Captain Parent

As I await the arrival of our 3rd I’ve decided it would be prudent to conduct some research into advice and guidance for multi-child parenting. There are the obvious tomes: How to talk so kids will listen & how to listen so kids will talk; Siblings without Rivalry; Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids; and so on and on.

Wherever one looks there is an expert or a guru on hand to foster secure attachments, to encourage baby led weaning and to emphasise the sanctity of your child’s autonomy. I mean no disrespect to any of them in saying that I eschew all of it in favour of the absolutely inviolate parenting template that is The Sound of Music. 

Before you get completely the wrong idea I am OBVIOUSLY not talking about that meddling nun. Instead, I’m taking about the GOAT of parents, the original Big Daddy -Georg Ludwig von Trapp. It is a shame that so little of the film is devoted to an examination of his first-class parenting methods for let us not forget the scale of his task. 

In a time in which many two parent families are completely undone by the stresses of rearing just one child Captain von Trapp was single-handedly raising 7, and just consider the age range: 

Liesl 16 

Friedrich 14 

Louise 13 

Kurt 11 

Brigitta 10 

Marta 7 

Gretl 5 

That’s a whole 7 Aside team of pre-schoolers, tweens and teenagers. Without rules, boundaries and discipline that schloss would have been reduced to the state of a menagerie in a trice: Liesl snogging Rolf under the pergola; Friedrich sneaking off to Salzburg to neck Schnapps with his mates; Louise Tik Tokking on the parterre and Brigitta blaring out Taylor Swift from the drawing room. 

You probably weren’t counting the last time you watched the film but he has ALL of those children on parade in under 10 seconds and the one that’s late is late because she’s reading a book. This is Olympic gold medal parenting. And lest you rashly suppose that actually this can’t be good for them given how beastly they are towards the hapless succession of failed governesses think on this: they drove those nannies away because they already had the perfect parent. 

 So here are my 7 reasons for tipping my cap at the Captain: 

 1. The whistle – permissive parents might balk at the Captain’s manner of summoning his ratings or ‘children’ as they’re known on land. But think of the frequency with which you have to shout to gain your kids’ attention and you too will see that the £25 you spend on your very own Boatswain’s Pipe will be one of the best investments you ever make: https://www.acmewhistles.co.uk/whistles-accessories/acme-classics/boatswain-pipe 

2. Individuality – it’s modish to feel that perhaps the children might be inhibited by their uniformity at the start of the film when in fact the Captain has taken great pains to give every one of them their own distinctive call, a system so successful that even Gretl gets it. 

3. The uniform – Speaking of uniformity those children are in a turn out smart enough to bring a tear to any Hapsburg eye. You want your children to act smart then get them dressed smart. You want your children capering about in public embarrassing the family name then dress them in curtains. 

4. Routine – Mornings are spent in the classroom and afternoons are spent marching. Mens sana in corpore sano worked for the Romans and it works for the Captain too. And as an Anti-Anschluss family those children are going to need to know how to handle themselves when the time comes. 

5. The stage – Like any civilised parent the Captain recoils at the idea of exposing his children to showbusiness. He knows too well that it starts with folk songs and before you know it there’s a film crew in your home trashing the parquet and smashing the Meissen. 

6. The Baroness – Until Maria turns up with her innocent ingenue act the VT children are on the point of being blessed with a step-mother for the ages. The whole point of a step-mother is that she’s supposed to fall for the dad in spite of the kids not because of them. When Liesl’s 20 who’s she going to want to be taking style tips from soignée Schraeder or milksop Maria? 

7. The flag – The Captain can spot a tinpot blackguard at 40 paces and if parenting is about leading by example his flag rending isn’t just one of the most stirring scenes in all cinema it’s proof positive to the Von Trapplings that their old man is made of the right stuff.

3 is the Magic Number

If you ever ask a parent of 3 children what it’s like there’s always a pause. It might be a second, it might be 4 (I know because I’ve counted). The answer is then invariably some euphemistic spiel about the challenges heavily caveated with an insistence about how they wouldn’t have it any other way. 

 You often hear about ‘one and done’ or ‘two and out’, this blog is about ‘three fall’. My interest in the concept of 3 child families has grown significantly since my wife announced that we are to become one. That particular pregnancy announcement hit very differently to the first. Less bouncing off the walls jubilation and more staring at the crayon streaks on the walls apprehension. 

 I’ve heard it all. No more man marking: it’s zonal defence with 3. Stupid big car. Impossibly expensive holidays, impossibly expensive outings, impossibly expensive meals. Impossible. Expensive. It’s getting your draft papers when you haven’t even finished your Hail Marys for making it through the first two tours. 

