I’ve recently been diagnosed with autism and ADHD. I’m writing about late-diagnosed neurodivergence in adults in my new newsletter—Life on Hard Mode.

If you are neurodivergent too, suspect you might be, or know someone who is, then I’m inviting you to join me over on Life on Hard Mode, or to share it with someone whom it might help.

Life on Hard Mode

For people with autism, ADHD or over neurodivergences—diagnosed or not—living with the difficulty turned up to the max

By Brad Kelley

So it’s been a while (again).

Firstly, I want to say a massive thank you to all of you for that time you pressed the Subscribe button on this newsletter—whether it was back in 2023 when I first launched it, or last week, nearly a year after my last post. I really do appreciate you all for doing so.

With that said, I have some news.

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I always knew I was different from others. I struggled with socialising, especially with new people (see here for Exhibit A). Staying focused on tasks has always been like trying to wrestle a toddler into a pair of gloves. The world always felt too loud, too bright, and too itchy.

I blustered through life with all these difficulties, but it wasn’t until I became a dad that things really started to break down.

My executive function was shot to pieces. I started forgetting to pack essentials for the kids on trips out became a regular event. I started to misplace things more. Tantrums and meltdowns made my ears physically hurt. So many more new people I had to just speak to; but challenge if something wasn’t right for my child. Among so many other things—all started to make life really hard; harder than it already was.

I started doing some research into autism. This wasn’t just out of the blue; I’d always wondered about it since I was a teenager, eating lunch alone, willing myself to be social but being utterly incapable of doing so.

I thought it couldn’t be possible. Surely it’d have been picked up by now, right?

But then I stumbled across the term AuDHD: the presence of both autism and ADHD.

It shocked me - I’d never once considered ADHD as something I’d have. I wasn’t necessarily hyperactive, so surely not, right?

But the inattentive side of ADHD is more commonly occurring; something I had no idea about.

More research followed. More self-screening tools told me I should get assessed. More books I read resonated deeply within me.

Fast forward to last year, and the news that didn’t necessarily surprise me after all the research I’d done—but shocked me, nonetheless.

I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD.

So much made sense now. There was so much reframing of past experiences to do; and there still is. But it got me thinking - there must be other people like me. People who wrestled through so much in their life to get to a point in adulthood where they learn this life-changing piece of information about themselves; knowledge that would have made things potentially much easier much earlier.

It was like we’d all been living life on hard mode all this time.

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I hesitate to say that this will be the last ever post on Some Other Dad. Parenting is a life-long journey, and I might find that I have more to say further down the line.

But for now, I have a whole lot to say about autism, ADHD and late-diagnosed neurodivergence.

That’s why I’ve started a new newsletter—Life on Hard Mode.

This might not be a relevant newsletter to you. If not, no worries.

But if you are also neurodivergent, you will want to check this out.

If you struggle with the same things that I do in life that I spoke about earlier, and you’re questioning whether you might be neurodivergent, you will want to check this out.

Maybe you have a child with a neurodivergent condition—if so, there’s a strong chance you are neurodivergent too.

Maybe you know someone who is neurodivergent, or is on the journey to discovering this.

If any of these apply to you, I’m inviting you to subscribe for free to Life on Hard Mode, or to share it with someone whom it might resonate with.

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I’d love to see you there.

For now though, from Some Other Dad—it’s not goodbye, but see you later.

Last week’s post from the archive was meant to be a one-off; a tactic deployed to give me more time to write a fresh new issue for you all.

Alas, I have failed in my endeavour. A mixture of work and time off work doing fun stuff has inhibited my ability to finish what I’ve started. Therefore I come to you today bearing not lasagne, but an essay about lasagne.

I’m sharing this issue in particular because soon I’ll be making some lasagnes myself to give away. Some friends of ours are expecting a baby very soon, and I remember how heartwarming and cared for I felt whenever someone would bring us freshly-prepared food when we were deep in the trenches of early newborn life. I vowed to return the favour to anyone I could.

The essay is more than just about lasagne (mental note: start a news newsletter exclusively about lasagne). It’s about the boundaries that new parents should set with neighbours, friends and even close family.

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As of Tuesday, I’ll be a member of Team No Sleep once again, and the proud father of a second baby girl.

I’ve been a little bit nervous about how our family dynamic will change, but a lot less trepidatious than I was the first time. The experience of having done it once before really helps—as I’ve spoken about before, there’s unfortunately nothing that can really replicate on-the-job training when it comes to caring for a newborn baby.

One of the things that I learned a lot about the first time, and that we as a couple have been very clear about this time around is our boundaries as a family during the first few weeks after baby arrives1.

Only close family (our own parents and siblings) will be allowed to come over and see the baby, and that’s with a lot of prior warning, and with us texting them just before they leave to say it’s still OK. Even when they do come, if they’re not providing a meals on wheels service—ideally a lasagne2 or five—or doing some tidying around the house, or at the very least entertaining our three-year-old for a few hours when she’s not in nursery, then they’re not coming over just to sit and drink tea with us whilst we’re desperately clinging to our sanity.

I’m not even thinking about asking the extended family over, and to be honest I don’t think I ever will. They’ll see her when they see her. I have no desire to host people for the sake of it.

It’s so empowering for us both as a family unit and personally to be comfortable and secure in setting these boundaries and sticking to them (only time will truly tell, but I’m confident). I’ve alluded to being a people-pleaser before, so being able to subvert that in this scenario has been really important for my own self development.

But I’ll be honest - there’s no way I would have been this confident and forthright in my convictions to hold these boundaries for us unless I’d let myself be walked all over in the past; unless I’d made the mistakes already and knew what it felt like to be trodden on. And that’s exactly what happened with our first. Like with everything to do with parenting, you don’t learn the lesson until it’s happened to you, and it’s too late.

It all started in the hospital. As soon as visiting hours in the recovery ward began, I was away from the bedside, away from my post-fifty-seven-hour-labour wife and newborn daughter, negotiating with the midwives to let my parents and sister up onto the ward to visit for half the visiting time, then handing them leaving just as my wife’s parents, brother and his girlfriend came to use up the other half. I didn’t have any brainpower to be dealing with logistics like this, but that’s what I was made to feel like I should be doing.

The close family visits continued after we returned home, which were fine. Our parents were both helpful and brought us food and treats, which were a big help.

But then the wider mob started showing up in dribs and drabs, all within the first week of being home. A couple of my wife’s cousins would text asking if it was ok to come over. Not knowing any better, we said yes. They each stayed for an hour. One even told my wife “bloody hell, you’re still massive!”, as if they thought the muscle and skin that’s been slowly expanding over the course of nine months just fucking disappears the moment the baby pops out. We should have said no, but we didn’t know we could.

Then a day or so later there’s a ring at the door. I check out doorbell camera to see who it is. It’s two more members of our wider family, turning up unannounced - literally doorstepping us. My wife’s just come off the back of a massive cluster-feeding session and is exhausted. But do we do the logical thing and turn them away? Of course not - we let them it, because it’s too awkward to tell them to come back another day

We give each other glances as if to say let’s get these two out of here as soon as possible. We try to guard the living room, but they shuffle on past us. We stay standing up, but one of them plops himself happily onto the sofa, shimmying out of his coat, making himself nice and fucking comfy.

They stay for an hour and a half. When they’d left, my wife is in tears as she calls her parents to find out what the hell’s just happened. Turns out her dad has given them our address, without a thought to say “hey, maybe ask them before you pop over?”

Credit to my mother-in-law; she gave him as much of an earful as my wife did.

As time went on the acute problem of home visitors seeped away as the novelty for family of seeing a teeny-tiny baby wore off as she got less teeny-tiny. But an inherent lack of empathy for our situation as new parents permeated into other aspects of our interactions with them. Family meals out would always get booked at times of the evening that weren’t conducive to a very small child’s fledgling schedule. But of course, we couldn’t say no. It didn’t enter our sleep-deprived minds to do so.

Then it all came to a head. Then came the Sip and See.

Whether it was us or my wife’s parents who initially suggested it, I can’t really remember. Either way, it was an awful idea that should have been shot down at launch. But I just remember the phrase “it’ll let everyone have a chance to see the baby all at once” being bandied about a lot.

As you can imagine, it was a fucking nightmare. I remember sitting there, fuelled by a plate of beige food, a glass of Prosecco and about four hours of sleep in the past week, expected to make smalltalk with the entirety of my wife’s extended family; Uncles, grandparents, cousins - you name it. There were nearly thirty people crammed into my in-law’s house in total. All invited over to pass their germs on to our pristine little baby as they handed her around, all getting their grubby hands on her for their photo and cuddle.

Truthfully, we didn’t realise how bad it was until a couple of months later. We looked back at some of the photos from the event, and we were horrified at what we saw. We looked like warmed-up corpses, propped up Weekend at Bernie’s-style for the entertainment of the masses.

My wife burst into tears, in grief for what our past selves had been subjected to. I didn’t feel much better about it, either. Not only did I feel sad for my past self for having felt as though I needed to do all that, but that I wasn’t able to advocate for myself, or my family. I guess I felt as though indulging family and going on tour with our newborn daughter was expected of us; like it was the ‘done thing’.

I am here to tell any new or expectant parents right now, that there is no ‘done thing’. There is your ‘thing’, and that’s it. But it’s hard not to get swept up in the madness of it all.

There’s so many guides online on how to deal with after-birth visitors, all giving sage pieces of advice. But do we feel like we’re able to follow them, in the heat of the moment? We certainly didn’t, and I know I’m not an isolated case either.

I spoke to some of my friends about their experiences with this kind of thing; here are some anecdotal examples from our conversations:

“We literally got home from the hospital after three days of intense labour, where our baby almost died, and sat on the sofa are my mum, dad, sister and her boyfriend. They’ve got a spare key for emergencies, but they thought they’d just let themselves in to greet us home. We were in no fit state to be entertaining people - we just wanted to get in our own little bubble and process what had just happened. They stayed for three and a half hours. I just thought it was normal at the time and went along with it, but later I realised it was out of order. I told them a few years later how shitty it was but they didn’t seem to understand why, even then.”

“We were renting off my in-laws at the time, so they just treating it like they could pop over at whatever time they wanted to see the baby. There were no boundaries whatsoever. My wife tried to speak to them about it, but they just brushed it off like “but I want to see my grandson, what’s wrong with that?” We had to put a latch on the door in the end and make up some excuse about my wife feeling safer in case she fell asleep during the day, but we shouldn’t have had to do that. We should have just said no.”

“Whenever my mum and sister would come and visit in those early days, they’d always just be in it for themselves, not to help us in any way. Once I asked them if they would bring some food - they brought sandwiches for themselves and nothing for us. Another time, my wife had literally just got the baby to sleep, and they both showed up unannounced with one of my sister’s friends in tow. My mum came straight in and started nudging the baby to wake up, and picking him up.”

You might have had a similar experience or story to the ones above and thought “ah, that’s just what families are like” or “it wasn’t that bad.”

Maybe it wasn’t for you, and that’s fine. But the fact that yet more articles exist on setting boundaries after having a baby, surely means that more people than just me and some friends have found this kind of behaviour to be detrimental to our post-natal mental health.

As I already mentioned, this time around we’ve felt much more comfortable being able to set those boundaries for ourselves. But that first time around, you’re so vulnerable and raw to the world once you emerge through those hospital doors, holding the car seat containing the most precious thing in the world to you. You’re still in emotional shock - no wonder so many parents need articles like those above to help them set boundaries. Because without them, they don’t.

But what if the parent doesn’t even know to look for advice like this? What else can be done? I’ll tell you what I wished had happened for us - I wish someone had set the boundaries for us when we didn’t know how.

That sounds like I’m passing the buck. But just think back to those first weeks after having your first child - they’re like a blur, right? You don’t know right from left, up or down, and you’re putting your car keys in the fridge because you’re so tired. How the hell do you think new parents can fight through that kind of fatigue to have what can be quite difficult conversations with parents, family and friends? It’s so much more likely that they’re just going to say yes to whatever whims they have, just to not rock the boat.

That’s where the parents - or someone, anyone! - needs to step in. At least for us, I wish they’d been the advocate that I wasn’t able to be at that time in my life. I wish they’d said “don’t do a Sip and See, it’s fucking stupid and it’ll be bad for you and the baby” (it was bad for the baby - she ended up in hospital twice with nasty bugs she’d no doubt picked up from the two-dozen people kissing her that day). I wish they’d told us to tell any unannounced visits to sling their hook.

But they didn’t. They’ve been great with childcare and stuff like that since, but I can’t help but feel a bit of resentment that they didn’t hold that boundary for us that first time around, especially when I see them doing it for the other new parents popping up in the extended family now.

Ultimately, all I can do is affect the future. So that’s why I’ve made sure to be the advocate that I wasn’t able to be before. And it’s why that no matter what, I promise my daughters that I will be their advocate if I ever become a grandparent.

And when I go over to meet my grandchild for the first time, I’ll come bearing lasagne.

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Tell me your stories

I think everyone has examples of when family or friends have overstepped the line when it comes to the post-natal period. Have you got any stories along these lines that you want to get off your chest? Or how about some occasions where you were able to hold that boundary?

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Previously on Some Other Dad

This is my excuse for not having a fresh new issue ready this week. But do not fear, dear reader—I’ve delved into the archive and pulled out this issue about paternity leave which was very popular at the time.

And, unfortunately, is still as relevant as it was a year and a half ago.

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As I mentioned at the end of last week’s post, my paternity leave has come to an end. I blearily rolled out of bed and into my office last Thursday, dusted off the ugly corporately-assigned laptop and turned on the work phone. The time has gone impossibly fast, and mentally, I’m nowhere near ready to turn my attention back towards the day job (or the 982 unread emails in my inbox)—but somehow I’ll have to make myself ready.

In truth though, I’m kind of still on leave. On top of the three weeks paternity leave I get from my employer and the week of annual leave I took to top it up to four weeks, I’ve used some of my leave to shorten my work hours for the next few weeks, which means I’m not back to full-time until July. It’s far less jarring this way around than jumping two-footed into the deep-end like I did last time, when I took five weeks (three weeks, plus two of my own leave) and then went straight back.

But something that unites my two periods of paternity leave over the past four years is that whenever anyone would ask what time I was taking off and I’d tell them, they’d always say “Oh that’s a good amount of time”, or “That’s generous”.

When I first heard that, I thought “Is it?”

I remember hearing tell of countries, mainly in Scandinavia (seriously, they’ve got everything sussed), where fathers could get way more than the three weeks I was being offered. With this portion of paternity leave, and the inevitable questions about how long I was taking, once again my mind turned towards the Nordic utopia, and how much better their provisions are for parental leave.

But I realised that I’d never actually looked into what exactly they did get. So this is what I found, and here’s some of the best:

• Sweden - both parents get 480 days between them—90 of which are exclusively for each. These are paid at 80% of their normal pay.

• Estonia - 435 days off between the two partners, with pay set at the average of their two salaries.

• Norway - fathers get up to 10 weeks, depending on their wife/partner’s income. On top of that, parents get an extra 46 weeks at full pay—or 56 weeks at 80% of their normal pay.

• South Korea - although this one is new and compensation hasn’t been confirmed, plans are for both parents to get 18 months leave each.

• Spain - Recently increased to 16 weeks—on par with maternity leave in the countries—on full pay.

After reading about these countries, and realising how it’s not just the Scandinavians and the Baltics being generous with their paternity leave, I felt somehow vindicated at not feeling as though my three weeks was sufficient. Especially as only two of those weeks are government-approved—the extra week is only because of my employer.

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That two weeks in the UK is also paid at a pretty miserly rate: either £149 (around $195) a week, or 90% of your weekly pay—whichever is lower. And if you’re self-employed, a contractor or otherwise not on some kind of formal payroll, you’re shit out of luck.

According to the above graph from a UNICEF report in 2019 (although most of the data in the graph is from 2016/2017), the UK is certainly in the lower half of the “richest countries” for provision of paternity leave. But as you can see, there’s a few countries with provisions even lower than that. Let’s talk about a few of them:

• USA - Dads in America don’t get any paternity leave guaranteed. There is some provision under the Family and Medical Leave Act, but it’s unpaid and not everyone gets it. What’s wild about the USA though—and as the majority of my readers are American, you’ll probably already know—is that there’s no guaranteed maternity leave for mothers either.

