group. Three fold!! And if you're a Dad, they could be shrinking: researcher Dr Rilling said "We know that testosterone levels go down when men become involved fathers." Further studies, analysing the size before and after becoming a father, are needed.

I suspect this is just the latest study in a long line of research comparing markers of testosterone with personality and behaviour. For example, I would have thought there has been research on 'digit ratio' and fatherhood. There are likely to be lots of other factors involved, and it's hard to imagine the study having much practical impact, other than lots of men today comparing the size of their bollocks while swapping stories about how involved they are with their kids. As Dr James Rilling told the BBC: "It tells us some men are more naturally inclined to care-giving than others, but I don't think that excuses other men. It just might require more effort for some than others."

Lessons from nature

If you've had a summer of your children constantly demanding food - I'm led to believe the appetite of a teenager can be particularly voracious - then you may or may not like to consider this parenting strategy from the animal kingdom.

Burying beetles occasionally punish young who nag for food by eating those who pester them most, according to Edinburgh University research.

It encourages the larvae to plead more honestly according to how hungry they are and not try to outdo their siblings by pestering their mother for food.
It also helps the mother beetle to maintain a degree of control over how she feeds her squabbling offspring.

Yes, I know it's the wrong kind of beetle.

Dr Clare Andrews, of the University of Edinburgh's school of biological sciences, said: "We already knew that larvae beg more if they have been deprived of food but we had not known whether this is because they are informing their parents how hungry they are or whether they are simply squabbling with each other to get their parents' attention.
"Our study shows that if you're a baby beetle it doesn't pay to pester your mother for food unless you're really hungry.

Too young to be a Dad?

On my holiday I read a very interesting piece from Yvonne Roberts in The Observer magazine. It points out that 'no statistics are kept on the number of "young fathers" – classified as anyone becoming a dad under the age of 24, and often much younger'. There are interesting contributions from Shane Ryan of Working With Men:

Ryan says many of the young men he works with are already marginalised, from ethnic minority groups or less affluent backgrounds; some may have come from families with a history of abuse or mental health issues, or have been in trouble at school. "Once they become dads, too often that pattern of exclusion begins again. They are expected to fail when they have assets and love to offer. Some teenage mothers, support services and grandparents can make it extremely difficult for them to gain a foothold in their children's lives."

There are some really touching contributions from young fathers, and links to other resources. For me, this is the nub of it:

Mark S Kiselica writes in When Boys Become Parents, "For too long our culture has treated boys who become fathers… as detached misfits who are the architects of many of our nation's problems, rather than seeing these youth for who they really are: young men trying to navigate a complex array of difficult life circumstances that place them at a tremendous disadvantage." Investment in high-quality compulsory relationship education in schools and a national holistic service for young parents would benefit children, mums and dads. It would save the taxpayer money in the long run, since absent and neglectful dads also exact a cost, as many of the young fathers interviewed testified about their own childhoods. "They can become the men they want to be," says Shane Ryan.

The issues are also covered in more depth in this article on disadvantaged young fathers-to-be.
 

'Who lets their eight- to ten-year-old children out alone?'

It's the summer: cue the annual debate about how children should be spending it, and all the nostalgia for long 'Swallows and Amazons' type holidays of unsupervised play. This article in particular caught my eye, from Barbara Ellen in The Guardian.

A report from the Future Foundation says that the average amount for eight- to 10-year-olds playing unsupervised in the summer holidays has fallen from 55 "occasions" in the 1950s and 1960s to 24 now. Cue parental nostalgia for their own unsupervised summer holidays.
I'm amazed by those figures. Who is letting their eight- to 10-year-olds go out alone 24 times during summer? And when would it be convenient to send the social services around?
I had those textbook childhood summers: running around, picking berries, making dens. Think Famous Five, only without the money or the casual racism. All of us went out in the morning and weren't expected back until … well, you just weren't expected back, except when driven home by hunger. Some would call it priceless formative freedom, others outright neglect; it didn't matter because everyone did it.
But that was then and this is now.

That's very much my own recollection of childhood… when we weren't on a family holiday, from an early age I would be out on the estate or further afield and I wasn't expected back in a hurry. Now with my own kids, aged 6 and 9, they tend to be on day trips with my wife or myself (or both), or at the childminders, or at some holiday club or other. They have not yet been out unsupervised.

I know plenty of boys from my nine-year-old's class who do go down the park on their own, and I'm certainly not about to send social services around. But I can't quite put my finger on why I haven't yet afforded my own son that opportunity. I know he must be on the cusp of it, and I know it's not 'increased traffic' or 'stranger danger' that are putting me off.

Maybe if he was pushing for it more himself I would be forced into a decision. But for now he seems more than happy hanging about with us 'old and boring, increasingly superfluous' folks.

Perhaps that's not the point, and that I need to cut the apron strings for his own good. Barbara Ellen concludes:

Whenever people trot out their lists of what children need (security, self-expression, discipline etc), there's never mention of one of the most important – privacy. Basically, there's too much parental ego flying around. Modern parents need to learn that it is not all about them, centre-stage, being great hands-on parents. Sometimes, it is about parents butting out. 

