Colm O'Regan: Why I love horsing around with my kids

Colm O'Regan: Homemade horseplay is still the best though, and it won’t last. Picture: Chani Anderson

Horseplay — frequently a negative word. Used by the defence in a court case to get some lunatic off. Used by the judge to justify the ludicrously short sentence.

However, there’s also nice horseplay. It’s a fleeting time. It’s where you are wrestling your children and gently throwing them around the furniture.

“Daddy daddy, wrestling!!” they’ll shout if I make the mistake of playfully pushing one of them. I protest, I have chores to do, but it’s too late. There’s no persuading them you’ve better things to be doing when it’s just emptying the dishwasher. So feckit gwan. I’m the dragon, you’re the knights trying to kill me. Let’s get ready to rumble.

I’d do it anyway because of the mental health benefits of generally rolling around your own floor. I know nothing about anything but I have a hunch that adult humans have a deep-seated need to act the silly goose regularly.

It turns out to be good for the children as well. It apparently improves cognitive development by enhancing working memory. It makes sense.

You’ll never forget your daddy dangling you from the back of the sofa.

There’s all the fine motor skills that get developed as well of course. and you get to throw the phrase “fine motor skills” around in wedding-afters conversation as well.

From an emotional point of view, the children learn empathy as they watch in real time their father’s physical decline and can, off their own bat, decide to go easy on me.

There’s the bonding obviously as long as there are no broken bones — which I find can fracture some connections. And of course we’re off the screens. So far, I mean. Like, if it turns out that there’s an opportunity to set up an Instagram ‘best roughhouse dad ever’ and monetise it… well I wouldn’t rule it out. With the children’s say-so of course, but I already have them in a headlock so I think they’ll say yes. I’m joking! It’s a suplex.

Colm O'Regan. Picture: Moya Nolan

They seem to get real joy out of it. They’re still at the age where I can lift them and sort of throw them onto the sofa and the squeals of delight are a great antidote to when you’re being the most annoying parent ever. You know those low points when you hear the words out of your mouth as you give out to them and you think: “When did I turn into such a dweeb?”

It’s funny. I don’t know what’s going on physiologically but there’s a particular type of laugh that happens when a small child is bouncing up and down on top of you. Maybe it’s involuntary as you have less air to breathe, but wheezy giggles are the best giggles.

They caught a glimpse of WWE recently and were enraptured. People just biffing each other and doing somersaults. They looked at me as if to say: “This was available all along. Why have you kept it from us.”

It just wasn’t in my wheelhouse.

My memories of it are more recent. Sky 1 on a Saturday morning in the early 2000s. Hungover watching the tail-end of the ‘Attitude’ era. Struggling to make sense of the plot.

Maybe I should let them watch more. It’s clearly the route to high office in America. Wrestling promoter Linda McMahon is now the US secretary of education and that doesn’t even make the top five of his insane appointments.

Homemade horseplay is still the best though, and it won’t last. There’ll be another WWE era but there will come a time when horseplay on the couch won’t happen. They’ll grow out of it.

I’ll miss it. So all I can do is stay wrestle-able for the next generation. Ready to get back on the horse.