• Australia - Australian dads can get a slice of the 18 weeks parental leave, paid at minimum wage, but only if transferred from the mother’s allowance, as it automatically is allocated to her.

• Mexico - Officially, dads in Mexico can get just five working days of leave, paid at full pay. However, as pointed out above, as up to 60% of men in the country work outside of the formal economy, they’re missing out.

You may notice Japan right at the top of that list, offering a full 52 weeks paternity leave to new dads, and you might wonder why I didn’t talk about them above. Well, the UNICEF report also highlights that in 2017, less than 5% of men eligible for paternity leave actually took it.

The top three reasons for this—staff shortages, companies not offering it, and “unfavourable atmosphere”—all speak to another issue that affect dads’ ability to take the leave they’re due: culture. I know anecdotally that this isn’t just the case in Japan, either—a good few friends of mine who work in fairly demanding industries felt pressure to take as little leave as possible, despite their employers’ own policy.

I already knew that the USA was among those countries not offering anything in terms of paternity leave—aside from what employers might offer—but I was really surprised to find so many developed countries with offerings under two weeks—which seems to be a threshold that a lot of countries aim for when deciding on paternity leave.

But any dad that’s had to roll out of bed after another sleepless night and leave their partner with the baby on their own—knowing that they might well not be able to go to the toilet, shower or do basically anything for themselves all day—will attest that this two-week mark that many countries seem content with is not enough.

You may be familiar with the three trimesters of pregnancy, each lasting roughly three months. But the fourth trimester is a thing as well. Those first three months for a baby outside of the womb are—to put it bluntly—a massive headfuck, especially for someone without a fully developed brain. You’re no longer being rocked endlessly by the movement of your mother’s diaphragm, your ears are no longer full of the lovely lilt of your mother’s heartbeat, and there’s an endless queue of nans and aunts waiting to plant a smacker on your unblemished skin1. It’s no wonder they cry more during these three months than at any other time.

So it’s no wonder either that this is the period where parents feel like they need their village the most—let alone their other half.

I could rant for hours about this—to me, the fact that in the richest countries in the world, we expect (mostly) mothers to put up with the most intense2 period of parenting on their own, all whilst they’re most likely dealing with constant bleeding, hip pain, stitches, or even recovery from a C-section—the only medical procedure that cuts through six layers of skin, fat and muscle. For a society has so many parents in it, and relies on people deciding to have children to keep the wheels of modern civilisation moving, it’s crazy to me just how unseen the struggles of new parents are. Once everyone’s had their selfies and cuddles with the smushy little newborn, it’s like society couldn’t give a fuck anymore.

Mothers deserve to have their partners around for those three months if that’s what they feel they need—and there’s plenty of dads out there who want to be there for their family for longer.

I don’t doubt that policies like those in South Korea would cost an eye-watering sum to implement in the US or the UK. I’m not here calling for a years’ fully paid leave. But the standard two weeks or less that a lot of first-world countries seem to think they can get away with offering is not good enough.

Three months—fully paid or not—is where we should be setting the bar for enabling both parents to be where they need to be—at home setting the foundations of their new family.

How much leave dads are able to take shouldn’t be up to the benevolence of corporations—many of whom are to blame for harbouring cultures like those we see in Japan that makes men not feel comfortable taking the paternity leave they’re entitled to. Every dad should have the right to adequate leave, and the only way to square that is through government action.

Until then, all I can do is call for all dads reading this to take what you’re owed. Do not let workplace or cultural pressures keep you from your instinct to be there for your family when they need you most.

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Over to you

The provision of paternity and maternity leave is so dependent on so many factors—it’s hard to meet two different people with the same experience. I’d be really interested to know how long you were able to take, and whether you felt any pressures to take less or return sooner than you’d have liked.

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Previously on Some Other Dad

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When I was eight years old, I would sometimes leave the house on my own to walk to a friend’s house. The playdates were pre-arranged, and both sets of parents knew when I’d be leaving, and when I’d be expected.

But that element of risk remained—I’d be walking for probably just over five minutes down a main road, completely on my own, at eight years of age.

At the time, it felt like the first taste of personal responsibility. The beginning of the rite of passage into my teenage years, of sorts. For my parents, it was probably the start of an easier period of their parenting life, where their youngest child was gaining their own independence.

This was the late 90s, and it felt fine. But now, would letting your eight-year-old do this get you into trouble?

What got me thinking about this vague memory from my childhood was this story of a mum from the USA being arrested for “reckless conduct” and “child neglect”, after her ten-year-old son was found to have walked from his home into the local town centre on his own. The mum claims it wasn’t far, he’d done it before, and there was no perceived danger of the area he was walking through. And yet, the law saw it differently.

But would they have left the kid be if he was eleven-years-old? How about twelve, or thirteen? We all know that different kids mature at different ages, and surely fostering independence—within reasonable safety limits—is a good thing. So at what point does nurturing independence become negligent?

Have things really changed?

The world anecdotally feels like a different place for kids to grow up in, depending on which generation you ask. I’m too young to have been a Latchkey Kid—a cultural norm in the 70s and 80s whereby kids would come and go from home as they pleased, often when parents weren’t even there, either with the latch of the house unlocked or with their own set of keys. During the day, kids would just bugger off on their bikes with their mates, apparently to swim in abandoned quarries and get stuck in old fridges, if the public safety adverts of the time were to be believed.

Things weren’t quite so blasé when I was younger—as I said above, I could go short distances but only if it was pre-arranged. The most freedom we had at that young age was to go over the park across the road, but that was only because it was literally in sight of our house.

Now though? I’m not a parent of older children quite yet, but I can imagine what my response would be if my eight-year-old asked if they could go down the shops on their own—and it wouldn’t be in the affirmative.

But why is that? Is it just purely down to cultural and societal shifts, or is there really a greater danger?

The latest set of data from England and Wales shows a slight increase in the number of child abduction offences compared to the previous year. When also compared across the whole dataset which goes back to 2002/03, there is a noticeable increase since 2015 (although to avoid alarm, the figure relative to other crimes is still very low).

In the USA, it’s estimated that around 460,000 children go missing every year. However, only 0.3% of these incidents involve abduction by a stranger.

It’s only a small amount of data, and some of the numbers seem high and scary. But the risk is still incredibly low for the worst-case scenario incidents that we all fear. In fact, crimes rates generally across the board in most developed countries have trended downwards for decades.

With that, what’s the issue with letting our kids off the leash a little bit?

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The case for free-range parenting

There’s a fairly strong case for giving our kids more autonomy. Research published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence concludes that autonomy-supportive parenting is linked to positive developmental outcomes, highlighting the importance of fostering autonomy in children.

When I visited Japan in 2018, I noticed groups of kids walking around city centres with bright yellow backpacks and school uniforms—without any parent in sight. It’s quite commonplace that schools there encourage—or even mandate—that kids as young as six make the journey to school alone. This isn’t just in rural parts either—I saw kids doing this in Tokyo, a city of over 14 million people.

Sure, you can’t transplant the culture from one country—where it’s expected that the community looks out for these kids as they make their way to school—and expect it to work the same way somewhere else. But it just goes to show what kids are truly capable of when given the opportunity.

Contrast that with the phenomenon of helicopter parenting, which tends to be more prevalent in the West. Research published by the American Psychological Association found that overbearing parenting can hinder children's emotional development, leading to increased anxiety and depression.

If you’re into the idea of ‘free-range parenting’, you may have heard of Lenore Skenazy, who strongly advocates for children to be given more autonomy. The difference in culture between East and West is clear in her case: in Japan, it’s normal for eight-year-olds to catch the subway on their own. When Lenore Skenazy allowed her kid to do the same, she was dubbed “America’s Worst Mom”.

A quote from her book Free-Range Kids that stood out to me was:

You don't remember the times your dad held your handle bars. You remember the day he let go.

This hit hard for me, as the other week was the first time I took my eldest daughter out on a bike without stabilisers. I held her up using a scarf wrapped underneath her armpits and ran alongside, but whenever I loosened that grip slightly, she was giddy with excitement at what she was doing, all by herself. She still talks about it now. Reading that quote and remembering that really resonated with me, and has made me think about how I can be less overbearing.

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Following in our digital footprints

But it’s not all one-way traffic in this debate. There is further research that increased parental monitoring does have its upsides.

Another article in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence looked into the effects of parental monitoring on adolescent behaviour, especially around risk. It concluded that effective parental monitoring is linked to a decrease in behavioural problems among adolescents.

Another study, published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, suggests that higher levels of parental involvement and monitoring are associated with better social skills in some children.

This debate goes beyond the safety of kids walking on the street or taking public transport. One challenge that children growing up in the 80s and 90s never had to contend with was the one place where parents can’t necessarily follow them— the internet.

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Having grown up with the advent of social media, I feel like those in my age bracket of 30-35 are pretty savvy with the internet—perhaps more than most—having had to navigate the early pitfalls of online chatrooms and forums for ourselves. Our parents didn’t have a clue what they were. I still remember getting scammed out of my Habbo Hotel password as clearly as it was yesterday. Bastards.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this generation’s young people are the most clued up about the internet, but recent statistics might hint otherwise. The NSPCC reports an 82% rise in instances of online grooming against children in the past five years, with a quarter of these involving primary school children.

Office of National Statistics data shows that 35% of 10-to-15-year-olds have accepted friend requests on social media from complete strangers within the past year, with 8.5% of those asked having shared their location publicly online.

Again, this is not an area of parenting where I have first-hand experience yet, but this is one particular facet where I will find it hard to not be a bit helicopter-like. We all have anecdotal evidence of how sophisticated online scams are getting. For us dyed-in-the-wool types who’ve been online since the days of MySpace and MSN Messenger, they're fairly easy to spot.

But imagine if you’ve just got your first smartphone, downloaded Instagram or Snapchat and you start seeing the type of adverts or posts that we’re talking about. How would you know how to decipher the scams from the real thing, unless you have the guidance from someone who knows what they’re looking out for?

I remember well the feeling of unease I felt talking to strangers on online chatrooms and forums in my early teens. I wouldn’t have ended up on them if my parents had a clue about the internet, or at the very least I would have known when to stop and what was safe and not safe to do. The only thing keeping me on social media nowadays is the desire to keep up-to-date with what’s going on online, so that I can pass that knowledge and guidance on to my kids when they inevitably end up with an online presence.

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A risky business

The wide range of considerations in this debate leaves me stuck betwixt the two camps.

There’s things that I want to do less of when it comes to monitoring the kids as they get older. I made a conscious effort to step away from my eldest a year or so ago whenever she went on climbing frames and the like in the park. I’m not the kind to hover underneath her anymore with outstretched arms. This is in part because I want to take any opportunity I can nowadays to sit down, but also because what good is it doing her? Sometimes life doesn’t come with safety nets.

I’ve felt judged by this before. I’ve seen parents glancing at me as they float around their own little ones, as if to say “are you leaving your child unsupervised?!”

I’m not—I’m managing risk. I can see she might fall from those monkey bars, but I can still see her. The fall isn’t that far. The floor is made of those rubber pellets. I can reach her quickly if she does fall. Plus, the feeling of being able to tackle an obstacle in the park unaided is something she’ll be beaming about the whole way home.

Conversely, I can’t unlearn certain things about the world. Social media in particular is a cesspit of much more than just dogshit opinions. I can’t knowingly expose my children to that kind of stuff. I will hold out as long as I can before letting them loose online, and even then I will make no apologies for using parental controls.

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This isn’t a question that I think has a singularly defined answer. Everyone’s idea of risk is different, and is shared by their own experiences and what they therefore want or don’t want for their own children. It’s also shared by where you live and your surroundings. One approach doesn’t fit everyone. As the mother of the young Japanese boy said in the clip I linked earlier, she said she would never let her boy do the same walk to school unaccompanied if they lived in the USA.

But one thing I personally can be sure of is that the mother featured right at the start of the article should never have been placed under arrest. If you’re to class her case as neglect, then you’re tying parents in a straightjacket; basically dictating that they must be able to see them at all times until they’re eighteen.

Recognition should be given to parents who want to give their children that extra bit of autonomy—without putting them at obvious, serious risk. It’s happening already: laws have been passed in the states of Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois and Montana, guaranteeing that children have the right to unsupervised time without the parents being automatically being considered guilty of neglect.

We can all agree that independence is a positive trait to have in our children. So what’s wrong with a bit more independence for parents too?

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Independence or vigilance?

This debate’s much more complex than just a binary choice between letting your kids out at all hours, versus wrapping them in bubble wrap until they’re 30. My opinion is still forming on the subject, seeing as my eldest is five-years-old and still needs a fair amount of supervision. So this is one that I’m really keen to hear your views on, especially those with slightly older kids than mine. Let me know what you think!

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Previously on Some Other Dad

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This story, as most of mine do, starts with a bit of childhood nostalgia.

In an ongoing effort to empty her house out of all my old crap and fill our house to the brim with it, my mum brought over an old magic set of mine.

“I thought [your eldest] would love it,” she said as she handed it over at the doorstep, whilst also dropping off my youngest, who, yet again, had fallen asleep in the car on the way home.

“Great, thanks,” I said. “I’m sure all my old stuff coming here has nothing to do with the yoga studio you want to make out of my old bedroom.”

But to be fair, she did enjoy looking through it. The magic set in particular was a Stephen Mulhern-branded one—for those who don’t know, he was a kid’s TV presenter back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, who also did magic tricks and stuff.

Aside from the cheap plastic cloak that features prominently on the box, it includes a pack of cards and some bits and pieces that kids can use to create heavily set-up tricks. They’re meant to be easy, but even I struggled to follow the instructions with a few of them.

As I expected, my daughter’s interest lasted a couple of days then drifted back to something else, leaving the magic set to sit on our lounge, along with loads of other stuff we don’t have a place for.

Fast forward a few weeks, and my daughter has some news.

She’s just come back from Rainbows—it’s this extra-curricular thing in the UK for girls where they play games and learn stuff. It’s similar to Girl Scouts in the USA, but for younger kids.

Anyway, she tells me that next week in Rainbows, there’s a talent show. Everyone has to prepare an act to show to everyone in the group.

She’s very excited about it. I outwardly match her excitement—but inside, familiar feelings begin to stir in my gut.

The idea of being made to participate in a talent show curdles my blood, even now as an adult. I’ve never been comfortable doing anything in front of even a modest gathering of people—even if I know the thing I’m doing is something I can do well.

Naturally then, I feel all of that for my daughter. None of her classmates in school go to Rainbows with her, so she’s only known these other girls—some of whom are three years older than her—for a matter of weeks. Surely she’s nervous as fuck like I would be, right?

Of course she’s not. She barely even remembers telling me about the talent show the next day, as we’re racking our brains for something for her to perform.

The easy things are do a song or a dance. Sure, having to do either of those things is my idea of unabated torture (unless there’s a karaoke machine and I’m six pints deep), but for there’s a lot of leeway for a five-year-old to do that kind of thing. Yeah she won’t be able to hold a note and her dancing will look a lot like entering red in Rainbow Rhythms, but half the group will either sing or dance and they’ll be objectively shit as well.

Alas, no. She doesn’t want to do either of those things.

“How about showing off some of your drawings?” we suggest. One thing she’s legitimately good at for her age is drawing. She loves the drawing tutorials on Art for Kids Hub on YouTube. We’ve got reams and reams of drawings that would be really fun to show off to everyone. Plus she wouldn’t have to go through the tedium of actually performing live in front of people. Win-win. Right?

Nope.

Suddenly, her face lights up.

“I want to do a magic trick!” She runs into the lounge, pushes away the latest crap we’ve dumped on top of the magic set—how she even knew it was buried there is beyond me—and starts rummaging through it for a trick she could do for everyone.

I guess that settles that.

We try a few of the pre-made tricks in the box, but they’re more convoluted than they look. The age rating on the box is 5-14 years old, and most of these were beyond her comprehension. Even if she could manage a couple of them, they took her forever to do and she’d say out loud the exact steps she was taking to fool the audience. She won’t be taking any of those to Vegas anytime soon.

How about a card trick then? There’s a few self-working ones that are impressive enough—certainly to a group of kids. The trouble is that they require you to remember a lot of steps which, under pressure, are easy to forget.

