Old friends

One of my good friends suggested on the telephone last night that his experiences of being the only dad at playgroups were much more positive than those I’ve recounted here. Admittedly those particular child rearing days were a few years ago now, and they took place in London – which I guess you might expect, perhaps wrongly, to be more liberal in its attitudes than the semi-rural area I live in.

But I’m glad he bought it up, partly because I have been re-evaluating things a little bit recently and partly [ok, quite a bit] because it’s good to know that people have been looking at this blog.

I conceded some ground, actually. ‘S’pose it can be a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy,’ I said. ‘If you stand around looking glum because no-one’s talking to you then they’re less likely to come over for a chat.’

I’ve alluded to this circle of gloom a couple of times previously – for eg, here and here.

What I wanted to add is perhaps what I’ve been trying to communicate in these posts all along: that the superficial things – the hello’s and goodbye’s, the weekly meetings in neutral venues, the small shopping trips to the local post office where everybody knows you by sight – generally go fine, give or take the occasional cold shoulder.

It’s moving beyond the superficiality to building relationships which is proving more difficult. The ‘quotidian’ stuff – the lonely afternoons with a tired child, the endless journeys in the car, the constant demands for attention even when she’s at her happiest – is actually what gets you down: it’s in dealing with the humdrum that you most need the ‘deeper’ support of a proper peer group.

A formulaic chat with people at a playgroup or activity is frustrating precisely because that is as far as it can go.

Actually this morning I came to the conclusion that I have been feeling a bit down, although not exactly for the reasons mentioned above.

I’ve talked about selflessness before, and I want to say more in a future post. But I guess I’ve been pining for my own personal space a bit. Like most blokes, I like to have a project on the go, and that’s nigh-on impossible with an active, demanding toddler and a fistful of housework in your life.

The odd thing is that I didn’t know I had the blues. Looking back, it was as though something was worrying away at me below the surface, and I just didn’t realise.

We were sitting talking just after her afternoon nap when the light broke through. S- was encouraging me to sing ‘Baa baa black sheep’ over and over, joining in herself at the beginning of each of the first two lines [not quite getting the timing or the vowel sounds right, but probably a little more in tune than I was]. We were having fun: I was absorbed in the moment, forgetting to worry about the jobs that needed doing, the little goals I’d set myself for the day.

‘Ahh, so this is what I’ve been missing,’ I suddenly thought.

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!

Word up

The paradoxical thing about the love you have for your children is that part of you wants them to stay the same and the other takes such joy in their growing up and all their achievements.

S-’s favourite word of the moment is ‘bubble’. She says it perfectly and knows exactly what it means.

She’s still struggling with some of the more basic words. Like ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and – as G- mock seriously keeps trying to get her to say – ‘Yes, mother, I love you lots and lots’.

But that’s not to say she doesn’t give it her best shot. We were bowling along in the car [dad was going a a bit too quickly, admittedly: we were late for a playgroup, again!]. S was lifting up the window shade and peering out, alternately chuckling and cooing, and kicking her legs, when she started practising.

There came a few indistinguishable noises and then she went for the biggie:

‘Ah yeh… yeye ….ye….zzz [splutter], ah yehyehye, ye, AH ye ye ye yeee ye ah [kick, kick, splutter] yeyeyeyeyeYeeeYEEEYEYEYEYE… [giggle, kick and then finally a shout of pure, unadulterated joy] AH YESSSSSS!’