 Obviously, there are also the ecocidal reservations but learning that the childbirth rate has fallen off a cliff means that perhaps signing up for a 3rd rodeo is actually a form of public service. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing it’s definitely a thing. When my wife prevailed upon me to take the leap I said I would do so whole heartedly but warned her that there would obviously only be one outcome to her rolling the daughter dice for a final time. 

 Quietly, I too was looking forward to a girl, variety is the spice and all that and different flavour parenting certainly holds an appeal. As fate would have it, however, Nancy Drew will not be joining the Hardy Boys, at least not this time around. Still, it’s going to save a fortune on the hand me downs; although we might want to put the redecorating on hold for another decade. 

 Any lingering doubts I had about the endeavour were dispelled by a friend who has just welcomed his 3rd. Once you’ve had 2 kids you are, unequivocally, a parent, he said. So why stop at the GCSEs when you can get the A Level as well. The other thing you realise is those bloody hard days, weeks and months at the beginning really don’t last and not because everyone tells you this too shall pass but because you know it does. And isn’t there something enticing about rearing a baby without the fumbling terror of the ingenue? I joked to my wife that perhaps we should go back to NCT classes, this time as grizzled veterans rather than anxious neophytes. 

 I will not pretend that I took to parenting at the first like a duck to water, more like a duck in a Chinatown window. But 7 ½ years down the track this is definitely who I am now and I’m looking forward to giving it a go having got the angst and petulant dismay at the loss of my unencumbered life out of the system. 

 On that note I’m off to explain Middle Child Syndrome to the 4 year old.

Absent Friends

 Marjorie & John Somers Cocks

 

Lee & Elizabeth Hardy           

If yours is the sort of family that engages in toasting the likelihood is that over Christmas you will have raised a toast to absent friends. In a family context absent friends is generally a euphemism for close and sometimes not so close relations. But to mourn someone's absence you have to have known them and not everyone sitting down to Christmas lunch will have known those that are called to the minds and hearts of others sitting around them.

I was fortunate enough to have had both my grandmothers figure prominently in my life into adulthood and can readily and pleasurably recall numerous Christmases spent with each of them. Their influence on me was marked although they were chalk and cheese. One a disciple of duty who worked for MI6 during the War and the other a raconteuse who lived for leisure, fashion and entertainment.

Unfortunately, by way of contrast, I knew neither of my grandfathers, one of whom died when I was 2 and the other nearly twenty years before I was born. I've sought as I've grown up to get a sense of the men they were but that sense is, of course, almost entirely dependent on the recollection and accounts of others, primarily my parents.

Obtaining those accounts depends to a very significant extent on time, energy and inclination and even the most minute account necessarily only conveys the idea of a person. One of the chastening discoveries of early parenthood is the realisation that as far as your child is concerned your life before their arrival is a matter of little consequence or even supreme indifference. The more curious children do of course want to learn more in time to fit the puzzle of their existence together. But as their parent you don't get to see that puzzle and therefore the possibility that their sense of a person, so vivid and real to you, is in fact wildly inaccurate or misapprehended.

Unless someone is really obtuse and dull it seems to me to be a near universal desire for people to try and understand who they are and where they came from, by which I don't mean from Milton Keynes but the nature rather than nurture part of themselves.

If you have a difficult relationship with your parents and you did not know theirs it's worth trying to know more about that relationship. But, more importantly, it's worth trying to imagine that relationship. I don't necessarily subscribe to the maxim that to know all is to forgive all but so often, in my experience, with understanding comes at least forbearance. At the very least when we try to imagine the childhood of others we are exercising empathy and sometimes a little empathy can stitch even the greatest rifts.

3rd Child Energy

Unsolicited advice is the worst advice because even when it's good, or for that matter needed, it always carries it with it an air of presumption. Few scenarios more vexingly attract unsolicited advice than matters parental. That must be especially so for first time parents who, for a particular type of person, seem eternal victims of a desire to show off expertise and proficiency.

I long ago learnt to confine my observations to those expecting their firstborn to expressions of reassurance that they will almost certainly discover what works best for them and their baby. But if there was one thing I could wish for all fresher parents then that would be 3rd child energy.

I should make clear here that I'm a parent of two and therefore I know not of what I write from personal experience. However, I have enough friends with 3 to see that the one thing no parent of 3 ever has is time. No time for doubt, no time for reflection, no time for self-reproach.

In a family of 5 the newest arrival's basic needs must of course be met but there is distraction and obligation at every turn. It's often said that children compete for their parents' attention but it's less often remarked that is perhaps a good thing and, maybe, a better thing yet they don't have it all the time.