We even tried her out with the easiest card trick we could think of. All you do is fan the deck and get someone to point to a card. You split the deck and ask them to lift off the card and take a look. While they do so, you take a sneak peek at the card above it, in the half of the deck you’ve lifted away. Then they place it back, you put the deck back as it was, and you start counting off cards. When you see the card you snuck a look at, you know the next card is theirs. Cue rapturous applause from a group of five-to-seven-year-olds.

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She could do the trick. But bless her, she wasn’t very subtle about looking at the top card. Then sometimes she’d put the deck back together the other way, or she’d just start shuffling the cards because…well, she’s five.

She was dead set on doing a magic trick, and we didn’t want to deny her that. But the last thing we wanted was for her to try and do a trick that was too complicated and for it all to go wrong in front of all those people.

Confidence is something I’ve struggled with since childhood. I was a fairly outgoing little boy, but my energy wasn’t honed or encouraged at all at home. In fact, it was drummed out of me, either by over-discipline or ridicule—and so back in my box I climbed, and I became an introvert.

I’m determined that this doesn’t happen to my kids. Yes there’ll be moments where enough’s enough and boundaries have to be set, but we’re going to allow the girls to go down paths and see what’s there, developing their confidence along the way.

That said, we couldn’t risk setting her up to fail with a card trick she couldn’t master. The confidence boost of doing this talent show would be invaluable for her, and we were determined to make it work.

Fortunately, there was one more trick up our sleeves. We just didn’t know it.

As I put the magic set away one night, a curious little blue box fell out of it. I slid it open, and inside was an old 1p coin, tucked in a tray that slid inside the box. I vaguely remembered how the trick worked: I turned the tray around, slid it into the box the other way. As I pushed it in, I heard a satisfying click.

I slid the tray back out and smiled.

The trick was perfect: immediately impactful for a group of our daughter’s peers, barely any setup required and super easy to learn. We showed her the trick, and she had it down in to a tee in half an hour.

The trick was nailed—but she still had to perform it.

The fact that she was totally unfazed as she left for Rainbows that evening only made me more nervous on her behalf. I was just desperate for the trick not to go wrong and for her spirit to be crushed so publicly and cruelly.

But this was a lesson I had to learn, just as much as one for her. You put your kids out into the world like a piece of yourself, and you can’t always control what happens to it. Our job is to prepare them as much as possible, giving them the skills they need to succeed and do well. But it’s up to them to go out and do it, or not do it. Either way, our next part in it has to be to simply wait for them to return from whatever quest they embark on, no matter how vast or small. And whatever happens, we’ll be there to give them a hug and tell them we’re proud.

I waited and waited, distracting myself with the bedtime routine for my youngest whilst my wife sat in the car outside Rainbows, eager for news regarding the coin trick’s success.

I emerged from my youngest’s bedroom after she’d fallen asleep to see my wife beaming with pride. Of course, she’d aced the trick and wowed everyone. I went to find my daughter to tell her what an awesome job she’d done.

But was she bothered? Not in the slightest.

How do your past experiences affect your kids?

It’s only natural that we want to protect out kids from the bad stuff in life—but it’s especially true if we know exactly what it is, because we’ve gone through it ourselves. But then you have to let them learn stuff on their own. It’s one of the fun juxtapositions of parenting!

So what tests this paradox the most for you?

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Previously on Some Other Dad

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My mind’s like the inside of a pinball machine. I think I know where I’m going with a thought, then PING! Off my attention flies somewhere else. When I saw the light bulb scene in Malcolm in the Middle for the first time, instead of laughing I just thought, Holy shit, that’s me!

Case in point was today. I’ve just finished a work call, and I glance over at my gaming PC. I’ve been meaning to clean it out for a while; I stuck a shitload of fans on it when I built it, so they’ve all accumulated a layer of dust that’s become somewhat unsightly.

I start to take the case apart, when I realise some of the cleaning bits I need are in the garage. When I get there, I rummage underneath my workstation when I find a box of old video games that I was planning on selling (another half-finished task). I’m having a spurt of energy. So, fuck it: let’s bring them in and get them sold.

Nostalgia overwhelms me, and I can’t help but dig through these old games that I brought home from my mum and dad’s house a year or so ago. Seriously, there’s some old games in there. Some are even for the original Game Boy, so obviously I spend a bit of time just revelling in the 90s-ness of it all.

As I’m rummaging through this box, I come across a graphics card from an old PC. Again, I’d been meaning to sell it for ages. Again, I get distracted. I pull out my phone and open Vinted—an app in the UK for buying and selling second-hand clothes and electronics. I snap some pictures and get it listed, along with a couple of other computer bits I had lying around, waiting to be given a new home.

Whilst I’ve got the app open, I see lots of people selling old clothes. So then yet again I get distracted, stomp over to my wardrobe and start pulling out stuff that was taking up space: shit I’d been meaning to get rid of for years, but never got around to.

This nostalgia trip didn’t take me as far back in time as the one with the Game Boy games did, but make no mistake, these clothes were from a lifetime ago—before kids.

Come take my hand, as I show you three relics of a bygone age.

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The Winter Drinking Jacket

I dubbed this in my mind the Winter Drinking Jacket, as I’d invariably wear it out to pubs and nights out when the temperature dropped. It became a staple of my going out attire. It felt pretty smart, but it was so comfy—which remains an essential aspect of any piece of clothing I own, even more so in parenthood.

But alas, my regular drinking days are done. Not that I judge those who still make weekly trips to their local drinking emporiums an immovable part of their calendars, parents or otherwise—but that kind of culture just doesn’t vibe with me anymore.

To me, there’s something sad about bustling pubs and clubs on Friday and Saturday nights now. It’s as if the people who make a habit of going out out on the regular have forgotten why they’re there; it’s just a reflex.

Just thinking about the days where I’d count myself among those people reminded me of the times where I’d wonder about my purpose in life. Was I just to drift from night out to night out forever? Not that it takes becoming a parent to discover purpose—nor should being a parent become someone’s primary identity—but for me it sure helped give me a starting point.

Aside from that, I still like this jacket. But it has to go for the second reason: it doesn’t fit me anymore. All those beers have well and truly caught up with me. It’s a Small, for fuck sake. Not a chance I’m getting in that now.

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The Young Professional Overcoat

This one, to be honest, gives me the ick.

Years ago, I worked a very stiff office job with very stiff colleagues. Company policy never dictated any dress code, but I saw the people I worked with on my first day, and I thought I needed to upgrade my wardrobe if I was ever going to fit in and get ahead.

My line manager was the main catalyst for it. He was a good boss, no doubt—but he was a dedicated student of sartorialism. Immaculate suits, a range of different cuff links—the lot. The bastard even ironed his ties.

I even remember on a Christmas do, people were talking about his dress sense, and he admitted to not even owning a pair of jeans. He wore trousers all the time. As much as I tried to play his little understudy in the office fashion department, I was never going to live up to that. And truth be told, I didn’t want to. But I felt as though I at least had to try.

Becoming a parent made me reassess a lot of facets of my life, my career being one of them. No longer was it viable for me to spend 10 hours a day either in the office, or commuting to and from it. I tried it for a few months, and it was clear a change was desperately needed if I was going to be the present dad I knew I wanted to be.

I switched career paths. I chose a more creative career that allowed for more flexibility and less performative dressing. It was a lot to learn and there was a steep learning curve, but I never regretted being able to spend more time at home, watching my daughter grow up in the flesh instead of having to see it through pictures and videos on my phone.

Office days still happen from time to time, but now I wear what I want. And it’s not this coat.

The Leather Bomber Jacket

Stop laughing.

Seriously though, let’s file this one under ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’

Historically, I’ve always had a love-and-hate relationship with fashion, and my wardrobe in particular. For years as a child and teenager, I’d have clothes bought for me mostly, so I’d wear them without question. I was never minded to think about what I actually wanted to wear. I just thought of clothes as something that were just there, in your wardrobe, to wear so you didn’t have to step out of the house naked.

Fast forward to early adulthood, and suddenly I’m on my own. I’m in university and I’ve moved out, so the birthday and Christmas shipments of new clothes had started to dry up. I needed new clobber, and I needed to seek it out and buy it myself.

I’ve written before about how we go through a bit of an identity crisis when we become parents—but I also think it’s true of people who’ve just stepped into the adult world. The teenage years are way harder than I think a lot of people recognise and remember, and part of that is the pressure and expectation that you’ll somehow magically figure out who you are and what you want to be by the time you leave school.

Many don’t, and I count myself as one of those people.

Fashion is no small part of that. It’s not vain to think about the way we dress and present ourselves to the world, because it speaks to who we are inside a lot of the time too. If you haven’t figured out who you are on the inside yet, then it’s trickier to know what exterior you want to show the world.

So without having figured that out yet, I followed trends. I followed what I saw other people wearing. Whether it vibed with me or not on a deeper level become irrelevant—I had to keep up. I had to look as though I was put together like a person who had themselves figured out, even if I didn’t.

I think that’s what was behind the decision to buy and wear the leather bomber. It wasn’t me—it never was. But I didn’t know who that was yet—so this, among other things, were the stand-in facade that people saw when they looked at me.

It’s not the job of parenthood to tell you who you are. That’s a burden I’d never want to put on my kids. But for me personally, it served as the foundations for becoming comfortable with who I was, and what I wanted from life. It gave me a platform for my morals, what was important to me and what I wanted the world to see in me. In the years that have followed, things have built from there.

I no longer do things or try to look a certain way to fit in with an expectation of what I think others think I should be. I don’t blame myself for having being pressured into doing many things to fit in—one of them being buying a leather jacket. But I’m finally at a place where I do things purely because they fit with my character—because I understand who and what that is more now than at any other point in my life.

Sure, I might still buy something as outlandish as this. But if I do now, it’s because I want to.

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What does your wardrobe say about you?

As you will have gathered by now, I’m no fashionista. But there is something to be said in the way we present ourselves to the world and how our clothes make us feel—both before and after becoming parents.

What about you? Do you need a clear-out of your pre-parenting clothes as well? Has your attitude towards clothing and fashion changed at all since becoming a parent?

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If you’re a keen user of Substack Notes (you should be—it’s close to what Twitter used to be like back in the early 2010s), you may recall a Note from yours truly recently, in which I lamented the fact that there are builders working in my garden every weekday for the foreseeable future. To an introverted being like myself that treats his home like an inner sanctum to keep the harsh realities of the world at bay, this is my idea of a personal hell.

It’s my fault, I guess. I’m the one who wants a new patio. But I’ve never done an iota of manual labour in my life. As for my DIY skills, I still revel at a picture I hung all by myself three years ago, which speaks to the upper limit of my abilities. So there was no real choice: some other people were going to have to come and do it for us.

I prepare for their arrival by clearing some things out of the garden and clearing space in the garage where they’ll be mixing cement, cutting tiles and other dark arts of manliness that I have no idea about.

Already, I’m getting in my own head about their impending visit. I look around at some of the stuff in my garage—there’s an old desk with a monitor and some old PC parts. If they ask, how am I going to explain that I’m the kind of nerd that builds gaming PCs from time to time? Hell, just the state of my garage is getting me nervous. If I’m not the kind of man who has all his tools and stuff arranged and organised, then what kind of man am I?!

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Before any tradies (I’m borrowing that term from Bluey) get offended by my characterisation, this is nothing to do with you; this is all my personal baggage. My dad was—and still is—fairly handy, both with DIY and in his career. Therefore when I was a kid I’d find myself on a few occasions either with him in his factory around lots of big machines and blokes who knew how to work them. To me, it was like I’d walked into the Mos Eisley Cantina.

All these guys were big, gnarled and scary looking. They all shared blokey banter with my dad which completely went over my head whenever I was caught in the crossfire. It was the same story with a lot of my dad’s friends who I’d encounter from time to time. They’d look at me strangely, even as a child, as if they knew I wasn’t a man’s man like them. Even at that age, I knew it too. I knew I was different from them.

That speaks to why I get so weird whenever tradies have to come to my house. I always feel like we’re speaking a different language.

It’s gotten more of a problem in the past few years, as now I work primarily from home. I always sense this lingering judgment from anyone who comes to the house, as if they’re thinking, Why the fuck aren’t you in work? Worse would be if I had to explain that I work in social media, writing tweets, for fuck sake.

Most of the time, these visits from tradies would be quick in-and-out jobs: checking the boiler, fixing the dishwasher. I’d feel a slight bit of guilt, as surely these are jobs that real men can do themselves, but the encounters are over fairly quickly.

This time though, these guys are going to be in the garden for several weeks.

On the morning of their arrival, I open the garage door and am greeted by Terry and Geoff (not their real names). I utter my awkward hellos and scurry back inside before they realise I’m wearing Crocs (they’re my garden shoes, alright?).

I make myself busy getting the eldest’s bag ready for school, which distracts me from the discomfort coursing through my veins. I’m going to have to make them a cup of tea at some point, I think to myself. What if they think the tea bags I have aren’t good enough? I get Yorkshire Tea—surely that’s good enough, right? Shit, what if they ask for coffee? Neither of us drink coffee—we only have a small pot of instant decaf that’s for my mother-in-law whenever she pops round. Will they notice it’s decaf? WILL THEY?!

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In my mad rush to get out of the door and onto the safety of the school run, I’m looking for my eldest to put her school cardigan on. I look over to the sliding doors that lead out from our back room into the garden.

She stands there, having opened the doors herself, staring and waving at both the blokes as they set about ripping up our old patio. Her eighteen-month-old sister is standing by her, at first with a look of utter bewilderment etched across her little face. Then, in her adorable little voice, shouts “HIYA!” at them both, waving her little hand as she does so.

My first instinct is to rush them away like that mum does when her kids barge in on her husband as he’s been interviewed on the news. But, in a moment of clarity, I pause for a moment.

Why would I do that? Because it makes me feel awkward? They don’t feel awkward—it’s the most natural thing in the world for them to say hello to these people—fellow human beings.

My kids—hell, most kids under the age of five—are in a unique position where they don’t have the same emotional baggage that most other people in the world do. They’re not weighed down yet by old feelings bubbling up that remind them of past negative experiences. It’s not right that I push that on them by making them feel as though they can’t express themselves and talk to them—just because it might make me feel a bit uneasy.

So I leave them to it, marvelling at the two men pulling our garden apart. In fact, over the past few days, my eldest has struck up a little friendship with them. She showed them her Halloween outfit. One of them gave her some money to put in her sweets bucket.

It’s not their job to teach me lessons and to help me reparent myself, but they do a damn good job of it sometimes.

Oh, and I’ve made them plenty of tea—most of it decaf, as we’d run out of regular. They didn’t notice—and maybe, neither should I.

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What lessons do your kids teach you?

I think there’s infinite wisdom in observing how unburdened people, like kids, interact with the outside world. It gives me new perspectives on things all the time.

What are the things that you’ve seen from your own kids that have made you rethink long-held beliefs or behaviours?

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I’ve always had a lingering fascination with chess. I remember from a young age owning lots of chess sets—not initially to play, but just to meticulously set up and study. I proudly placed each piece, knowing where the knights and bishops went, and knowing that the queen goes on its matching colour square, whilst the king goes on the opposite. As the saying went, the queen’s shoes must match her dress.

I vividly remember the first chess set that got me into my mild obsession. The gateway drug was my much larger obsession with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. The film had come out in May 1999, and in my bloodlust to devour every piece of merchandise George Lucas could pump out, I was bought this abomination of a chess set for my 9th birthday. It’s not all bad—R2D2 serves as the pawn for one side, so you get eight of the little buggers. I might have set it up for a chess game or two, but really I just used the pieces as action figures. I shudder to even think of trying to play a single move, let alone a whole game, with that monstrosity.

I progressed from staring at the board to playing one-person games where I’d always win in four moves. By then I had a few different sets; one of which was inexplicably all made of glass. Eventually I became a teenager though, and the chess sets fucked off to the attic.

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I started to dabble with actually playing again. I played online, and lost a lot. Whenever I played my wife, I would lose, but still have fun kamikazeing all my pieces when I decided the game was beyond saving.

That was always my trouble, I think. I’d never look beyond the next move. All my opponent needed to do was a tiny bit of forward-thinking, and they’d have me on toast. I was always keen for a game whenever a board appeared, but I always would lose. But it was years between games whenever I did play, so I didn’t think much of it.

My last two over-the-board games happened on a family trip with my in-laws. We stayed in a great holiday house with a massive games room. When we were all bored of pool and darts, a dusty chess set emerged from underneath the TV unit.

