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.