Message in a bottle

So I’m 1, 2, 3, 4, 4-and-a-half months in and counting as a stay-at-home dad [though G- and I have been parents by adoption for almost a year now]. What have I learned in that time?

Here are my top tips [in no particular order]:

1. Always have a Plan B. It’s no good turning up at the swimming pool and finding it closed due to the presence of some contagious disease or because the roof has fallen in [yes, this really happened to our local pool], and then just turning back for home. You need to think fast and on your feet. Usually retail therapy is not a good option – unless it’s the Early Learning Centre. Small kids love Early Learning Centres
2. Develop a personality. One that doesn’t frighten people. It may have been ok in an earlier life to stand around in rooms looking like a bored adolescent, and maybe your friends even expect it of you now, but your child needs to see that you can at least pretend to be a normal person. The type of guy who can indulge in pleasant small talk while balancing a plate of half-eaten biscuits in one hand and using the other to prevent his daughter from devouring the contents of a pack of crayons, for example
3. Put your child first in and above all things. This is much, much harder than it sounds. I cannot tell you anything about this: it must be experienced to be properly understood
4. Learn to multitask, as best you can. Granted, it’s not easy for a dad to keep more than one train of thought on the tracks of reality, but if you don’t/can’t/won’t then you’ll need to be prepared for the consequences. These may include potentially expensive and embarrassing pratfalls such as filling your car’s petrol engine with diesel, or walking away from the cashpoint machine without the money that’s just popped out of the slot, because you’re thinking about whether you should have changed that juice-covered top she’s wearing after all
5. Don’t use reins. Not because they’re dangerous, or politically incorrect or any other reason that you might have heard. Because your child will quickly learn that reins give them all sorts of opportunities for spectator sport, like sitting down on the floor in supermarkets and refusing to get up for ages, while a small crowd gathers round to comment on your pathetic efforts to persuade her otherwise
6. Get out of the house for a meal/drink/film/run/shopping expedition/concert/squash game [tick the box that lights, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor, your candle,] as often as you can. Definitely more than once a year, anyway

It’s my life

These days, I find I’m getting rather used to the reversal of roles in our family. So I’m quite happy to do some of the creative thinking around how we bring up our daughter, about S-’s routines, welfare and happiness.

I’m still pretty rubbish at shopping, but I am getting used to the more spontaneous things about parenting: like snatching sleep where and when you can and having to think on your feet when you’ve nothing in the fridge for lunch.

One thing I found very difficult at first is the strange language of parenthood. And it has taken me a little while, but I’m now scarily fluent in Motherese, that strange tongue where you have conversations with people in your immediate vicinity – whom you may or may not know – though to all intents and purposes you’re actually talking to your child.

Search me out on a typical day and you’ll find me on the edge of groups of women speaking in a bizarre, descriptive language that requires a loud voice and an irritating over-reliance on the third person:

‘Yes, S-, the boy is climbing on the table. Yes, he’s very clever, but I hope he doesn’t fall off. Can his mummy see him? Oh no. Ouch… It’s ok. It’s ok, look, there’s the boy’s mummy, running over.’

In the evenings I relax by practicing grown up conversations with my wife. Luckily, she often tolerates my stumbling and sometimes rather juvenile efforts.

So macho

No, this isn’t some crazed love letter or invitation to an Internet forum, but sometimes the titles of these blog posts just jump out at you.

When I got to the playgroup the other day the organiser greeted me with some excitement. ‘You’re not the only dad today!’

I looked around while I was taking S-’s coat off and nodded to a large bloke in jeans and a sweatshirt, talking into a mobile phone. Pulling the drawers out of a toy kitchen just by his feet was a girl of about 3 or 4 years, obviously his daughter.

I thought we might have a manly catch up during the morning’s activities. This is a playgroup specifically for adoptive parents, so we could grab the opportunity to natter about being in the same boat [you don't see many of us stay-at home adoptive dads about, you know!].

But there was little opportunity for any sort of conversation, nevermind the mutually supportive, caring-sharing discussion I had envisaged. He wandered around the room following his daughter, playing desultorily with some of the toys and resolutely refusing to talk with anybody. I tried to catch his eye a couple of times but soon gave up. His face grew longer and darker with each passing minute. For a while he sat at the activities table poking glitter onto a cardboard star with magnificently bemused contempt.

It must have been a depressing morning both for him and for his daughter, and it wasn’t long before her slightly manic attempts to play with everything in the room flagged. As soon as it was clear that she was running out of ideas, he asked whether she was ready to leave.

Perhaps she was ready to go, and perhaps I’m being unfair, but he wasn’t really giving her a choice. Of course she agreed with him! She wanted to keep him happy.

It can be bloody difficult standing in a playgroup for the first time, especially if you’re not used to kids. So I had a small amount of sympathy for him on that score.

But come on man, you’ve got to make an effort and at least look as if you wouldn’t rather be thousands of miles away, for your child’s sake if nothing else.

So anyway I guess we’ll have that chat next time. Or perhaps not!