By all means babies should be doted upon and it goes without saying they should be loved but I'm not convinced it does babies any good for them to be obsessed over. I don't think it does parents any good to do the obsessing either. It is natural for first time parents to get obsessional over their firstborn's wellbeing because caring for a baby is, at the beginning, an intimidating prospect and the vulnerability of babies feels a lot like frailty. But most babies if they're fed, rested and stimulated are actually pretty robust.

They're also remarkable emotional barometers and if they perceive a busy, active family around them they fall into its routines and rhythms. On the other hand if they sense only overwrought, anxious and stressed parents for company it is perhaps not surprising if they start mirroring those emotions.

The obvious difficulty with 3rd child energy, which I acknowledge, is how a first timer is supposed to tap into it. It's rather like taking a first time skier up to a Black run and suggesting that they adopt some Tomba energy or taking a beginner driver onto the M1 and recommending a Hamilton vibe.

The problem with experience is that it is only achieved by experience. That does not mean we don't have our imaginations or that we shouldn't use them. So if I was asked for advice by an expectant mother or father I would ask them to imagine that this was their 3rd born and not their 1st and see what effect that has on their outlook and attitude. As adults we already know how to crawl, walk and run so perhaps it's just a question of mentality whether we take faltering first steps as parents or break immediately into a confident trot.

The worst question

On Saturday recently the 7yo’s team went down 1-0 to Primrose Hill he having presciently warned me to ‘never underestimate Primrose’. Over a consolatory pizza he completely sideswiped me with a question that left me quite literally speechless. I had complacently assumed I was the kind of parent that could take any kiddie q in my stride but this was an absolute pearler. Out of absolutely nowhere: 

“Dad, what is the worst thing you have ever done?” 

I sat gulping at him like a goldfish while he nonchalantly reached for another slice of pizza. When you’re in the questions business you know you’ve asked a ripper when the witness responds with stunned silence. So bold and effective was this enquiry that I have considered incorporating it into my standard cross-examination routine. I was half minded to say why don’t we talk about babies come from instead? 

My brain went into frantic overdrive as I snatched in vain for any answer that would fill the unforgiving silence that was growing between us. Just as I was about to equivocate with the classic diversion of asking a question of my own he followed up: 

“I know already, you once tried a cigarette didn’t you.” 

Immediately I seized on this: “You got me kiddo, guilty as charged!” I said with relief that I hadn’t volunteered a single one of the possible answers I was going to give. Mercifully he did not follow up with asking what the second worst thing I had ever done was. Nor, slightly less reassuringly, did he elaborate on why he had selected this particular line of enquiry. The conversation moved quickly on but the effect of the question did not. 

My initial intention had been to ask him to define the terms of his question. By worst did he mean most embarrassing, most foolish, most unkind? Or were we in 7 Deadly Sins territory: most prideful, greediest, wrathful, envious, lustful, gluttonous or idle? When he’s a bit older, perhaps 47 for example, I might follow up my curiosity with him. Absurdly my chief anxiety was that my answer was going to disappoint him. Like most people I would not want every moment of my life broadcast on the Piccadilly Circus billboards but all told, so far at least, my history is a bit thin when it comes to iniquity and perdition. 

There’s something a bit bombastic about superlatives but I do think the youngster may have been onto something. Try asking your parent of what achievement they are most proud, (instant disqualification if the answer is birthing or rearing you). If they’ve won an Oscar or a Nobel prize their answer might be rather predictable but in most cases, I suspect, there would be more than a surprise or two. 

Likewise, eliciting from your parent which was their most shaming moment may not be your most endearing moment but it’s an enquiry of challenge and an opportunity, therefore, for some truth telling and seeing your parent as a human first and parent second.

Breath is Life

One among many of the responsibilities of a barrister at court is putting witnesses at their ease so that they feel able to give their best evidence. This applies whether that witness is the defendant, the complainant, an eyewitness or even a police officer. If I can tell that a witness is or is likely to become nervous I will often remind them to keep breathing. This may seem patronising advice but it is extremely common for witnesses overcome by nerves to start breathing in a shallow way up at the top of their lungs and in their throat. This has a negative effect on voice projection which can make them inaudible and it is the opposite of the sort of deep and controlled breathing that helps dissipate the anxiety brought on when the brain is not being well oxygenated.

Breath is life seems the sort of platitude that it's easy to dismiss as a vapid athleisurewear slogan. It also happens that it's true and conscious breathing is a sure path to a better life. I have found that in times of acute stress I sometimes, without realising, actually hold my breath. This is not healthy for a number of reasons not least of all proper functioning of the heart.

Another statement of the obvious is that exercise is good for you and one form of exercise, yoga, is particularly good for you. Again it's obvious because it's true. But to the uninitiated and the untrained yoga can seem intimidating or alienating, with poses only harder to say than they are to perform. The key thing to remember and understand though is that yoga, like breathing, is not a competition.