The first game was one I played against my father-in-law. I had way too many cans under my belt, considering I had two children upstairs that were ready to pounce on me at 6am, so I was hardly going to give a good account of myself anyway.

Come on Brad, I thought to myself. Remember the video lessons you did on the Chess.com app on your phone years ago at your desk when you were meant to be working. Don’t completely embarrass yourself.

Father-in-law started with moving his king’s pawn two spaces. Standard stuff.

For some reason, I moved my queen’s pawn two spaces forward—leaving it ripe for capture. Now, that technically is a legit opening move, called the Scandinavian Defence.

Did I know that? Did I fuck.

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He took my pawn, I didn’t follow up with the correct next move and already I was a pawn down. The game was over before it’d started. I reverted to type, and started sacrificing pieces, just so I could end the agony of defeat and go to bed.

Our collective states of inebriation showed as our hands fumbled to put the pieces back on the board once the game was over.

“You’ve got quite an analytical mind,” he said to me, “so I thought you’d be good at chess.” A double-edged comment only an in-law can land.

The next day, I go out into the garden after getting the youngest down for her nap. There, he’s playing chess again, this time against my wife. They have a decent game, but in the end he wins. The board turns towards me, and suddenly I’m playing against my wife. She’s white, because obviously she’s always white.

I don’t blunder within two moves this time, so it’s an improvement. However, my classic impatience gets the better of me once again and I’m slowly picked apart due to my lack of foresight. She’s not as efficient at finishing me off as her old man, though. I wish she was, because I had to endure the indignity of him leaning over her shoulder, whispering, you’ve got him—you’ve done him. One move and it’s over, followed by him on more than one occasion taking a photo of the board to show my wife where she could have beaten me earlier if she’d made the right move. Aren’t in-laws fun?

After my king was well and truly cooked, once again my father-in-law makes some comment about thinking I’d be better at chess—this time, my wife agrees.

I think back to all the chess sets I owned as a kid; all the time I’d spent learning about the pieces and the moves from a fairly young age…and yet thirty years later I’m still shit at it.

It was then that I decided I’d git gud.

Fast forward three months, and my YouTube algorithm is all just chess nerds showing off their opening traps—but I’m a hell of a lot handier at chess than I used to be. I still only play correspondence games against people online—which means you’ve got a day to make each move; ideal for parents who are time-poor. The idea of playing to a proper timer still fills me with dread. But I’ve kicked the habit of sacrificing all my pieces on the altar of boredom.

One thing I picked up as I tried to cram as much information about the game into my head was that—holy shit, this is complex. It blows my mind the extent to which some of the top players in the world calculate upcoming moves—something up to twenty moves ahead. Seriously, people shouldn’t be allowed to have a brain like Magnus Carlsen has. It’s just not fair.

Plenty has stuck for me, however—and I’ve noticed a few things. Like parenting, chess is a complicated balancing act. There’s principles, tactics, strategies, and it can all turn into a complete and utter shitshow in the blink of an eye. But there’s a few things you can do in both chess and day-to-day parenting that give you the best chance of not repeatedly embarrassing yourself in front of your in-laws succeeding.

Protect the king and queen

Whilst we’re in this game to look after every piece and member of the family, self-care is essential. If the king and queen aren’t safe, you’re going to run into problems either later down the line, or very quickly.

In chess, it’s best practice to castle the king within the first ten moves. This move tucks it underneath a bed of pawns nicely, with a rook guarding the door. God it looks cosy; every time I tuck that little bastard in now, I get a bit jealous.

Whilst the queen is less vulnerable than the king—in fact, it’s the most powerful piece on the board and does most of the heavy lifting (where have I heard that before?). Yes, it can look after itself—but play it too early at your peril.

The same applies to our day-to-day lives as parents. We’re actively engaged parents here—and we can’t be that unless we look after ourselves. Take the moments whenever we can to do something that nourishes our body or soul—or just snuggle under a lovely bed of pawns.

Accept when the plan changes

Having watched so many opening chess traps on YouTube over the past few months, the temptation to try a few out myself has been too much to resist.

They all start the same way; you make some weird off-beat move, luring your opponent into an easy, lazy and obvious move. That move then turns out to have been the wrong one, and you pounce and spring a devious trap.

Like most things on YouTube however, it’s designed for cheap, throwaway engagement. Of course, too many times when I’ve tried to spring one of these traps, the opponent doesn’t play the move I want them to. Probably because the move the YouTube video said they’d play is a totally shit move that no one would ever play in real life.

What I should have done in more games than I care to admit, was accept that the plan hadn’t worked and look for a new strategy. Instead, I’d carry on waiting for that opening that would never come, playing more and more desperate moves whilst I waited. All of these games I ended up losing.

This is pretty much every day when you’ve got kids. One day you think baby has finally started sleeping through nicely—then a week later a sleep regression hits you like a steam train. Or that one meal that you could bet the house that your three-year-old would eat, suddenly might as well be laced with poison with how emphatically they reject it.

I’ve driven myself mad in the past chasing after a happy status quo that suddenly doesn’t exist. The rules of the parenting game change at such breakneck speeds sometimes—and it can be truly maddening.

But kids will be kids. Plans change—all the time. And most of the time, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Well, except one thing—accept it. Move with the change. Lean into it, acknowledge that it’s happened, and make a new plan.

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Teamwork makes the dream work

There’s few regularly occurring scenarios where you can checkmate your opponent with a single piece. You might get lucky and find that your opponent has trapped their own king behind a line of pawns, and a single rook or queen move can spell the end of the game.

More often than not though, you’re going to need backup.

This checkmate that I got recently, for example, was only possible because of then queen, the three black pawns and the king.

I’m guilty of thinking I can do things on my own—a lot. I’ve always been a kind of introverted and socially awkward person, meaning I’d often rather struggle on my own than the indignity and crushing embarrassment of *gasp* bothering someone else for the most minor bit of assistance.

A parenting example of this is the night shift—I always put the youngest down for her naps and sleep time, and if she wakes I’ll go in first. Being the age she is, there’s plenty of fun surprise sleep regressions that pop up from time to time. For some reason, no matter how hard I try, sometimes the youngest will just not go to sleep.

The right thing to do is to tag out; admit that you’re knackered after an hour and a half of rocking the baby to no avail, and ask your other half to take over for a bit while you rest and recover.

I find it hard to ask for that help sometimes—even from my own wife, who has explicitly told me many times to come and get her if I ever need a break from rocking.

This is one facet of growth that we have to tackle head on if we want to get through parenting with our sanity still (somewhat) preserved. If you too have a hard time asking for help, you’re only setting yourself up to fail. Bite the bullet, confront what it is that makes you not feel comfortable asking for help, and then do it anyway. I’ve found that whenever I’ve managed it, the perceived backlash that my mind tells me will come if I dare to speak up never comes, and I get the help and rest I need.

Double-check your next move

This was my number one issue with how I’d play chess before. Tunnel vision would befall me as I’d spot an opportunity to capture one of the other player’s pieces. Like a greedy magpie, I’d leap at the chance to greedily nab a shiny knight or bishop, should I get the chance.

Then, all my hopes and dreams would crumble around me, as the opposition player would take a piece back immediately—or worse, discover that in moving my piece, I’d left another, more valuable piece unprotected. Bye bye queen!

Before I had a child, I was sure that I’d be a certain kind of parent—one that would never raise their voice or get frustrated with their kid. One that would always choose patience and compassion over an instinctive reaction.

Well, as we all know, that’s so much easier said than done.

Whether one of them has smeared their yoghurt in the sofa, drawn all over the wall, or piss themselves just because they thought it’d be funny1—there’s an instinctive, snappy reaction in all of us. Mostly one that our own parents would have used, and has become our own learned default.

Whenever anything like that happens, I try to make myself take a breath. Think—really actively think—about what the next move should be. Am I making a mistake here? Is there something I’ve missed? Maybe the eldest didn’t push the youngest over—maybe it was an accident.

Just a single breath has saved me on many occasions, both on the board and with the kids.

Push your pawns

One thing I quickly realised about my chess tendencies when I started to look back at games was just how little I used my pawns.

I can see why I neglected them so much. After all, they’re boring. They only move one space forward—who wants to move that?! Moving a bishop or a rook is way more fun when they can zoom across the board in a single move. Or doing fun horsey jumps with the knight.

But as I came to realised, if those little guys just sit there doing nothing whilst the bigger boys and girls take care of everything, how are they going to ever get promoted? One of the key things you want at the end of a game is to get a pawn to the other side of the board, so you can promote it into a queen. How can it fulfil its destiny if you don’t let it?

All the time, I’m realising that the same thing applies to our real life little ones. My early parenting instincts would always be to run and get whatever my daughter was asking for, to help her down from a high bit of the playground, or to literally wipe her own bum for her.

Now that she’s five, I’m making myself step back from my helicopter parent tendencies. I’m letting her figure out how to climb down from high places by herself, encouraging her that she can figure out where she left something, or trusting that she’ll put her shoes on the right feet, if she gets enough practice.

It’s a balancing act, for sure. Push a pawn too soon, and it’ll be unprotected and prime for capture. Likewise, expecting a one-year-old to wipe their own arse is a bit optimistic. It’s hard to know when one little pawns have crossed the threshold that lies betwixt needing us to help them and needing us to push them. The best thing we can do is pay attention to their own cues; take their lead.

Of course however, pawns on a chessboard can’t talk. This analogy is crumbling before my very eyes. I can’t believe I managed to get a whole issue out of this.

Whether or not you like chess, however, these are often guiding principles that are easy to lose sight of in the whirlwind of day-to-day parent life. Any little idioms or analogies that help you keep sight of the mantras, and that get you through the day, are worth holding onto.

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What’s your number one parenting mantra?

Gosh, that was way longer than I thought it’d be. Thank you for sticking with me until the end!

There’s five parenting mantras to live by—but what’s the one that gets you through the days? What single guiding principle would you bestow to a new parent, should they ask you?

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Previously on Some Other Dad

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About a month ago, another mother told my daughter off. Right in front of me.

I was furious. Raging. Thank goodness my wife was there to step in and have a measured, calm conversation with her, because I’d have definitely told her to fuck off—and ruined my nieces' birthday party.

That doesn’t reflect well on me perhaps, but my daughter was so upset so this random adult’s rebuke, for something that was really minuscule in the rough and tumble of soft play.

How fucking dare she! I fumed to myself in the car on the way home, with my daughter happily delving into the obligatory party bag of cheap plastic shit that ends up in big landfill pits in China, having completely forgotten the incident. I would never do something like—

Then I had to stop my train of thought. Because I was about to make a massive hypocrite of myself. In my own head, albeit—but nevertheless, a hypocrite.

Let’s rewind a bit.

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I was running late, for two reasons. Firstly, because I have two children under the age of five, so of course I’m late for everything where their presence is also required. Secondly, because I forgot the birthday presents. I guess both reasons are in a roundabout way, my fault.

To further deflate my already flagging mood, I end up ignoring the sat nav (I’m sorry, tech overlords, I will never question you again), taking a shortcut (it wasn’t), and driving past a speed camera that was, to be fair, heavily concealed by bushes. Nevertheless, a speeding ticket followed in the post two weeks later. I knew I’d been caught at the time. So I was on cloud fucking nine, as you can imagine.

I end up having to park down the opposite end of the road from the church hall that the party’s taking place in. Incidentally, I used to go to day care in the same church hall. I hadn’t been back there since I poured a jug of milk over a girl’s head on my last day, so that was a nice trip down memory lane.

I found my way inside, past the room that had been the sight of my dairy-related assault, and into the main hall. It was the classic kid’s party setup—bouncy castle, soft play, ball pit with a slide, beige buffet and those shitty plastic chairs around the edge of the room for knackered parents to seek the faintest moment of respite. Lovely.

I let the kids loose into the maelstrom. The five-year-old is mostly self-playing in a situation like this, but the eighteen-monther is at that age where you basically have to follow them with your arms outstretched, crouching like you’ve shit yourself, waiting to catch them before they fall face-first on the paper-thin lino tiles.

Fast-forward a bit; I’ve tagged out of following the little one around and I’m sat by the side, near where some soft play toys have been laid out. My eldest is there dicking about, trying to build a bridge out of some big soft play blocks. I'm vaguely aware of another slightly younger girl playing nearby, as well as a woman sat on the mat watching who I presume is her daughter.

My attention turns briefly away from my daughter. I was probably making smalltalk with one of my sister’s in-laws—you know, the kind of person that technically you’re sort of, kind of related to but you really don’t give a fuck? That.

Anyway, I hear someone crash to the mat. I turn my head, and the other little girl has fallen off a bridge that my daughter was building. I’m just tuning in to what’s happened, so I don’t quite hear what the woman sat there says, but she said something. All I clocked was the look she gave my five-year-old: it was the kind of glare that if a Disney animator gave it to one of their villains, the director would go “alright tone it down, that’s a bit much”.

Before I knew what was happening, the mother had whisked her girl away, and my daughter was crumpled in my lap in tears. I ask whether she’d hurt herself: no. I ask if the other girl had hit her: no.

Then the pieces fell into place.

“Did that mummy say something to you?”

A nod, and another tear rolls down her cheek.

“What did she say?”

She wouldn’t tell me.

I wanted to go and say something immediately, but two things stoped me. First, my daughter still needed me, so being there for her gave me a chance to calm down and think rationally. That presented a second reason to temper myself: the daughter of this mum is likely a classmate of my niece, who’s just started in state nursery. I had to tread lightly, as if I blew my top I’m potentially serving my sister with years of awkward encounters with this woman.

Once my daughter is calmed and she’s back diving head-first down the slide into the ball pit, I seek out my mum. She’s the kind of busy bugger who knows everyone.

“Who’s that?” I say, surreptitiously pointing.

“Who?”

“That lady. The one with the fringe.”1

I tell her what’s happened. I go into the little kitchenette alongside the church hall to eat the cookies think about what to do next. By now my wife knows as well. I really want to say something, but it occurs to me that might not be the best approach. This mum is here on her own with her kid, whilst I’m here with my wife, mum, dad, and sister (who’s the host of the party). Already that’s a fairly intimidating prospect—plus I don’t feel like I’d stay appropriately measured. I haven’t calmed down sufficiently yet. I’m still pretty cross at the fact that someone else has upset my daughter so much.

I just think that whether my daughter was in the wrong or not, it’s no one else’s place to discipline her but mine. Sure, the odd utterance of something like “careful” or “watch where you’re going” is harmless—but that’s not what happened here. Whatever had been said was a stern telling off. I know my daughter would not have reacted that way to anything less than that.

I say all this to my mum who’s talking it over with me, as my hand dives right back into the Costco cookies. She agrees.

“Absolutely,” She said. “Gosh, I’d never dream of doing anything like that with someone else's child. Would you?”

As I affirm that I wouldn’t, I’m dragged back in time. Back about two years or so, to an incident that I’d buried in guilt and regret. I’d hoped I’d forgotten, but today I needed a reminder of it.

I was in the park with my daughter, who had only just turned three at the time. My wife was sat away from us, still pregnant with our second. I was stood by the climbing frame, helping my daughter clamber up the rock climbing wall that was a bit too big for her—but she insisted—and then watching her go down the slide. It wasn’t that busy, so she mostly had the thing to herself.

Two boys emerged out of nowhere. They were far bigger than her; my guess was at least seven. They’re charging around this climbing frame like you’d expect seven-year-old boys to. I can hardly tell them to calm down, but equally I’m stressed they’re going to squash my three-year-old daughter.

Well, it was worse than that.

My daughter had just gotten to the bottom of the twirly slide, when the two boys both came down together, arriving at the bottom in a heap, where my daughter was still sat. They bumped into her a little; no big deal. But then as one of the boys jumped off to go up again, the other boy—for no reason—pushed my daughter off the end of the slide. She went backwards, hitting her head on the floor. It was that kind of rubber flooring you get in playgrounds, but it obviously still would have hurt, and made her cry.

Naturally, I was cross. But I’m not proud of how I reacted.

The boy who pushed her jumped off, as if he’d done nothing, to go and join his friend. He ran right past me.

“Oi,” I said, the word leaping from my mouth before I’d had time to compose myself and figure out the proper way to react. In that split second, I made a decision that doesn’t reflect well on me, but the purpose of being open I’ll tell you. I made a grab for him.