What do you think? At what age and in what circumstances is it best to butt out?

Improvised weaponry

Listening to the Frank Skinner show on Absolute Radio, I was amused to hear about his Dad's habit of carrying salt in his pocket, to throw in the face of a would-be attacker. Even more amusing was one of the listeners who remembered an eccentric Dad who used to keep a three-year-old egg in his house, claiming it could 'blind an elephant'. Apparently, 'if you ever knocked at his door after 9pm he'd have it in his hand'.

The show's hosts mused that this 'might be a regional Dads thing'. I'm hoping it's just a Dads thing: I'm all for anything which embarrasses the kids.

So have you ever improvised weaponry, to the amusement / embarrassment of your children?

Dad song #10

Dads: don't neglect your other halves, or this is what will happen.

This song was written by Dolly Parton but recorded and released first by Emmylou Harris. Emmylou's own father went missing in action during the Korean War.

Sergeant Major Dad

I haven't posted for a few weeks, mainly because I've been too busy being a Dad to write about it. But I've certainly been reflecting on it, and something has been bothering me.

My wife went away for a few days, and I had the boys to myself. When I see Mums on the school run at times like this, they tend to ask 'How's it going?', with a worried look on their face. I tend to reply, rather too enthusiastically, 'Brilliant!' Because the honest truth is that I find lone parenting absolutely fine, and in some ways easier than sharing the duties. I like to do things my way, and I'm confident I'm doing a good job. We do things, stuff gets done, she comes back, everybody's happy.

But there is one aspect of my parenting that I suspect might be different when she's not around. She sometimes says I can slip into 'Sergeant Major mode', i.e. things need to be done, they need to be done my way and they need to be done NOW. I think I might do this even more in her absence.

Take one example, which has been bugging me. My six-year-old had been chucking his bottle of squash around at his gym competition, and after we drove on to a festival down the road I realised we no longer had it. When I asked him where it was, he didn't display the necessary level of concern regarding its whereabouts. I blew my top, and marched us all a few hundred yards down the road in the searing heat to go and reclaim the bottle, barking at him to keep up.

I was hard on him, but deliberately so. I thought I was teaching him a lesson: that I work hard to ensure that he has 'things', and that he has no right to be so offhand about them. This was something that he seemed to be increasingly prone to, and I felt I needed to nip that growing sense of entitlement in the bud, to teach him that 'Mum and Dad will sort it' is not always the answer. Take responsibility.

I still think that's right, but on the other hand it was a £1 bottle and we could have all done without the walk back and the black cloud descending.

Are you a Sergeant Major Dad?

Then last week I was at a conference in Stockholm, and I met a lawyer from the US. We got chatting about fatherhood, and I recorded what he had to say. When we parted I realised to my horror that it hadn't recorded. If you're out there, I'm really sorry not to give you due credit and to do justice to your insightful and eloquent comments.

The gist of what he said was that he enjoyed being a Dad more when he stopped treating every interaction with his children as an opportunity to teach them a lesson, to build their character. In fact, he realised that he needed to learn from them. They are the future, literally, and they know far more about what to wear, how to act etc than we do.

He gave me the example of receiving a late night phone call from a girlfriend of one of his sons. He launched into the typical Dad diatribe, do you know what time it is, etc etc, and then slowly realised that this girl was, in a very responsible manner, asking him to come and pick his son up because he had had too much to drink. 'Here she was doing the grown up thing, being responsible, and I would have got in the way.'

But don't they sometimes need to learn those lessons, I asked? 'Life does a pretty good job of teaching them', he replied. 'If you do it, do they just learn that they do that thing and Dad gets mad?'

Relax, he said, and learn from them.

As I say, this guy had much more wisdom to impart than I can. I'm sorry I didn't get his name, but I'm going to learn from him and relax.

P.S. Another thing about the bottle incident… I felt really bad about it. Do other Dads out there think that a sense of guilt is a decent indication that your parenting has gone awry? Or is it not as simple as that?

P.P.S. Actually, thinking about the bottle incident even more… maybe I felt particularly guilty because deep down I knew I couldn't be 100% sure that it wasn't me that put the bottle down somewhere. All in all, the whole kerfuffle was definitely not worth the effort.

Drawing Dad

Much as I want to avoid this blog becoming an online fridge door, I just had to share this father's day portrait of me by my 6-year-old.

At least I think it's me: it could be Alistair Darling line dancing.

It made me reflect on the fact that children the world over have been drawing pictures of their Dads for thousands of years. They are often difficult to interpret, but none the less enjoyable for that.

Then today, via PsychScientists, I came across these nine hundred year old drawings from a 7-year-old Russian boy called Onfim, including this one of him with his Dad. Amazing stuff. They look very proud of their toast racks.

The image suggests to me that children have been proud of sharing activities with their Dads for centuries… long may that continue.