What yoga does do is make you conscious of your breath so that your breathing serves you in movement and stillness. What quickly becomes apparent is how much easier movement is when working with the breath rather than against it or oblivious to it. But conscious breathing doesn't just improve the functioning of the body it helps settle the mind and level mood.

Thus comes my parenting point. Because if parenting is about anything it's about moods. Your own and that of your children. Many of the emotions of parenting are welcome but some are not and the black box emotion is anger. I call it that because it's easy to believe that anger is an emotion that parents need to keep locked in a black box. That belief stems from the fear of what displays of anger can do to damage a child.

But we cannot pretend anger away however much we might like to believe that it's an emotion that can be suppressed with sufficient self-control. Some parents, regrettably, have no self-control at all and the criminal courts all too often bear witness to the terrible harms that can be done to children when their parents succumb to a rage that is unchecked.

Anger is natural, you will feel it, perhaps all too often as a parent. The question is what you do with the emotion. If you pretend it is not there a time will come when it will insist upon you acknowledging that it is. That time will not be convenient nor will it be pretty, in fact it may be actively unsafe.

Anger can be channeled into physical endeavour like running or chopping wood. You can literally exhaust the anger by exhausting yourself. However there is a way of causing anger to dissipate like the morning mist on a hot day and that is through breathing and the best breathing comes with yoga. And while we are alive it is very important that we keep breathing.

Fathering fit

People talk about being fighting fit but other than an absolutely feeble scuffle in my teens that makes Grant v Firth in Bridget Jones’ Diary look like the Rumble in the Jungle I’ve never had to consult the Queensberry Rules, or a martial code of any description. It may be that I’ve seen more than my fair share of people that raise their fists in anger but my perception is that fighting is going out of fashion. When I was a baby barrister my diary was chock-a-block with pub punch ups; nowadays my staple diet is far seedier and I sometimes long for a good honest split lip and black eye. 

So whatever men are getting fit for now it’s not for having it out in the garden of the Dog & Duck. My sense is it’s wellbeing and the dismal pursuit of a physique to match Andrew Tate’s. If only men would learn that the dad bod has achieved iconic status for a reason. Contrary to popular male belief not all women swoon at the sight of ripped torsos, bulging biceps and rock hard calves. 

This is because most women are familiar with an immutable truth which is that any man that has achieved physical perfection comes with at least one and sometimes all three of the following fatal character flaws: i. Irredeemable dullness 

ii. Incurable narcissism 

iii. Insatiable appetite 

Most people of perception realise these are in fact all sides of the same triangle. Thor might have a surprisingly good sense of humour, really care about other people and be a one woman man. He’s also not real. 

Which brings me to my actual point which is that the most important thing I’ve got fit for is fathering. To say it has been belated achievement is an understatement. One of the many cruelties that early parenthood inflicts new on parents is that it annihilates physical fitness. If you have got time to keep fit with a new baby in the house that’s because somebody else is caring for the new baby in the house. For the rest, watch as the hours of sleep you lose at night transmute by some hideous alchemy into inches added to your waist. 

There are a number of things I regret about not having my first kid at 20. Chief is the fact that my eldest would now be 23 and, ostensibly at least, standing on his own two feet. But hot on its heels is the vigour I have squandered. Nothing serves to remind one that age is absolutely not just a number than having a kickabout with a gaggle of under 10s. Young boys benefit from young dads and in the absence of youth they need energy. 

There’s a lot of advice one can give parents of sons but the best advice is that they need a hell of a lot of running, like dogs. It’s not by chance that boys boarding schools lay on 2 hours of sport a day, an unexercised boy will exercise your patience and needle your nerves like nobody’s business. 

The problem with exercise, in case you hadn’t noticed, is that it’s boring, unpleasant and time consuming. At least that is until you find your thing. Just as there is a person for everyone I truly believe that there is an exercise for everyone. Being picked last for football at school is a sure-fire way of dissuading many from realising that curling, scuba diving, samba dancing or speed walking are in fact their thing. 

I’ve ridden a bicycle since university. Not for fitness but for transport. Consequently, when Spin broke free from Manhattan fitness studios to end up in London basements I thought what a mug’s game to pay through the nose to ride a bike that doesn’t go anywhere. 

Well, let me tell you I am the mug because spin is amazing. You know when you’ve found your thing when exercise doesn’t feel like work it feels like enjoyment. Turns out the dark, some disco, and flashing lights is all I needed to put the brakes on mid-life collapse. Having trudged my way around the Hackney Half Marathon last year I’ve realised that solitary exercise is not for me. There is something about collective non-competitive exercise that provides a jolt of fellow feeling to go with your fitness kick. 

If you’re having your first child don’t forget to get fit for fathering and remember it’s a marathon not a sprint.