What was I going to do if I grabbed him? Tell him off? Chuck him over the fence? To this day, I have no idea why I did it.

Fortunately, I missed. He stopped in his tracks, looked at me like I was a nutter (which was a fair reaction), and they both ran off to play on something else.

My face flushed red. I knew immediately I’d fucked up. I picked up my still crying daughter, sought my wife out and told her we needed to leave. I felt eyes all over me. What if someone had seen what I’d tried to do? How could I possibly have explained that?

What I should have done—and what I believe the mum who told my daughter off should have done—is parent your own kid first. My daughter was hurt. She needed me to be with her, not taking my feelings out on the aggressor.

Sure, I wanted the kid to know that he’d done wrong. But that’s not my job. Judging by the fact that no-one said anything to me as I fled the park that day, his parents hadn’t seen what happened—or weren’t there at all. While that’s annoying, it’s not my job to step in. And it wasn’t this mum’s job either.

I told my daughter to be more careful with the younger kids myself, after she’d stopped being upset. In the end, my wife had a word with the mum. She was defensive, saying that she was just keeping her daughter safe. But the incident had already happened. Yes, she was probably cross that my daughter had pushed hers over. But taking it out on someone far younger than you, with much less impulse control, isn’t going to help your own child.

Having said all that, as all the memories of two years ago in the park rushed back to me in a great big Proustian Rush of shame, I realised that, whilst I still thought she (and I, in the past) were in the wrong, it’s still fucking hard not to react when you see your kid upset or hurt.

I looked in the rear view mirror as I carried on driving. My daughter was happily rummaging through her party bag, stuffing her face with cake. She probably won’t remember anything about today—but I would.

Whether I was cross that someone hurt my kid, or whether I was fuming at another parent for telling my own kid off, it’s my job to take a beat. In those moments, I’ve learned that a deep breath and a second of pause can stop me from reacting impulsively, giving me the space to respond in a way that sets a better example for my kids.

It’s my role to demonstrate how to regulate myself (without betraying the valid feelings I might have) and move forward in a measured way, prioritising my own kids—the people that, at the end of the day, I care about the most.

And if I don’t manage all that? Then just try to do better the next time. That’s all any of us can do.

What do you think?

I’m interested to hear your views on this one. Whilst we can’t totally ignore other kids and the impact they might be having on our own kids, is it ever OK to discipline them, instead of letting their parents do it (if they even do)?

Let me know what you think—and thanks for reading!

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Previously on Some Other Dad

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I’m 34 years of age. I’ve been through school, university, and have worked for nearly fourteen years.

I’ve had friendships come and go, relationships crumble and flourish. I’ve travelled the world and carved out a small space of the world for myself.

My hair is starting to thin, I’m two jeans sizes bigger than in my mid-twenties, and my body is no longer as agile as it used to be.

My birth certificate says I was born in 1990. And yet, I—the person who sits here writing this—was born in 2019.

If you’re already a parent, then you might know where I’m going with this.

If you’re not a parent yet, then here’s a visual example of what I’m talking about. Find someone you know who has had a child in the last five years or so. Ask to borrow their phone, and scroll chronologically through their camera roll. At some point, the photos stop being of beautiful landscapes in faraway exotic locations, or of a pair of lovestruck dopes getting drunk together on a weeknight. At a very clearly defined point, the baby pictures begin. This signals the beginning of parenthood.

To describe the feeling of becoming a parent for the first time to someone who hasn’t made that leap yet is difficult. I’ve tried conveying what it’s like to friends and family members who are yet to have kids1, and everything I’ve ever ended up saying has felt woefully inferior.

The closest I can get to describing it in written form, with all the time in the world, is that the very fabric of your reality and existence has irreparably transformed—forever.

That still doesn’t really feel like enough, but for the sake of brevity—and for the sake of getting on with it—let’s go with that for now.

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I still remember taking our first child home from the hospital, about five years ago. We remembered we needed something from the supermarket, so we headed for the Tesco that was on our route home. It was a Tesco Extra—a Walmart-sized supermarket for our American readers. It was just after 5pm on a weekday, so there were plenty of people doing their post-work food shopping. The car park was—as Jeremy Corbyn might say—ram-packed.

It still hadn’t dawned on me that, now I had a child in the car, I could use one of the bigger Parent and Child car parking spaces. So I squeezed the car into a regular bay—one of the only spaces I could find, which ended up being ages from the doors.

I staggered through that car park. The air felt thicker. As I walked further away from my newborn baby, a sense of foreboding draped over me like a heavy quilt. Everything became more urgent. All I could think about was getting back to that car, as if I’d left a piece of myself behind, and was scared it wouldn’t be there when I got back.

As the doors slid open, I emerged into the outside world for the first time. The harsh industrial lighting searing my raw, sensitive soul. My heart raced as hordes of people swirled around me.

I drifted like a listless ship down each aisle, entirely forgetting what I’d come inside for. I tried to remember, but my attention kept wandering to the people around me. They all looked so normal; filling trollies and baskets, chatting with each other, hurrying to the checkouts and on to their next appointment.

Did they not know? Didn’t they realise that the world was not what it was a few days ago, before all this began?

Until then, I’d existed in the post-birth maternity ward bubble. Sure, there was the new phenomenon of nappy changes, and I’d already sampled a taste of what was to come with sleep (or lack of it). But I still felt looked after; even if it was an illusion cast by overworked and underpaid nurses, run off their feet with a dozen other families to tend to.

This first foray back into the world was the first brick being pulled out of my old self. It was the beginning of the demolition job of my former self.

Slowly but surely, pillars of my previous life began to crumble. Every day was truly 24 hours long, and I got to know each and every one very well indeed. The free time I used to save for reading and video games had to be spent on other things. Dinner was no longer something we could both eat at the same time. That new show we wanted to watch? 3am on the iPad with headphones—each with one earbud—while the baby fed was the only opportunity.

Without putting too fine a point on it, I struggled in the first few months. I wrestled with the idea of who I was now, and whether I’d made a mistake ever thinking I was cut out to be a father. There was love for my newborn baby, for sure, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be. It came with so much more. I felt conned, woefully unprepared for what I was always told was the natural progression for someone my age and in my circumstances.

It was in that first year of fatherhood that I went to therapy for the first time. My mind was all over the wall; I’d known it for a while. I needed to scoop up the pieces and glue them back together somehow—and I needed someone to help me figure out which bits went where.

I can’t say therapy solved everything—I ended up going back a second time just before my second daughter was born—but it gave me enough tools to keep me in check and to stay present in moments of high emotion. Even just something so simple as pausing for two seconds before reacting was invaluable—even my sleep-starved brain could understand that one. Being able to calm yourself down and regulate your own emotional state where you once might have blown a fuse is the difference between a good and a bad day. When you’re in the trenches of early parenthood, you need all the good days you can get.

That ratio of good to bad gradually began to tip in my favour; the rebuilding had begun. I knew I wanted to be around more to catch all of the “firsts” live, rather than on a phone screen. I changed careers so that I could work more from home—right before the pandemic started2.

I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to homeschool children during the pandemic—so massive shout out to those who managed it—but raising a baby during that time was hard enough. But in a way, it made life simpler. I realise I speak from a privileged position when I say this, but it was a ‘stop the world, I want to get off’ moment for our fledgling family. Without the fabled village, we had to get on by ourselves—but those good days still outweighed the bad.

As the first couple of birthdays rolled by, I recognised a different person in the mirror. Sure I looked like shit most of the time because I was so tired. But that person had just dealt with a poo explosion on their own in the front seat of their car. The same guy three years ago with glowing skin and no grey spots in his beard wouldn’t have been able to cope with that.

Another thing I definitely wouldn’t have been able to cope with was the birth of our second daughter, who surprised us all by popping out in the car on the way to the hospital. With the ambulance nowhere near, it fell to me to direct traffic (figuratively speaking) and catch baby number two. That, by far, was the most intense experience of my life—but I got through it. I can’t say for sure the old me would have.

The urge to people please became less overwhelming—but not entirely non-existent. There were—and are—still moments where the instincts of the past are closer to hand than the techniques that require work and commitment. The number of times I’ve caught myself mid-sentence and thought, fuck, that’s what my dad would say, is higher than I’d like to admit to. But breaking these cycles is my—and our—life’s work. Perfect is the enemy of good.

I hope that no one takes away from this piece that just because I—or any parent, for that matter—became a dad and lost my former self entirely. Everything I’ve learned through parenthood has made me a better individual, as well. The skills we have to pick up along the way in the million-miles-per-hour pace of living of the modern parent are invaluable, and can be applied anywhere, to all aspects of our lives. It just so happens that, despite being a self-described loner for most of my formative years, I can’t imagine doing anything without my family along for the ride with me.

So, then. Five years into the rebuild. Am I more tired? Yes. Do any of my clothes from before fit me? Not a chance.

But would I go back to how—or who—I was before? Not for anything.

When I wrote the words “five years” just now, I had to stop and stare at them for a while.

Like, what the hell? How is there a five-year-old living in my house? When did this happen?!

It is kind of doing my head in how quickly time is passing sometimes. As they3 say, “the days are long, but the years are short.”

Thanks for reading! I was prompted to write this while thinking of how I’d describe the process of becoming a parent to the various people I know who are expecting their first children. Maybe you know some people in the same situation—why not share this with them?

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I’m a big professional wrestling fan. Since the age of six, half of our home’s VHS collection was WWF (now WWE) pay-per-view shows—some bought, some recorded by my mum at 1am, as they went out live.

A huge feature of those events, as well as the hours of weekly programming I watched at that tender age, was the man behind it all: Vince McMahon.

So when I heard that Netflix were making Mr. McMahon—a documentary about his life and career—I was naturally intrigued.

Being into wrestling for so long, I’m well aware of what a problematic character Vince is. All you have to do is look at some of the risqué storylines and the objectification of women and ethnic minorities during the peak of WWE’s popularity in the late ’90s and early ’00s, and you could deduce that the creative mind behind it all probably belonged to a rather strange bloke.

Confirming these suspicions in no uncertain terms were two pieces of news within the last few years about McMahon: firstly, he was forced to resign after he was found to have used company money to pay hush money to a number of people to conceal multiple affairs; then after he wormed his way back into the company, he was made to resign again after a lawsuit from a former employee alleging sexual abuse, sex trafficking and more.

These two stories were the precursor for the documentary series—which goes into more detail about all manner of other allegations and accounts of his behaviour over the years. But the first episode focused on Vince’s upbringing, which was something I knew little about.

Vince came to own WWE when he bought it off his father, Vince McMahon Sr., in 1982. But he didn’t actually know his father until he was 12 years old. Just after Vince Jr. was born, Vince Sr. left his wife and took his older son with him. Vince Jr. then spent the formative years of his life bouncing around trailer parks, living with his mother and his stepfather. During this time, Vince Jr. says he was beaten “every day” by his stepfather. He also alleges sexual abuse by both his stepbrother and his mother.

Even after he met his father and worked with him, taking the family business to levels of success Vince Sr. could only imagine, his father only ever told him he loved him once: on his death bed.

Was I shocked by these accounts? Yes. But knowing everything I already did about the man Vince had become, was I surprised? Not at all.

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ACEs and their impact in later life

It’s all too common that see a news report about someone that’s done something depraved or awful, then years later you get the documentary that, within the first ten minutes, utters words along the lines of “they had a very difficult childhood”.

71% of adults report having experiences at least one adverse childhood experience—or ACE. Studies unequivocally show that the presence ACEs make the likelihood of that person engaging in criminal behaviour in later life significantly higher. One such study from the University of Edinburgh took a sample of over 4,300 people and found that 25% had at least one criminal conviction by the age of 35. When looking further into those with criminal records, researchers found that factors such as drug use during adolescence and being a repeated victim of crime could be linked with continuing to offend into early middle age1. They also found that the presence of ACEs–such as “bereavement, relationship breakdown, and having a serious accident or illness”–also contributed to a person’s likelihood to become involved in crime. 

Another report in the USA highlighted that childhood abuse and neglect can foster anti-social behaviours in adolescence, which often carry on into adulthood. These behaviours include increased aggression, risky decision-making, and the development of unhealthy relationships: all of which can contribute to a propensity to become involved with criminal activity​.

Interesting as these statistics and studies are however, they really just confirm what we anecdotally already know. You’ve probably got someone from your own life in your mind’s eye when you’re reading this. I know I have. I still remember seeing a notorious member of my school year group decades later, dressed up in a suit, before realising that they were walking towards the courthouse. I read about the case in the local news days later.

So what does this have to do with parenting?

Granted, some ACEs can come from things well beyond anyone’s control. But further research from the CDC suggests that a majority of ACEs experienced occur in the household, indicating parental or caregiver involvement, either directly or indirectly.

ACEs are complex. When we talk about them, we tend to think about the worst possible kinds, such as physical and sexual abuse. But recently the definition has broadened from what was previously indicated by the earliest studies.

I’m willing to wager that the vast majority of us can recall some incident from our childhood that still shapes how we perceive the world today. Not to sound too dramatic, but that’s probably an ACE.

“But other people have gone through way worse stuff in their lives,” is a typical response to that, because it’s exactly what I said to my therapist once when discussing this very topic. The answer to that is the old maxim that we’re all different. And part of that is we all react in a unique way to each and every situation. Something that happened in my childhood that has stayed with me for years might have been forgotten about years ago by you, and vice versa. You only have to look at the trajectory of Prince William and Prince Harry’s lives to see that in action. They went through the exact same trauma—one decided to stay in the institution that indirectly led to it, and the other left.

How to live—and parent—with an ACE

I’m not trying to scare-monger you all into thinking that we’re just one step away from fucking our kids up for good. The point that I’m getting to—and the main thing that jumped out of me as I watched the early and later episodes of Mr. McMahon—is that for all the statistics about criminal behaviour in later life and so on, the biggest fulcrum in the life of someone with an ACE is when they become a parent.

We all know kids are like sponges. They see, hear and take in everything around them. It’s alarming just how many times my daughter can parrot back to me something I said six months ago, word for word. So naturally, any ACE we have shapes our worldview and will likely affect our parenting playbook—as I’ve written about before.

The first step of anything to do with mental health is acknowledging that it’s there, and that it exists. You can’t fight an enemy you can’t see. “The best thing we can do for the children we care for is to manage our own stuff,” says Donna Jackson Nakazawa. “Adults who’ve resolved their own trauma help kids feel safe.”

I’ve also written before about how kids know exactly how to push our buttons; and this can be linked to ACEs that we experienced. Parents who have experienced ACEs generally report feeling more stressed and irritable as they become parents.

Of all the times where I notice my past experiences shaping how I parent my own kids is when I’m dysregulated; something has triggered me or thrown me for a loop, and then I’m parenting by numbers, which is often when we find ourselves talking like our own parents.

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Anything that I can do to remain as present as possible, even in stressful situations, allows me to react to the latest parenting chaos in a measured way; the way that I’d want to react if I could see the situation coming a hundred miles away.

I don’t share this as advice for preventing ACEs in our own kids. Statistically, it’s more likely than not that it will happen anyway. But by being able to better regulate myself puts me in a better mental position to be able to listen and respond to what my children are feeling. I hope this in turn will foster an environment where they’re completely comfortable expressing their concerns with us as their parents, something which I never had.

I always think of it as like putting a pair of jeans in the dryer by mistake. If you have them in there for the full three hours, those creases are baked in and they’re shrunk for good. But the earlier you get them out of there and address it, the better. Alright, there might still be a few minor creases, but they can be ironed out.

Breaking the cycle is hard. And no, I’m not still talking about dryers. Generational trauma takes years of unpicking. Sometimes I resign myself to it being my life’s work. But if it means my daughters don’t have to go through nearly as much as the same shit, then it’s been worth it.

On-screen Generational Trauma

As much as the majority of the subject matter of Mr. McMahon was hard to watch for the majority of viewers2, there was a bright spark at the end of the piece that centred around Vince’s son, Shane. Just like his dad before him, he became infatuated with the wrestling business by watching his own father running the show. All he wanted to do was impress his dad and follow in his footsteps.

He put himself through his fair share of insane on-screen stunts. When I watched when I was young, I couldn’t believe that a non-wrestler was jumping through glass, falling off platforms 30 feet in the air through tables, when someone trained in the wrestling business would rightly say “fuck that”.

