keep moving forwards – Page 3

October 14, 2017

Parent life

06:45, weekday morning:

Minimal signs of life
Dissent
Progress only visible via time-lapse camera.

06:33, weekend morning:

Both awake
Standing over sleeping daddy
Prodding face
Tiny fingers prising adult eyes open.

I’m knackered.

BSD

October 12, 2017

Honesty

Always the best policy.

I picked the cubs up after to work today. The order was reversed as I was in the north of the county so daughter was first, followed by son.

I walked into after-school club and she was sitting alone on a sofa. This is quite unusual for her as she is normal a social being and would normally be in the midst of her friends.

She turned and saw me; and immediately I could tell, all was not right. She moved to the middle of the seat, hugged me and burst into tears.

Through the sobs

Her school has a reward system called ‘Golden Time’, which is awarded to children for good behaviour. They collect tokens throughout the day which gives them time back to do something they like. If they’re well behaved throughout the whole term, they get a certificate. Since starting school 3 years ago, she’s never missed one. She parades them like a badge of honour.

Today, she had lost her entitlement to Golden Time.

A minor idescretion had led to it; she was inconsolable.

Rebuilding

We hugged; a lot. Then we talked.

We discussed mistakes and how important it is to make them. We then talked about the importance of learning from them so that we could avoid them in the future.

I also told her that I make mistakes quite often. That seemed to do the trick.

The assistants at the club were concerned that something had happened whilst she was under their care as she had been ok up until the moment I arrived.

She’d been holding on to these feelings for most of the day before they finally exploded into full blown tears.

Thinking

I was reassured that despite all the inner turmoil she’d put herself through before I arrived, she’d confided in me completely as soon as she saw me.

This level of trust is critical; I need her to come to me regardless. Communication and compassion above all else.

BSD

October 4, 2017

Halloween is here…

This morning’s drive in;

‘Dad; my friend and I found a dead butterfly in the playground yesterday’

Did you? What type was it?

‘I don’t know, but we took a wing each and threw the body into the hedge…’

Lord help me.

BSD

October 3, 2017October 3, 2017

We will get to the truth…

So what was your favourite part of the school day?

‘After school club’

Ok (trying to get to a favourite subject) What about during the day? What was your favourite part of the day?

‘Lunch’

Gives up.

Also on the way home

Boris Johnson on the radio from the Conservative conference;

“COME ON PEOPLE! ITS TIME TO BE BOLD!”

‘BOLD!? But Dad; I like my frizzy hair!’

BSD

September 29, 2017September 29, 2017

More serious questions

This morning’s drive in turned plenty deep plenty quickly.

“Dad; would a hurricane blow the hair off someone with Cancer?”

Whoa

After skillfully not crashing; I ponder a suitable response. I’d have preferred a ‘Where do babies come from’ as I have a script for that one but this was left field.

‘Those two things are quite unrelated darling; how did you put them together?’

Silence..

“Well; I’d noticed that when people get Cancer they lose their hair. I suspect that Cancer makes it loose so if you’re in a hurricane, those strong winds will only make matters worse.”

I can see her logic and decide to tackle the big one first.

‘Ok; it’s not the Cancer that causes sufferers to lose their hair, its the treatment. It can be quite aggressive’

Having lost my mother to the big C, I know enough about the topic to feed her facts. Preempting her next enquiry, I continue.

‘Cancer happens in the body at a cellular, microscopic, level. Every part of us is made up of cells. Technically we are constantly regenerating ourselves but slightly older than the version before..”With Cancer, somehow the message to create a new cell gets messed up and misunderstood, so the new cell isn’t quite as it should be. If there are enough of these not-so-right cells, they can attack the good cells. That can be really bad’

She looks creeped out.

‘It’s a gradual process; we call it mutating‘

Less creeped and now showing the look of ‘I’m gonna tell folk this in the playground’.

“So is a cell small? what’s the smallest living thing?”

Now I’m wading out into deep waters…

‘I think it’s a single celled, protozoa but I’m not sure; I’ll check this evening’

It’s been a while since Biology class.

“I think it’s a woodlouse”

The hurricane went unmentioned.

BSD

September 26, 2017

On the drive in..

“Dad? What makes us different from animals?”

Not your everyday question, but the kind of thing I expect from my daughter on the drive in to school.

Well, it tends to be our ability to express a range of emotions such as compassion grief love et cetera. That and the fact that we can display intelligence.

“Not like Donald Trump then?”

One high-five later, daddy 🙂

BSD

September 12, 2017

Stress? What stress?

This morning’s school run was a test of patience.

As seems to be the norm on Britain’s roads, you can’t drive more than a mile without hitting roadworks.

I’d managed to hustle the cubs into the car in reasonable time and with limited fuss, but we were now confronted with the familiar sight of brake lights.

I watched my chronological advantage slip away and my ire rise. Not good.