Two days ago

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 02 July 2008 11:41:53

I got bored.

About seven years ago I discovered a talent for soothing babies and rocking them off to sleep. Either it has something to do with flexing the knees at exactly the right speed or it has something to do with offering to hold the baby at exactly the right moment - when it is susceptible to being pacified. I used to mostly think the former but in my cynical dotage I'm tending much more to the latter view these days. In any case I got to really enjoy holding babies. Partly I was enjoying challenging the stereotypes and encouraging other males to participate in childcare by setting an example, and partly it was the simple pleasure of providing comfort to the child, obviously, but also to their parent(s) since a calm baby is better than a screaming one. I remember being mocked (by a mother; I'm afraid there is a gender war on and it's important to clarify which attacks come from which side) that if I really enjoyed it then I should do it full time. This was one of those incredibly rare moments when I had an answer ready because I'd already gone down that line of thought. And my answer was that I'd love to do that but I simply couldn't afford to since hands-on one-to-one childcare like that is never going to pay anything like as much as I earn (and, I kid myself, need in order to pay the mortgage and support my family).

Five years ago that enjoyment of holding babies took a dent when my daughter made it abundantly clear that she hated being held by me (or being with me in any shape or form). But other babies still enjoyed my rocking and I still enjoyed holding them, so the feeling largely stayed. And I suppose it still does though I get to do it less often. But whereas that enjoyment of caring for babies developed along with my own babies, it hasn't developed into an enjoyment of caring for primary school-aged children as my own kids have reached that age. I'm certainly not going to be volunteering to run a Sunday school class any time soon, and would rather do crèche any day.

Now, that all sounds fine and cool - different people have different talents, and of those with a talent for looking after kids, some will be good with babes-in-arms, some with primary-agers, some with tweenagers and so on. But it's not actually fine, it's actually a bit of a problem. Because it means, more or less, that I don't actually enjoy being with my kids. And that's not so cool.

This week I happen to be getting to watch a lot of TV, which is quite unusual and, consequently, a novel pleasure. And one thing I happened to see was a video of that cliché, the middle-aged dad who doesn't understand his teenage son. It was an advert so it was fairly abbreviated, concentrated cliché, so we had the son playing loud music on his stereo and the dad shouting at him to turn it down. Then we had the son playing guitar and the dad leaving the room, and later of course we had the son performing a gig to an adoring audience to demonstrate how successful he was in his chosen métier. And of course, everyone watching that was screaming at the dad to see how stupid he was being and to stop and listen to his son and understand things from his point of view. (Why, incidentally, is it so clearly the dad that's in the wrong? Is there no rôle for the son in the necessary reconciliation? Funny the things that occur to you once you become a parent.)

Now, of course, it's all supposed to be symbolic and the music/guitar playing is just a standard symbol of teenage rebellion. The problem is I (and I suspect I'm not alone in this) have a literalist mind, so to me the son is actually playing a guitar, not performing some icon of rebellion. As such it seems easy and obvious for the dad to actually stop and enjoy the music and, thus, build up the necessary rapport with his son. What I can't get my head round is how objectionable a guitar can be to someone of sufficient age. (Perhaps I'm biassed by the recollection of my mum listening to me playing music when I was a teenager and her saying "I can't stand this guitar strumming music" when actually the instrument playing was an organ with no guitar in the mix at all. Or perhaps I'm biassed by being an occasional guitar player myself. Whatever). I can't really comprehend the dad's difficulties in this scenario. I can't make the jump from literal to symbol.

But slowly I'm beginning to understand. To take one example, my son has a book about dragons. It lists dozens of different species of dragon, and details each one, pretending to be like those wildlife books that help you tell your great tit from your stupid tit and so on. For some reason (perhaps because of the association with RPGs, perhaps the proximity to science-fiction) I can't stand this book. But my son reads it and then wants to tell me every conceivable detail about the difference between the kangaroo dragon and the kimono dragon, their eating, mating and toilet habits, and a thousand other things. And I can't stand it; I just want to leave. As I said, that is one example and there are, unfortunately, dozens of others.

I can enjoy spending time with my kids, but (it seems) only if I get to be talking to them about science or music, or other things that I want them to know about. Ha - I almost wrote there "things that I think they'll be interested in". I stopped because even I can see the fallacy of that. Some of what I say they will be interested in, but my whole problem is that I have no patience for listening to them tell me about stuff they are really interested in, like dragons. I am a dad, I am that dad.

That cliché-ridden ad at least makes it easy to see the son's point of view. My experience with the dragons makes the dad's point of view overwhelming clear too. So, if the traditional view is right then I guess I have no choice - I either get with the dragons or slowly lose my son. Great. Ok, tell me about the wyvern again and I'll try and fight my boredom.