But it all makes so much more sense now. All that death-defying stuff was a response to the lack of attention and affection from his father—the same ACE that Vince himself went through twice; first in the twelve years of his life after Vince Sr. abandoned him, and in the years afterwards where he tried and tried to make his father proud, with little affection shown in return.

I see Shane now as a cycle-breaker. Rather than continue on the endless pursuit of his father’s approval, he left the company in 2009, only returning on his own terms, when Vince called him to do a match at Wrestlemania 32 in 2016.

In the backstage clips before Shane walks out in front of the crowd, he talks to his three sons and invites them to come out onto the stage with him. They look awe-struck, and after the match the affection that he shows each of them is clearly apparent, and in stark contrast to the father-son dynamics shown throughout the rest of the documentary.

Then, battered and bruised, Shane turns to his dad. They share a hug, and although the things revealed about Vince in the rest of the documentary are downright monstrous, I couldn’t help but be moved by the barest hint of tears as he shared that hug with his son. Decades of generational trauma welled in his eyes; his father’s, his own and his son’s.

But my emotions were not for Vince—but for Shane, the cycle breaker. I always rooted for him as a kid. Now I know why.

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Thanks for reading!

I never thought I’d be writing about wrestling and parenting at the same time, but here we are! It just struck me as I was hearing about Vince McMahon’s childhood how often we hear about troubled upbringings when we examine people who’ve done terrible things, and so it just made sense to write about. I know I’ve spoken before about generational trauma and breaking the cycle, but I think it’s genuinely one of our greatest challenges as parents, so I’ll probably end up talking about it again in the future!

As ever, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this week’s issue!

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Since we last properly caught up, quite a few things have changed.

That baby I was always writing about is a baby any more. Now nearly eighteen months old, she’s walking, running, climbing, on the cusp of talking, and the primary reason for why my the muscles in my knees and lower back are constantly on fire.

Although there’s still a few relics of the baby phase left over with her—bouncing on the yoga ball being prime amongst them—it’s clear that she’s well into toddlerhood. Soon enough she’ll be stepping through the doors to the same day care that her elder sister started almost three years ago.

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Speaking of my eldest, that’s probably where the biggest change is taking place at the moment. As the beginning of September rolled around, daughter number one started full-time school.

On the surface, perhaps it wasn’t that big of a leap for her. After all, she’d already attended the nursery of the same school for the previous year. She was used to being away from us for most of the day as she attended a private nursery in the mornings as well. She’d gotten used to wearing the uniform every day (even though it’s still a fight getting her into it), and she has already made plenty of friends that are starting alongside her.

Not that much had really changed. At least, that’s what I thought for about two days.

Buried under permission slips

I’ve written here before about the Admin Mountain, and holy shit does it get a whole lot bigger once they’re in school for real.

They’ve got school photographs that need to be taken, so you need to sign permission slips for those. Oh, and arrive at the school an hour earlier than usual if you want them to have one with their sibling. Oh, and they’re £27 EACH for just the digital version. Great, thanks.

You’ve got to sign permission slips for them to go on school outings, so obviously they need to know her allergies, medicines, blood type, bone density, star and Zodiac signs1, and more for those forms. Those slips are just for community outings though—for proper school trips, don’t worry—you’ll get more forms for those.

You need to give permission for flu vaccinations. You need to bring in a bag of their stuff that describes their interests and personality. You need a 5x7 framed picture of them and their family to hang on the classroom wall. All lovely stuff, but it takes us time—the one thing we parents lack above all else.

No matter, we thought. As my wife and I always manage to do, we conjure up some time from nowhere (that “nowhere” being the time we’d usually be watching TV and eating crisps) and get it all done. No one could say we hadn’t kept on top of our parenting paperwork this time.

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As we flick on Love is Blind UK as a stimulus for our brains to shut down for an hour or so however, both our phones ping at the same time.

It’s a WhatsApp notification. You know, that one you we all dread. We’ve been added to a group chat.

Cue two days straight of strangers introducing themselves and their kids. So, so many new names and faces for me to awkwardly mix up at the school gates in a couple of days time.

Then the party invitations come flying. Everyone feels the need to RSVP on the group, rather than individually, so yet more phone pinging. Wading through all the messages about kids’ dietary requirements, all I could think was how long it must have taken these poor parents to fill in their permissions forms.

The questions keep coming. Does anyone know what the required PE kit is? How do I order their school lunches? What time is pickup now, is it different than nursery or the same? When’s the next inset day? Are individual photographs on the same day as sibling photographs, or a different day? Never mind Love is Blind, I could have just scrolled through that group to put myself into a lovely long coma instead.

But the point of this isn’t to rant about all the new and weird school admin. Because amidst all this, there’s a kid who's just started something momentous. She’s walking into a new classroom every day, with new teachers, new surroundings and new expectations. Some of her existing friends are there, but there’s plenty of new faces as well.

Never mind my head being stuffed with new information—she’s the one going through the most right now. And don’t we just know about it.

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So much stuff for such tiny minds

Parents of kids who’ve already started school will know exactly what I mean when I say that the hours between them coming home from school and going to sleep in those early few weeks of the first school year are quite volatile.

Her mood swings far more wildly than it does at any other time. She’s constantly hungry as soon as she leaves school, but then won’t eat a bite once dinner is ready. She’s so tired to the point where I’m dragging her up the stairs to bed, yet once she’s in her pyjamas all she wants to do is jump on the bed and use me as a flesh-and-bone jungle gym.

Her head is literally spinning with all the new experiences she’s going through right now.

Writing all this down is helpful for me, because I do need reminding that what she—and many kids starting school for the first time right now—are going through is MASSIVE.

Reflecting on the past few weeks, I have found myself to be a bit snappier than usual with her recently. The jump from one kid to two is way bigger than I ever thought it would be, and what little thinking time we have reduces even further, so I haven’t been able to be actively as present in the moment as usual (and that’s not as often as I’d like to begin with), which means my mind shortcuts to authoritative responses—”Stop doing that!”, “Just eat your food!”, “That’s enough!”.

My wife told me the other day about the nine most important minutes of a child’s day: the first three minutes after they wake up (and come and jump in your bed), the first three minutes after you pick them up from school, and the last three minutes before bedtime.

All these outbursts and temper fluctuations throughout the day are really driven by one desire in my—and our—kids: the desire the interaction with us. But let’s face facts, we can’t be everything to them all the time. It’s impossible. Yes, we try our best, but there’s moments in the day where, like Chilli, we just need twenty minutes.

But reading about those three-three minute chunks in the day has validated that feeling in me that I can’t be perfect the entire time—and I don’t have to be. As long as I put my fully active self into those nine minutes of the day, and fully engage with my daughter’s desire for close connection, I don’t feel so guilty for letting standards slide for small portions of the rest of the day.

You don’t need a permission slip for that, either. We’re all humans, just doing our best.

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Whilst writing this, it really struck me just how much I’ve missed doing this. I’m slightly annoyed that I let myself get too wrapped up with subscriber numbers, content schedules and deadlines, to the point where I lost my desire to write. But I’m grateful to be back.

Also a big thank you to everyone’s kind words in the last week. It’s reaffirmed that I’ve made the right decision.

If you happen to be a follower of mine on Substack Notes but not yet fully committed to being a subscriber, then I hope the mere fact that you made it this far means you like what you’ve read. Fancy helping this publication grow and getting each issue delivered straight to your mailbox? You know what to do.

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If you’ve subscribed whilst I was off wandering the yonder for a year, then perhaps you’d like to take this chance to take a look at some of the most popular posts here on Some Other Dad - here’s a few to get you started:

So, it’s been a while.

Last year, just as the school summer holidays were starting, I thought I needed a break from writing Some Other Dad. A few weeks, perhaps. I’d come back fresh when the chaos was over.

As it turned out, a meagre few weeks wasn’t enough. I couldn’t face coming back to what I was doing on here. So I shut it down.

In truth, I was pretty much set on never coming back to writing this again. That’s part of my personality, you see. When I get an idea for something in my idea, I obsess and obsess about it, burning white-hot with excitement, before crashing and burning when it gets too hard or I get in over my head.

A lot’s happened in a year, including my longing for writing returning. I missed the sense of purpose writing here about my experiences and half-cobbled together musings on fatherhood and parenting, that occasionally someone might find useful. I contemplated my return several times. I came very close in March, but I never made the leap.

Now though, the time’s right. But, with a few changes.

I once claimed that one of the virtues of this blog/newsletter/periodical/whatever you want to call it, was that we need to be kinder to ourselves as parents; recognise that life is fucking hard when you’re looking after little ones, and that you need to look after yourself.

Well, as it turns out, I was breaking that one virtue whilst writing Some Other Dad.

I became obsessive with making a success of this Substack page, to the point where I’d set myself a firm 5pm Friday deadline for each weekly post. Then I created social media profiles on all channels, planned content for each and scheduled it two weeks in advance. Then when that started falling apart, I thought it was a great idea to launch a paid offering here, with more weekly posts and more deadlines. All whilst expecting my second child, and being busy enough parenting the first.

It was too much to put on myself. There was only ever going to be one winner. And it made me dislike what I once loved doing.

I also started to notice that I was no longer writing for myself primarily, which I think is the one true sign in writing that you’re heading down the wrong path.

So now things will be different. I will post as regularly as I can, but don’t expect your inbox to ping at the same time every week with a new piece from me. It’ll be ready when it’s ready. I think that espouses a valuable lesson for the parent trying to do it all whilst already doing it all.

No social media profiles, no obsessing over subscriber numbers. Just writing what I feel, and hoping it helps someone feel seen or heard as they traverse the arduous and joyous road of early parenthood.

Welcome back to Some Other Dad.

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Speaking of subscribers…

Ok, I’m already going back on my word. But just a quick note to those people who subscribed to Some Other Dad between the start of my long hiatus and now—hello! I’m half expecting many of you to freak out at this random email that’s popped into your inbox and unsubscribe. That’s cool. But you’re more than welcome to stick around!

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The other morning started like most others: at 6:45am, I’m awakened to the sound of tiny pounding footsteps across my landing as my three-year-old daughter runs into our bedroom. She comes to my side of the bed, knowing that I’m the one that’ll actually get up and entertain this early morning bullshit.

I pull myself to sitting and, holy fuck, the world is spinning. I thought my body had gotten used to the horrible startled jolts out of a sleep state that punctuate days as a parent. Usually I’m just about able to function on a near-human level—but this particular morning hit me differently.

My instinct is to get her out of our room, as not to wake the baby or my wife—equally terrifying scenarios. I quickly realise though that I possess none of the mental faculties to start making up games or read books to my eldest. So, I reach for the iPad, grab my pillow and usher my daughter back into her room.

I turn on some painting app for her, drop my pillow at the other end of her bed and crash out. It’s genuinely surprising to me at this point just how knackered I am. I barely drink anymore, so it’s not like I'm hungover—but the general malaise and pounding headache feel familiar. At least when I was hungover, I’d had a fun night to soften the blow. The previous night this time around had been spent in a familiar fashion: feeding and changing the baby, and coaxing my eldest back into bed when she’d wake up at 3am and try to sneak into our bed.

I hadn’t set up the painting app on the iPad on the right setting, or something. I don’t know, the inside of my head feels like it’s been scooped out with a rusty spoon. Either way, my daughter isn’t satisfied with the childcare arrangements I’d put in place. She must have seen me dozing as I top-and-tail in her bed, and seen the opportunity to make another play for the holy grail—mummy and daddy’s bed.

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I hear the footsteps too late to stop the advance. I watch, stumbling in pursuit, as my daughter leaps onto the bed, squealing “MUMMY!” and pawing at her until she wakes. This obviously startles the baby awake as well.

I crash out on the bed beside them both, knowing I’ll have to get up again in a minute to change the baby’s nappy.

But I’m done. I’m spent. It’s barely 7am and I already want to tap out of parenting for the day. I just don’t have anything left in me.

I’ve been feeling this way more often than usual lately, and I think it’s got something (also, a lot) to do with the summer holidays. As a family, this is the first true taste we’ve had of the six-week-long ordeal of keeping children continuously entertained and stimulated—all while keeping the regular day-to-day shit floating along. I now fully appreciate why my parents would be desperate for us to go back to school come September when I was a kid.

Let’s be real though, we’re doing this with the training wheels still on somewhat. One of ours is still a baby, and my wife is on maternity leave so isn’t having to juggle work as well.

And don’t get me wrong, I do love having a bit more time to spend with my eldest. I’m painfully aware from the constant stream of reels you see while stuck flicking through Instagram that these times don’t last forever. If you know me day-to-day, you’ll know that I never take any of this for granted, ever.

Despite those caveats though, I’ve no shame in admitting that this summer holidays shit is way harder than I’d thought it would be.

We get such a finite amount of down-time and space to climb our admin mountains in the early days of parenthood—and there’s even less of it right now. The diary is full of trips out, activities, play dates and more—just in an attempt to stop our nearly-four-year-old from going feral as she bounces off the walls. She’s so ready to start school and get stimulation from other kids her age—it’s an itch that, try as we might, we just can’t scratch for her as parents.

Not only does the cost of all of these excursions add up financially, but mentally and physically also. The logistics and pure physicality of lugging two kids and all their daily paraphernalia around for a month and a bit has hit me harder than I’d imagined—and it came to a head that morning at 7am, with the prospect of another action-filled day ahead, where the kids need me to give a full 100% yet again.

But I don’t have it to give.

That’s why this week’s essay is shorter than usual—I’m sensing burnout touching the edges of my peripheral vision, and I need to put the brakes on a few things. I’ve removed all the social media apps from my phone’s Home Screen, I’m thinking of starting some form of meditation—and I need a small break from writing.

I’ll still drop into your inboxes every Monday, but for the next few weeks we’ll be taking a look back at some of the essays from behind the paywall that launched Some Other Dad—but a bit freshened up. They only went out to a mere handful of subscribers at the time, so chances are they’re fresh to you anyway. Full subscribers will still get a weekly Here’s Five as well, but these might be nearer the end of the week rather than the usual Wednesday.

I’ll aim to resume normal service on Monday 4th September—but honestly, who knows. I’ve sensed my mental resilience begin to swirl around the drain of late, so I need some time to address that before I can commit back to this endeavour.

Think of it like the core message behind the episode of Bluey called Sheepdog: I love doing this very much, but I just need twenty minutes.

Thanks to you all—I hope you’re all enjoying your summer breaks.

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One of the genuine joys of becoming a parent (of which, obviously, there’s loads) for me has been a reintroduction to the world of children’s books. There’s so many incredibly delightful yet thoughtful and nuanced books out there for every age range. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t remember them being this good back in the 90’s.

As parents, we’ve all got our favourites that we love to read to our kids. Maybe it’s the funniest ones that we can narrate with a cast of funny voices, or maybe it’s one that hits us right in the feels.

At the moment, I’m loving The Girls, written by Lauren Ace and illustrated by Jenny Løvlie. It’s a simple story of four girls who meet when they’re young and grow up together, sharing in the ups and downs of life. Whatever’s going on in their lives, they always come back together under the same tree they played under when they were little. It’s beautifully illustrated, and something about it stirs something in me—it makes me hopeful for the wonderful friendships my daughters might start to forge in the near future, and they might carry them through the rest of their lives.

The floor is yours, lovely people—what’s your current favourite children’s book that you always want to read again and again to your kids?

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If you hadn’t realised by now, Bluey is not a kids show. It’s a show for parents that kids also happen to enjoy.

Ok, well maybe not—but there’s no doubt that it’s a lot of parents’ number one choice if there’s going to be screen time.

There’s some great parenting tips and tricks that I’ve picked up watching the show—the writers always seem to draw upon the latest schools of thought in childhood development, as well as fabled as old as time, to teach both kids and adults valuable life lessons in such a delightful, joyous way.

So to stop me going on and on about just how great Bluey is, let’s actually look at five episodes that taught me lessons that helped me in my own parenting—and might help you too.

Dance Mode

The core concept behind this episode is a great lesson for kids to learn, but it was also a really important reminder for me personally, as my natural tendency is to jump right to the next thing and hurry things along, meaning sometimes I’ve made decisions for my daughter without giving her time to give her input.

Essentially, Bandit eats Bingo’s last chip in a cafe, and as a way of making it up to her, she gets to use “Dance Mode” three times, meaning one of the others in her family has to dance to whatever music’s playing—but the first two get used by Bluey and Chilli, whilst Bandit buys the last one off her (which Bluey convinces her to). Bingo is sad because, even though she said yes to all of those people asking, she didn’t actually want to. Her outside voice said yes, but her inside voice said no.

