Guilt Without Regret

As I’ve learned over the last couple of years, parenting is full of self-doubt and guilt. We do things the way we feel is right but that doesn’t stop you questioning yourself and wondering if it really was the correct way of going about something. We feel guilty about things we do ‘for their own good’. So, in an attempt to combat this here are some things which I have done, but I am not sorry for doing, even if I do feel guilty about doing some of them. I am not sorry that after you took over an hour

Favourites

Is it just my children that don’t really have favourite things? They have ‘transient’ favourites certainly, where the thing they’re playing with at the time is their ‘favourite toy’ if asked, but generally they have never had that one thing that they gravitate back to, or can’t live without. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is a massive problem. I’ve seen parents of children who are too attached to a blankee or particular toy with panic in their eyes as their little one is having a minor meltdown because 5 minutes ago they dropped it on the floor

Review: Snow Tales by Michael Morpurgo

A slight break from my normal post style again. My Eldest son got this book for his birthday. It is aimed at children slightly older than he is, but he has such an appetite for reading and books that we went with it to see how he got on. This review has two sections, one from my perspective, one from my son’s perspective (based on my observations). The Parents’ Perspective I loved reading this book out loud to my son, it has two stories in it “Rainbow Bear” and “Little Albatross”. It is written in such a way that ‘performing’ it

Getting the Meek to Talk

When my Eldest came to us, he wasn’t the most talkative of people. He was fairly happy to just fade into the background and watch the comings and goings of the house. He was at his most talkative when we were in the car and he spotted lorries, bridges, cars, vans, ambulances, etc etc etc and liked to point them out along with their colour. At home was another story. He was very meek and quiet. He would talk to us, he certainly wasn’t shy, but rarely exerted any will (other than the odd foot stomp). One of the books

Calming the Storm

Patience. It isn’t necessarily a quality I would attribute to myself. Not without some internal effort at least. I can sit and stare at a problem on my computer, methodically looking through hundreds of lines of code, attempting to identify a bug and fix it. It can take seconds, minutes, hours, or sometimes days to do that. I can do this where others may not. This is where my patience holds. I do not have patience with people, at least I never thought so, but occasionally I surprise myself. When patience is the last thing on my mind, but is

Out With Dads

Children, especially younger ones, tend to be literal creatures. With little experience of social convention they say things as they see them, whether that may be offensive to someone or not. It usually leads to hilarious moments, followed by a red-faced parent apologising for the socially unacceptable thing your child has just said. Children also have no prejudice until it is implanted into them by external factors, they don’t care about your gender, sexuality, race, or religion. Our children are no different. It is impossible to go out as a family without it being blatantly obvious we are a two-dad

The Christmas Quandary

This year will be our second Christmas with our boys but it’ll be our eldest son’s 4th and our youngest’s 3rd in their lifetimes. I don’t think we really appreciated how big a deal a stable Christmas with the extended family and lots of presents was until last year. It was something both my partner and I have always had, so it is the norm for us, for our children though it was not. It started to hit home a little bit with the lack of excitement from our eldest the night before. I know it was only his 3rd