Brilliant dad feature week 70

This week our brilliant dad feature is UK top 10 parent blogger Alex . He says he is just the wrong side of 40 and lives and works in St Albans as an accountant. He fell into accountancy by accident in the late 1990’s as he began looking for a profession at the start of the alphabet.

He says he must doing something right though because 20 years later he is still at it. He has three children aged nine, seven and four and a lovely wife who is also a parent blogger Being a Mummy, but has been doing it much longer than him.

He started blogging as a way to both express his creativity, to also stop watching soap operas and for him to keep a record of what they get up to as a family.

He has blogged at Daddacool for the past seven years and at Do it anyway for almost as long. His parent blog unsurprisingly has all his parenting posts on, and his other blog has everything else on.
Thank you to Alex for taking part. 

 

1. Have you always wanted to be a dad?

                                                               To be honest it’s not something I really put much thought in to when I was younger. I never had particularly much luck with girls, so most of my thoughts were preoccupied with girls and getting to see them naked! You get the idea!

hen we got married everyone automatically assumed that it was to have a huge family immediately, which struck me as odd.

 

First off my wife made me look after hamsters for a while to prove I was responsible. They all died (eventually, mostly of old age, another had wet tail and died after a short illness), but by that point I’d proved myself!

 

 

2. How did you feel when your children were born?

 

I’m sure I was elated, scared and proud, but to be honest most of what I remember now is the bone grinding exhaustion. Our eldest was accidentally born to Megadeth’s Symphony of Destruction after I neglected to take the MP3 player off of shuffle, at around 3am after a labour that had gone on for most of the Easter bank holiday weekend. 

 

I remember watching some duff surfing film with Jessica Alba in during the early stages on Good Friday, but by the time the birth happened on Easter Monday, I was heading towards what Pink Floyd refers to as Comfortably Numb because of being so so tired. I’m not entirely sure how my wife coped with it, she obviously had a lot more to do than I did!

 

I think our daughters birth was a lot quicker and more painful, but I knew what to expect for that, so it was a lot more joyful and, as I’ve written in this post, the-baby-i-almost-missed, the hospital almost cost me the opportunity to be at the birth of our third. I was pretty stressed for that one.

 

 

3. What have been your most rewarding experiences so far as a Dad?

 

Being loved unconditionally, and my kids having the faith that I can sort out any situation that upsets them. A child falling asleep in your lap, and their arms snaking out to give you a cuddle. I am perhaps rather too good at taking myself down to my kids levels, seeing things with their wide eyed wonder and the extreme emotion that goes with it, so I experience the elation along with the upset. I remember years ago we were on a blogging trip to North Italy. We went on a day trip to a medieval walled city and the boy, who would have been 4 at the time, left his precious bunny on a bench somewhere. We got back to the car with 15 minutes left on the meter and he said,“Where bun-bun?” Panic set in, but I hid it well and told him I’d be back in a minute with bunny. There were no tears, not one, because he had that child’s faith in me to put it all right, and to be fair I did, with out 10 seconds to spare on the parking. Because I’m awesome! Not awesome enough to notice when he put his bunny down, but awesome just the same.

 

4. What are some of funniest moments to have happened to you as a dad? 

 

Goodness me. There are so many. Perhaps the time we were at the Chiltern Open Air Museum and a chap hailed us, and came over, introducing himself as the chairmen of the Friends Association. As he put his hand out to shake mine, our lad, four at the time, punched me as hard as he could in my nuts. I fell on the floor in a wheezing heap, and the poor bloke stood their with his hand hanging in thin air. That was funny in hindsight, as was the time that our eldest was sick down the side of his bed the day we were due to go to Butlins. He was so excited about going, he piled his duvet on top of it and didn’t tell us. I only discovered it when we got home 3 days later and the duvet was welded to the floor. I didn’t laugh much at the time, but afterwards I definitely found his determination funny.

 

Perhaps the cutest was the time that the boys nursery did a year book. Every child was asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. It was the usual white middle class aspirations of doctors, lawyers, firemen, policemen, vets and so only except two girls put they’d like to be married to our lad and he himself put he’d like to be Spider-Man!

 

 

5. Have there been any situations with your children that you have found difficult to cope with?

 

Our littlest is 4, but because his older brother is 9, he thinks he should have the same rights and be treated the same as a 9 year old. It’s very difficult because he won’t accept the explanation that Sam is allowed to stay up later because he’s 5 years older, it just doesn’t make sense to him. He also just does exactly what he damn well wants to at any given moment and doesn’t care about the consequences.

 

We almost lost him at London Zoo once as he just ran off without looking back, he runs off on the school run all the time, and generally is a proper handful as I imagine a lot of third children are.

 

The general situation I find very difficult to cope with as the co-owner of three children though is giving them all a fair share of my time and attention. A fair share isn’t necessarily an equal share, as their age and situations are different, but I also get upset from one child when I try to do something with one of the others on their own. It’s a constant battle 

 

6. What are your dreams and hopes for your children?

 

Our childrens generation is in an invidious position. They will never be able to get on the property ladder under their own steam – currently the average deposit is £60K, which is over twice the national average wage. House prices continue to outstrip wage inflation, so this is only going to get worse. Given that so much of what my generation strove to do had the ultimate aim of getting a home of our own, I am in a sense a bit stumped. I was the first person in my family to go to university back in the 90’s and I left with £400 of debt. Today kids leave with a huge debt, face high rents if they don’t live at home with their parents and an uncertain future full stop.

 

I can see todays under tens living at their parents home into their 40s, even if they’ve been successful. If we’re lucky enough to inherit from our parents, that will pay off our mortgage and provide for our retirement, our kids generation will have to wait for us to pop our clogs for the trickle down wealth. Most of this countries wealth seems to have trickled offshore – betraying our generation and our kids generation. This has lead me to ponder hard on what I would wish for our kids in the future. 

 

Although both my wife and I were, and still are academically driven (she has a degree and two masters, I have a degre and a professional qualification), we’re not going to push our kids academically. I want them to be able to fulfil their potential, don’t get me wrong, they’re not going to sit around the house playing video games until 3 in the morning every day, but I want them to also appreciate the life they have, the world they’ve grown up in and realise that it’s not all about the kerching kerching. I suppose at the heart of it, I want them to grow up and have no regrets about either the things they’ve done or the things they haven’t done. To take risks and not fear failure but not to be reckless. A tall order, but they’re a damn good bunch of kids, despite whatever influence I’ve had on them!