Hidden behind what’s a really fun episode was a great lesson for me in looking out for when they want or don’t want something, but outside pressures are forcing their decision another way.

Pirates

This is a rare episode that Bandit actually appears to be embarrassed or self-conscious about the way he plays with Bluey and Bingo, which is very much an “all-in” approach.

Bandit’s playing pirates with the girls and their friend in the park, putting on silly voices and being loud, when another dad walks into the park with his kid. Bandit clocks him, and suddenly gets all shy and tones himself way down, much to the confusion of the kids. Eventually though, he’s brave enough to ignore the other dad there and go back to being completely enveloped in their game.

It spoke to me personally because I’m not a person who likes to be the centre of attention or put myself out there for the judgment of others. I knew though that as a dad, sometimes you’re going to end up dragged up on stage at the kid’s club on holiday or some other awkward situation.

It also reminded me that even though I might think I’m on show or exposed in a situation, most people probably aren’t thinking about me or even noticing me. Case in point; when the other dad sees Bandit launch back into his stride, he smiles.

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Baby Race

Ah, Baby Race. If I could show one episode of Bluey to any parent having a tough time, this would be it.

I’ve written a lot—and will probably write a lot more in the future—about the pitfalls of comparisons when parenting, and this episode encapsulates it in such a meaningful, emotional way.

Chilli is desperately trying to get a baby Bluey to crawl, but she just isn’t getting it. Meanwhile, her friends’ babies are all pulling to stand and walking. One day, another mum at the group they go to notices Chilli isn’t there, so she goes over to her house. She tells Chilli that she has eight kids (no wait, nine!), and tells Chilli there’s something she needs to know.

“You’re doing great.”

I defy any parent not to shed a tear at that part.

The lesson of the episode is such a vital one for our mental wellbeing as parents, particularly in the age of social media and “competitive parenting”. Kids reach their developmental milestones at different ages all the time—but they all get there eventually.

Until then, run your own race.

Bike

You might know that I’m a bit of an obsessive parent—and part of that has been to interfere and intervene in situations with my kids that I really don’t need to get involved in. In the past, I’d see my daughter struggling to climb the slide’s ladder at the park and instead of coaching her through it, I’d just lift her up to the top.

Bandit could have gone over to Bingo as she tried to scale the water fountain and pressed the button down for her, or he could have helped Muffin get her backpack on. But he didn’t—he recognised that they were all going through a learning process, and that their frustration and tears were part and parcel of that. Eventually, they all got there on their own through the innate determination that toddlers and pre-schoolers have hard-wired into them.

Now, I try to take a similar approach. I’ll be nearby to offer the tiniest hints of advice, but I’ll let my daughter figure things out for herself. That way, it’s so much more satisfying for them—and they actually learn how to do the thing again and again.

Unicorse

On the face of it, Unicorse looks like one of those episodes where it’s just mad shit happening. A puppet called Unicorse is deployed and causes havoc at story time. What’s not to love?

I actually stumbled over the deeper meaning of this, and it blew my mind.

The story that Chilli (eventually) reads to Bluey is one about a queen who tries to cover the surface of her lands in leather, so no one ever steps on a prickle ever again. But when that proves to be too difficult, someone suggests that she makes leather shoes instead.

I didn’t really get it at first viewing (mainly because my daughter would laugh manically through the episode)—but then the very same night I’d watched Unicorse for the first time, my wife shared with me a reel on Instagram featuring Gabor Maté, in which he uses the story of a monk trying to cover the desert with burlap instead of just making burlap shoes as a metaphor: when your circumstances appear to be beyond your control or ability, focus on what you yourself can change.

I immediately understood what Unicorse was about, switched it on to show my wife, and it clicked into place. Bluey tries to correct Unicorse’s behaviour throughout the episode, but she can’t because he’s such a pain in the arse. Chilli can’t stop Unicorse from interrupting the story, because he’s such a pain in the arse. So instead, they both resolve to change how they react to him by ignoring him, and they finish the story.

I actually briefing mentioned that this was something I’d picked up from therapy in my Monday essay—which is true. What I didn’t mention was that Bluey taught it to me first!

Life as a parent is chaotic, and it can often seem like so many different factors are working against us, all at once. In those situations, remember how Bluey deals with Unicorse. Remember the leather shoes. Focus only on what you can change.

I could probably do this about every single episode of Bluey (yes, that is threat)! Let me know in the comments which episodes you learned something from—or if any other kids’ shows opened your eyes to a valuable parenting tip or trick!

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It’s true that you’ll never truly be prepared for becoming a first-time parent.

Having said that, I’m a firm believer that candid, shared experiences and knowledge from real parents is invaluable in your preparation for life as a new mum or dad.

That’s why I’ve written a short ebook called 30 Things You Need to Know About Becoming a Parent—and it’s free to all subscribers of Some Other Dad!

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I sat staring at the inky black swirls on the screen, as if I actually knew what I was looking at.

I was holding my wife’s hand, anticipating the news we’d been waiting for since those double lines had shown up about 20 weeks previously.

“All the anomaly scans are done; everything looks great,” the sonographer said.

“That’s great,” we said in that high inflection that’s asking subliminally for more. “Any idea about the gender?”

The sonographer gave us a knowing glance. “Let’s take a look,” she said. As if she doesn’t already know.

After a minute of pretend looking around, the proclamation comes.

“Those three lines there look like a vulva—it’s a girl.”

I was never one of those dads who was desperate to have a boy. In fact, I knew that I definitely wanted to have a girl—it felt as though it was written in our future.

Obviously you’re delighted with whatever you have (even though that’s not true for everyone), we always knew we’d have two kids; it’s just neither of us could see ourselves with two boys. So when our first was a girl, it was almost like the second was a free shot. I could genuinely say that I would be equally happy either way.

Coming out of the hospital after learning that I was a #girldad4lyfe was a maelstrom of emotions and feelings that took a couple of days to properly process.

I settled on this position: on one hand, I felt a little bit of grief. Every now and again I’d pictured what a little mini-me would look like. Seeing that vision of that little boy fade away like in Back to the Future made me a bit sad. On the other hand, I was relieved. My relationships with other males are complicated, and so the prospect of actually raising one filled me with a bit of dread pre-scan. But on the other other hand, in the days that followed what I thought was my closure on the issue, there was a small part of me that wondered…what if?

I’ve mentioned before (both in the first issue of Some Other Dad, and literally in the paragraph above), how I’ve struggled to develop and sustain meaningful friendships and connections with other males. A mix of lack of consistently present and positive male role models in my early years, some difficult experiences with a group of former friends in my teens, and having to mould myself into friendships with stereotypical “lads” just so I didn’t feel completely isolated in university have all contributed to a sense that with other men, I’ve never really found my tribe—and has left me wary of other males. This has a knock-on effect whenever I have to interact with other dads at the school gates, at the swings or by the snack table at a kid’s birthday party. More so, I’ve noticed it start to affect how I interact and perceive the behaviour of boys my daughter’s age.

Maybe it would have been beneficial for me to have had a son, to confront these hang-ups head on. But would that have been fair on the boy, who didn’t get a chance to choose a dad without this emotional baggage? Perhaps not; any child shouldn’t have to be an experiment for remedying their parents’ own personal issues.

You might be thinking at this point: Brad—you said you weren’t one of those dads who’s desperate for a son, so why are you writing about it?

I was at a kid’s birthday party last month; a little boy who’s the son of a family friend, and has regular play dates with our eldest. He’s a really lovely boy; innately kind, gentle and sensitive—traits which both his parents have done a great job of nurturing.

He starts out playing in the usual way with my daughter. But then, as he gets more involved with playing with some slightly older boys that I presume he knew through family, he starts playing rougher. Not that that’s a problem—believe me, my daughter’s a fucking scrapper in a play fight; she takes me down on a regular basis. So she holds her own with the rougher games they’re playing on the bouncy castle, even with boys a year older than her.

Then these two older boys start singling her out more. They snatch a party hat from her that she’s wearing. She thinks nothing of it and goes to do something else. When they drop it moments later, she picks it back up and comes over to show us it. At this point the boys—including my daughter’s usually mild-mannered friend—storm over, swarm around her and forcibly grab it from her, gleeful smiles on their face as they do it. Obviously this upsets my daughter greatly—and me.

As my daughter cried and we sat with her as she let out her feelings, I saw her friend glance over. Conflict was etched all over his young face, and it hit me right in the gut—because I know what that felt like. And honestly, I’ve got no clue how I would have reacted if that was my son getting swept up in behaviour like that, because it would have triggered me quite badly.

I’ve been the boy who‘s gone along with friends acting in a way that I would never have done if I was acting alone—but felt compelled to in order to keep up appearances, to fit in and not be seen as a wimp or a pussy. I don’t doubt for a second that this still happens to teenage boys today. I’ve come to learn through therapy that this denial of one’s authenticity is as commonplace as it is dangerous to one’s mental health and sense of self-worth.

You’ll no doubt have heard of the “bro code”—dress it up however you want, but it’s essentially an unwritten pact between a group of males to never divulge details of shitty behaviour exhibited by one or more of those involved. This was around when I was a teenager, and I still hear it parroted today when I eavesdrop on my wife watching Love Island. I don’t for one second think that this kind of toxicity is solely getting passed down by parents. So where does it come from?

I can’t help but conclude that misinformation and the numerous breeding grounds for misogyny dispersed across all corners of the internet are quite a bit to blame. A lot of things that teens see and interact with online are things that most parents won’t even know exist. I know from experience of MSN Messenger, MySpace and the early days Facebook that my parents didn’t have a clue what they were or who I was speaking to on them—and that’s not even touching on the various gaming forums I’d end up frequenting.

I know these grubby corners of the World Wide Web used to exist, so I can only imagine how many more there are now—and it doesn’t take a genius to work out who they’re targeted at, and what they’re talking about. Just look at how many of these banned subreddits discuss misogyny in some form or another. Then when you realise that the people spouting misinformation and hate online now have access to methods of viral marketing for spreading their bile, you start to fully understand the scale of the problem. It’s so hard to combat messages and content like this when you often can’t get to the impressionable boys who get to it first.

With all of this combined, being a parent of boys these days comes with a constantly evolving set of challenges. Given my own experiences growing up around other boys and knowing how peer pressure and not wanting to be seen to deviate from the prevailing groupthink at any point, I can see how easy it is for the type of misinformation, misogyny and hate spewing by people like Andrew Tate ends up on the algorithm’s or otherwise tolerant young boys.

Having been the type of kid that might have ended up in this kind of situation, I thought a lot about how I’d go about combatting this if I was the parent of a boy today. These are, for the most part, lessons I wish had been imparted to me.

My son would be made to feel as though every emotion was safe, necessary and normal to experience. There are no “good” and “bad” feelings, and speaking from my experience I feel that boys get told that the expression of sadness, for instance, is something that isn’t for them.

My son would not just be told about what equality meant; he would see it every day in action inside the home. I’ll speak until I’m blue in the face about the blueprints for parenthood that were written for us by our parents through their actions, rather than just their words.

My son would not experience the conscious division that took place in my childhood between girls and boys. He would hopefully come to understand through play that there are more that boys and girls have in common than not—and he would respect and understand whatever differences made themselves evident in the coming years.

My son would—like my daughters—learn that he is in charge of his own body, and likewise others are in charge of their own.

My son would know that the “bro code” is bullshit, and only exists to let shitty people get away with shitty behaviour. I would make sure they’re not afraid to call out other men when they’re in the wrong.

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When I read the kind of falsehoods that teenage boys are hearing online and happily repeating to their parents, such as “58% of rape accusations are false” (the article claims this is more like 4-8% at the most), I worry what kind of male role models the boys that will be growing up around my daughters will have.

I hate the notion that girls and women have to adapt their behaviour—like avoiding certain parts of cities after dark and carrying keys clenched between their fists when walking alone—instead of men, like, not stalk, harass, assault, rape or murder women.

Having said that, something I’ve learned in therapy is that we can only affect things within our sphere of control. No matter how idealistic the lessons I’d teach my son are, they’re not my lessons to teach. It’s not for me to choose what the next generation of boys will be taught.

So instead, I will do two things. I will raise my daughters to breathe fire. They will know their voices, and will know how to speak out against injustice and wrongdoing. They won’t be cowed or silenced.

And they will speak with the authority of knowing what masculinity should look like, because I will endeavour to show them every single day. I’ll show them my emotions. I’ll own up when I fuck up. I’ll show them what equality is, so that they know it when they see it.

Therefore as I alluded to last week, I will continue to raise my daughters to know how to use their voices, be comfortable speaking out against injustice. They will be secure in themselves and understand, from what they’ve been modelled and shown, what is right and what is wrong with how people of all genders should behave.

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Previously on Some Other Dad

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So you might have seen the title of this and thought: that’s a weird question for Brad to ask out of the blue.

It stemmed from this Guardian article that I read on Tuesday afternoon over what was meant to be a relaxing mid-afternoon cup of tea, intended to calm me down after I went on a massive rant on Monday.

It did exactly the opposite.

I confess I didn’t make it through the whole thing after several attempts—it just pissed me off too much.

I’ll give you a snippet as to why: it opens with a quote from a manager of a restaurant in South London. His name is mentioned to be Stephen “Boydie” Boyd, which annoyed me all on its own. But his explanation as to why he’s banned under tens from his restaurant really got to me. He said:

“There’s a level of expectation that the world fits around the kids, the kids don’t fit around the world.”

This is bullshit on an obscene amount of levels. Fair enough, it’s your restaurant so do with it what you please. But to say that parents expect the world to conform around their kids is totally not my experience.

Every time we take our kids anywhere public, whether it’s a restaurant, a coffee shop or even to some shops, it’s painfully obvious that the world isn’t made for people with young kids—and the world could not give less of a shit.

The amount of stuff we bring with us to a restaurant for a family gathering just to distract our three-year-old is ridiculous—colouring books, stuffed toys, fidget toys…and most of the time she ends the evening watching something on my phone anyway. Why do we do this? Because we’re so painfully, acutely aware of the damn stares—the ceaseless gaze of the permanently miserable, cynical adults who seem to frequent whatever restaurant we’ve dared to come to with our kids—probably the first time we’ve had a meal out of the house in six months or more. These types of people are typified by this quote from the article’s author:

Ultimately, the pro-kids side is probably outnumbered by the legion who like children in principle, but feel they have done their time at the coalface.

Imagine thinking being “at the coalface” is having a meal with no children at your table; no crayons, lidless felt tip pens or stickers strewn across your table, no constant demands and cries for attention—oh, but you have the unbearable misfortune to hear someone else’s kids in the same room as you.

Sure, if someone’s been there and done it with kids and are now left with an empty nest, of course they’re going to enjoy child-free time more often. But they can’t expect everyone else in society to militantly ensure that their kids don’t dare to make a sound in their general vicinity. Children are part of society too—like it or not.

No one’s asking these people to look after or entertain someone else’s kids—just to have a bit of sympathy with the parents who want nothing more than for their kids not to bother anyone else.

I feel like parents of young kids are constantly bending over backwards to make sure that we’re not perceived by these joyless wonders as “those parents” every time we deign to set foot outside our homes. We don’t want anything from these establishments, other than a bit of patience and for their awful patrons to mind their own damn business.

But no. Let’s ban kids from restaurants. Let’s let the people who have all the time and space in the world to fritter away in eateries and coffee shops have more, and the parents who just want a change of scenery for once in a while have less.

Ahem. Sorry, I may have slightly biased the debate here. But I am genuinely interested to hear your views here—am I missing some more complex part of this argument? Should there be more child-free spaces? The floor is (finally) yours.

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God knows how people parented before electricity, hot water and Disney+. Seriously, technology has made our lives as parents a hell of a lot easier, especially in the past 20 years or so. Parenting tech can give us peace of mind through things like video baby monitors, and it can help with the most repetitive of parenting tasks with products like bottle sterilisers and formula prep machines.

But the greatest role that tech has played in my parenting journey? Without a doubt, it’s been to keep me ✨SANE ✨

So without further ado, Here’s Five pieces of tech that really stepped up and solved seemingly insolvable issues for me during parenthood:

Toniebox

My three-year-old is one of those kids that has made mealtimes a rather arduous endeavour. There’ll be once in a blue moon where she’ll eat most of what’s on her plate without encouragement or comment—which is what we’re meant to do, I know. Most of the time though, we have to resort to tactics like making up games with the food, delivering sweet treats after particularly controversial vegetables, and—in the most desperate of times—the iPad.

Being so heavily involved in her eating process is obviously unsustainable—but she’s just one of those kids that seems to want that kind of stimulation when eating. But we don’t want to stick her in front of a screen while she eats.

Enter the Toniebox.

It’s like a cube with a speaker in one side (and it’s padded as well to protect against drops) that’s got a magnetic pad on top. On there, you place little characters that are sold separately. When you do, the box chirps into life and it either plays songs or tells stories based on the character. For example, we have a Moana figure that sings songs from the movie, then an abridged narration of the film.

It’s a really good alternative to screen-time, especially when they have figures for almost all of kids favourite shows, films and books—like Paw Patrol, Disney princesses, the Gruffalo and—shudders—Peppa Pig.

The existence of that last one will be a secret I take to my cold, cold grave.

Refer a friend

Wireless earbuds

I’ve written a bit before about my struggles with the night-shifts with a newborn. Our second has actually been quite good in the night, settling into a regular rhythm of wakes and feeds at quite consistent times. Plus, once you go through the newborn night-time experience once, you’re a light sleeper for life.

The first time around, I hadn’t realised the incredible lulling power of the yoga ball, and so I was walking around the bedroom in the dead of night, rocking and swaying our baby to sleep for half an hour to an hour at a time. Not only was this murder for my knees and lower back, but god almighty was it boring. I toyed with using my wired headphones to listen to an audiobook or a podcast while I did it, but that meant having to hold my phone awkwardly in one hand or in my pocket (which, depending on your preferred pyjama configuration, you might not even have), and it meant draping a wire over the baby, which would inevitably get tangled in their arms when you did come to put them down to sleep. It wasn’t worth the fuss, but I really needed something to quell the boredom and monotony.

My awesome wife got me some AirPods Pro for my 30th birthday, when our daughter was around nine months old. In hindsight, I can’t believe I lasted a whole nine months without these things, because they truly do make those long night-shifts go so much quicker.

They don’t have to be fancy Apple ones, either. My wife picked up this set for herself for labour, and the sound quality on them is very good for the price.

Don’t make the same mistake I did by going nine months without these—if you’re the one waking up with the baby every night, these are a godsend.

A quick note to say that the links in this article are Amazon affiliate links—if you happened to buy a product through any of these, it helps support my writing without costing you anything anything extra.

White noise machine

Through a whole heap of trial and error with all kinds of sleep aids and techniques, we realised that our firstborn really responded well to white noise.

There’s a whole manner of ways you can create white noise for your child. There’s white noise tracks on YouTube that come with a black screen so the light doesn’t wake up your baby (although be careful as some of these dastardly videos have adverts right in the middle of them!). There’s smartphone apps as well that will give you a whole host of sounds for a small fee.

But if you’re anything like me, all you want to do after the baby is asleep is descend very quickly into a doom scrolling session on your preferred social media cesspit platform. Even if that’s not you, chances are you’ll want to keep your device on you for all manner of reasons, rather than leave it in your child’s room all night. You could always use another device, but sometimes it’s just easier to remove the dependency on them altogether.

That’s why dedicated white noise machines are superior. Not only do they free up your phones and tablets so you can actually use them whilst your child’s asleep, but most will have a set volume level on them, which keeps the track at a sound threshold that is not harmful to your baby’s ears.

There’s a heap of these out there, but we went for this one because it’s portable so that we can use it in the car and pram as well as at home—and it’s rechargeable via USB, meaning you’re not swapping out a fistful of AA’s every other week.

Guided Access

I’m not sure how well known this is, but I remember discovering it and being open-mouthed at how useful it was.

Ok, so let’s cut to it—sometimes our kids get screen time. On those days where they’re inconsolable, irritable and grouchy as hell and you’ve still got a 25 minute car journey until you’re home—we’ve all broken the emergency glass and reached for an iPad or phone as a last resort.

I just want to make sure that we’re all comfortable with this reality. Ok? Ok.

So on those occasions where my daughter’s been watching something in the car, every now and then I’ve become very concerned because I can hear the keyboard clacking away. I pull over, turn to grab my phone and yes—she’s ended up on Twitter and is tweeting out a load of random numbers and letters. I’ve had my covfefe moment.

Luckily, to prevent prying hands switching between apps and causing mischief, there’s a solution available on iOS and Android devices.

By following the instructions in the guides linked above, you can lock down certain apps to only allow certain inputs (or no inputs). For instance, I could apply Guided Access to a drawing app so that my daughter can only use the touch screen, and not the home or lock buttons. I can lock down Disney+ so that she can’t exit the app and get onto my WhatsApp, or accidentally stop whatever she’s watching and get upset because she can’t figure out how to get it back.

It’s intended as an accessibility tool, but this application to the use of screen time for kids is a lifesaver for parents at the end of their tether who’ve run out of options until they get home.

GroEgg

This one has helped me out twice—once in a way which the product was intended to help, and once maybe not.

The GroEgg is a brand of bedroom thermometer that changes colour depending on the temperature in the room. It gives a handy colour-coded guide to first time parents for how hot or cold the room is, and how they should therefore dress their baby safely for sleep.

This was great for us in the first instance of parenting, because as we all know everything worries us about babies when we first have one—one of these things being are they too hot or cold at night. The GroEgg also comes with a handy guide for telling you what kind of attire is appropriate for each colour. This greatly took the stress out of dressing our firstborn for the night, especially when things got really hot in the summer. It also doubles as a night light when your kid gets a bit older!

With our second born, we got the GroEgg back out of its box and plugged it back in our room, but to be honest we had much less worry about what to put her in. We just kind of instinctively know what’s appropriate and what’s not now, and that’s been working fine. The GroEgg stays on for peace of mind, but it felt a bit necessary.

Then a couple of weeks ago our baby starts rejecting the bottle that I give her at her first wake up. This stopgap feed was intended to give my wife a break from feeding through the night, as well as a chance for me to connect with the baby a little more, and so we were both really gutted that she started spitting out the bottle in the dead of night. She was irritable, distracted.

Then we had an idea. We took the GroEgg from the dressing table and popped it on my bedside table, directly in the eye line of the baby during her daddy bottle feed. The first time I tried it, her eyes locked on the soothing orange light, and she took the bottle just like she used to. Feeding crisis averted, thanks to a previously redundant light-up thermometer.

So there’s five bits of tech that have helped me along my parenting journey so far. What about you? Which pieces of convenient tech have helped you out of a parenting bind, or are first on the list of things you take on a trip with the kids? Let me know in the comments!

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I’m sat on the playroom floor with a bunch of hastily-attached hairclips digging into my scalp and some poorly applied nail polish adorning my fingers. I think we’re playing shops, but for some reason I’m also Muffin from Bluey. She’s Bluey, obviously. Yes, I know she’s wearing a Cinderella dress. No, don’t point out the discrepancy. It’s not worth it.

I go to give her some change from the till, only to find that all the play money (the few notes and coins that aren’t under the sofa) is gone—it’s all in my daughter’s little handbag.

“Pause game,” I say. “Do you want to put some of that money back in the till so I can give you change?”

She stares at me dead in the eye. “Don’t ever pause my game again,” she says.

A few days later, we’re in the car on the way to nursery. She likes listening to Yellow Submarine, so I put it on and we sing along together. Then after it’s done, Twist and Shout comes on. I launch into it with the confidence of someone with the music turned up just enough so they can’t actually hear their own voice.

My eldest cuts me down. “Stop singing now, Daddy. It’s not good anymore.”

It was nice of her to imply it was good at one stage, I suppose.

What I’m getting at with these two anecdotes is that my three-year-old—like most pre-schoolers—can be a bit sassy when she wants to be.

And do you know what? I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I like it a lot.

But just looking up a definition of the word sass, you can see that some other parents—most likely of previous generations—may not see it in such a favourable light:

Sass - noun: impudence, cheek; “the kind of boy that wouldn't give you any sass.” verb: be cheeky or rude to (someone); "we wouldn't have dreamed of sassing our parents”

Especially in the context of parenting and interactions between children and adults, this definition puts a negative slant on the kind of confident, assured and cheeky retorts we’ve all been on the receiving end of from our kids.

I think these definitions need to evolve—we need to redefine the kind of sass that’s an indicator of a strong sense of self-assurance, self-esteem and assertiveness, so that people stop marrying it with overtly rude behaviour.

Let me explain: I set out writing this essay to be an ode to the sassiness of little kids and how we need to nurture it and push it in the right direction rather than stamp it out as previously generations did.

Honestly, I didn’t think this viewpoint as a particularly controversial one.

And yet, I started trawling the web for articles, surveys and the like for corroboration. Instead, these are the kinds of headlines I got when I Googled “is sass in kids a good thing?”:

• Sassy Kids: How to Deal with a Mouthy Child

• Back-Talk Boot Camp: Stop the Sass

• Is kids’ sass factor out of control?

• How to Punish a Child

Then I started reading some posts from some parent bloggers about sassiness (not here on Substack), and one of them in particular (that I won’t link to as I don’t want to single them out) really rubbed me up the wrong way.

Here’s some select quotes:

I looked up synonyms for "sassy" -- disrespectful, mouthy, overbold, rude, smart-alecky, smart-mouthed... the list goes on. I don't know about you, but I don't want [my child]1 to be any of that.

Obviously “rude” and “disrespectful” are not traits you want for your child—fine. But throwing “smart-alecky” and “smart-mouthed” throws up red flags for me. To stamp that kind of expression out of a child is to take away their critical voice, to mould them into permissiveness. Also not a fan of rallying against a child being “overbold”—who are we to decide how bold our child wants to be? By what measure do we decide that someone is too bold?

Would a man want to marry a woman who acts like this?

Um, what the fuck?

I don’t want to come across as some sort of male saviour or anything, but being the dad of two girls has solidified the feminism inside me to the point that shit like this gets me really angry. My daughter will be just as fiery, bold, sassy, and will take up as much space as she damn well pleases—and she will not give a shit what “a man” thinks of it—you can quote me on that.

A further point on this front before I move on. Out of the four articles I linked earlier that I’ll put under the “how to brow-beat the character out of your children” banner, three of them use stock images of a parent and a child. All three of the children in these images are girls. In fact, it’s occurred to me that the word “sass” isn’t used about boys. Neither is “bossy”, come to think of it. Why is that?

My wife read a book after our first daughter was born called Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I read it too. It opened my eyes to so much, and set in my mind a blueprint for how I wanted my daughter (now daughters) to grow up. In light of the above and by ways of rounding off this particular strand, I’ll just drop one of my favourite passages from the book:

In fact, that quote addresses the last part of this particular blog post that’s riled me so:

…we need to stop praising "sassy." Let's, instead, praise and promote kids being helpful and kind and classy and respectful and positive and all of the wonderful characteristics that we want to see in them as adults.

There’s no reason why kids can’t be bold, outspoken and sassy when they need to be, as well as helpful, kind and respectful. The world is ready to throw our kids challenges that all require different approaches. I’d rather my children have a full range of strategies for dealing with these challenges. Just being kind and respectful doesn’t always cut it in the face of injustice.

And breathe. Back to it.

Refer a friend

I was kind of surprised by all these pieces—and having read the articles in question, I don’t think it’s just a question of semantics.

Kids can trigger us greatly with their choice of words, and sometimes they cut right to our core. Especially in younger children, there’s usually a very good idea why they’re choosing to communicate with us in that particular way, and it has nothing to do with rudeness or disrespect.

Kids, particularly under five, are often trying to express emotions that they don’t necessarily have the words for—at least not the words we’d use. This often results in meltdowns, tantrums, throwing things or otherwise saying stuff that we’d put under the “sass” umbrella.

It’s the prevailing opinion of experts such as Janet Lansbury that it’s up to us to give our kids the space to express these difficult or new emotions, and them help our kids understand what the emotion is and how to express it in a healthier, more constructive manner the next time.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling that a lot of the normal expression of feelings that pre-schoolers will inevitably exhibit still get the Back-Chat Boot Camp treatment.

As difficult as this kind of behaviour is to deal with, and as much as we’d rather our kids lined up at bedtime like the Von Trapps or ate their dinner like with all the grace and decorum of some angelic kids in a commercial, there are going to be times where they’re really testing us—but it’s only because they’re trying to tell us something. Employing a near-Victorian era stance of “seen but not heard”, labelling anything other than total obedience as something that needs to be corrected or punished and totally quashing any form of their self-expression will lead to them not feeling like they have a voice, and growing up not knowing how to use it.

I know this all too well. I was one of those three-year-olds that my parents still affectionately refer to as a “little bastard”. I’d always be throwing tantrums, acting out against other kids at nursery school and generally “acting up”. What was really happening was that I was trying to communicate something. I didn’t know how to communicate it, and so I picked whatever course of action I had available. Each and every time however, I was slapped back down. I learned that it was dangerous to use my voice, or what passed for my voice back then. It was easier to shut up and get on with it. I guess that’s why I prefer writing to speaking now.

Maybe my feelings here are driven by my own personal experiences, and maybe this is why this essay is quickly descending into a rant. But I can’t help but feel a bit pissed off reading articles about techniques to get our kids to shut up and stop talking back. They’re kids, for fucks sake. They’re our kids. They rely on us to show them healthy boundaries, teach them right from wrong. We’re meant to nurture them and help them repurpose that fire in their bellies—not extinguish it.

Something I’ve learned in counselling is that what triggers is not because of the actions, words or event that happens in front of us, but rather the reaction in our minds that happens as a result. Renowned psychologist and my dream therapist Gabor Mate discusses this a lot. My own example of this is that I get triggered massively by my daughter not eating at meal times. I’ve worked out that this is most likely because of the way I’d be spoken to at meal times when I was a fussy eater at the same age. I’ve spoken before about the parenting playbook—what we’ve seen modelled to us in our childhoods often becomes the easiest, most well-worn path to follow when it comes to our own brand of parenting. I was shouted at for not eating my food, and thus the urge to do the same to my daughter is greater than it otherwise would have been.

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I know there’s loads of times that we just need a break from the tantrums and meltdowns—believe me, I KNOW. It can also be true at the same time that kids don’t deserve to be stifled and stripped of their voices every time they say something that’s not “Yes, mother. Thank you, father.”

And of course, there’s a balance to be struck between self-assured sass and overt rudeness. But that’s our job to find that sweet-spot. We’ve got a better idea of where that spot is, but a lot of us (me included) had to find that cliff-face for ourselves through years and years of biting our tongues and not wanting to be seen as difficult or outspoken. Let’s instead show our kids where the line is from an early age, trusting in our own ability as teachers that they’ll learn and respect the difference.

I know what some people would say to all of this. It goes something like this (and if I was reading this aloud, I would put on a funny voice for this bit):

“But you’re not preparing them for the real world!!!”

Well guess what? The real world is coming for them—whatever I do or don’t do. I know there’ll be more boundaries they face in the future, and most of them will be one’s they’ll have to figure out for themselves. I’d much rather send my kids off into the wide world with a surety of their own voice; a self-assurance that we’d done our best to foster, not stamp out under the false banner of discipline.

Fortunately, I did find some supporting opinions to my own. Chief among them was —who writes the consistently-brilliant —who wrote back in 2021 about kids feeling safe to express their true selves, and how it aids their development.

I’ve got on far too long on this. To distill my views on this subject beyond the rage-induced diatribe that this post became: let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water by squashing the barest hint of rebelliousness in our kids. By all means, set the appropriate boundaries, but don’t mistake your kid’s attempts at communicating feelings past their vocal ability as “disrespect”—that’s our feeling, not theirs. Let’s not be responsible for another generation of people who don’t know how to use their own voice come adulthood.

Instead, let’s normalise sassy kids. Let’s celebrate them expressing their individuality, and—beyond the pre-school ages—standing up for what they believe in, because we taught them that using their voice was a safe and necessary thing to do.

Over to you

I’m fully prepared for being in the minority on this, and that many of you might disagree with me. Maybe my personal circumstances are responsible for this opinion rather than anything else, but either way I’d be interested to hear what you think on this!

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Previously on Some Other Dad