The things that make me a good dad
Dr Coleman Noctor pictured with his children from left Odhran, Harry and Layla at their home in Carlow.
Dad ain’t so bad...
When I agreed to write this piece, I did not imagine it would be as difficult as it turned out to be.
Perhaps it is my Irishness, which can often view self-praise as arrogance, but I realised had this been an article concentrating on my negative aspects or parenting struggles it would have been much easier.
I reflected on my role as a father, and on the larger role of dads in contemporary Irish society. We see a lot more fathers pushing buggies and attending parent–teacher meetings etc, more than before. This increase in parental involvement means that many dads have a more integrated role in Irish families.
I have always had an issue of how fathers are portrayed in children’s media. I am openly critical of how fathers like ‘Daddy Pig’ or ‘Homer Simpson’ are often designed as a dithering buffoon who has no parental value and is largely deemed not very good or useful to the running of the family home.
This image bears no resemblance to the role I have with my own children. I am heavily involved in all aspects of promoting value systems, attending parent-teacher meetings, doing the sports runs as well as disciplining and exploring their emotional struggles. Alongside the housework aspects of hoovering, washing clothes, making school lunches and buying my children’s shoes. The roles of both parents in my family is not gender-specific, which is something I am particularly proud of and happy about.
But on a more individual level, I think my parenting strength is my authenticity. I have always tried to convey a messaging that the perfect parent, much like the unicorn, does not exist. It is mythical.
These reactions, within reason, are utterly normal and the parenting message that instructs you to be the softly spoken, emotionless robot who always gets down to the child’s level and gently removes the crayon they have just used to draw all over your newly painted wall and redirect them calmly to a selection of colouring books, is both unrealistic and I think undesirable.
This approach does not communicate to the child that what they have done has upset you and therefore the learning is lost. Alternatively, when these types of things happen we can find ourselves raising our voice, getting a but histrionic and losing our composure. This is often followed by a pang of guilt and shame as we now realise that the intent on the part of the child was not to upset us, it was merely to draw on a white surface.
This is where I come into my own. I will openly address with my children how I got it wrong and how my reaction was not about them, but instead because of a busy week, a sleepless night or just poor judgement. I will help them to see how an apology works, I show them how to make amends and most importantly, I give them examples of how to apologise and to be brave enough to name the errors that we make, and own them.
I already see how this has impacted on my children as they have a good sense of conflict resolution and they always know that I will never criticise them for making mistakes or bad decisions, but I will be much more critical if they do not attempt to make amends for their errors in an authentic way. One of the value systems this has established already in my family is the ‘honesty is the best policy’ approach and ‘nothing is beyond being able to be resolved if we are open and honest with each other’.
This can be evidenced by a joke in our house which my 10-year-old often quotes which is “the two hardest things to say in the world are ‘sorry’ and ‘Worcester Sauce’.
So I hope this value system will stay with them as they grow older and enter adulthood and I would like to think that if it does, that their Dad had some part to play in that being part of who they will become.
Regardless of what inventions invade our children’s lives and minds, even the most sceptical kid loves a story. It's the one good thing I consistently do with them, and I find that it helps them later to explain things that happen to them in their lives. I also throw in a few “big” words and they always ask me to explain them. It's a symbiotic relationship - I love telling stories and they mostly like listening to them.
My seven-year-old Olivia is beginning to critique my yarns and has told me “Mammy said you make up stories for your job”. But regardless of how glued she is to Disney Plus, or Netflix she will bend an ear like an old Soviet satellite in my direction when I start telling our two younger boys a tale of when “I was your age”. Kids love to hear what life was like when you were their age. That's when they will ask the most questions too.
Once as I was in the middle of telling a story about the time I found a dinosaur in the back garden with Grandad (who’s now up in heaven). Tadhg who’s obsessed with all things Mesozoic asked me “was it a Triceratops?” I said, “Yes, Tadhg it was” to which he replied, “But your back garden growing up wouldn’t have been big enough to fit a Triceratops”.
I tailor the stories to what is happening in their lives. At the moment Olivia is loving all things dance and music so I tell her stories about being in a kids' band and putting on gigs. She has started to throw her eyes up to heaven a bit, but an hour later she coolly approaches me and ask “Did you have any number ones, Dad?”
For Tadgh he loves my self-penned “Adventures of Eddie The Underpants”. It's about a bold underpants who keep landing on people's heads. Anything with underpants right now he just thinks is hilarious. Even Sean, who’s only two, copies him when he laughs.
If you have kids that are hard to get to sleep, and believe me ours were and still are at times, here’s a good story idea that worked for me. I used to tell them a story about a big purple slide that appeared out of nowhere in our school when “I was your age”. I would tell them about climbing up to the very top of it and meeting everyone I knew. Then when I would get to the very top, all the kids had to blow themselves down. I would normally get about ten big breaths out of them.
They wouldn’t necessarily nod off straight away but it definitely calmed down their busy brains. The only problem was they used to ask for it every night, and being honest it's hard to tell the same story, word for word, 365 nights a year.
However, repetition makes kids and adults alike comfortable. We all know the one story that does the rounds in our own group of friends and no matter how many times we hear it it makes us laugh. So telling them stories and really putting a bit of effort into them is probably one of the best things I do with my kids. It's such a simple and easy thing to do.
If you feel you're not great at making up stories and you don’t know where to start just begin by saying “When I was your age I found a...” And let your own imagination run wild.
My grandfather had a saying - you have to get out and meet the people. It’s something I use every weekend.
My wife and son are home-birds, they like to chill out around the house, particularly if the weather is looking dodge. My daughter and I are wanderers, we like going somewhere new.
So when I suggest we go to the beach/woods/countryside, it’s two against two. My wife insists we have to stay at home and clean the house. This is a negotiating position, betting that I’ll offer to stay at home as long as we don’t have to clean the house. I’m not having that because we cleaned the house the day before and our neighbours called around to eat their dinner off the floor. So at this point I call on my main parenting talent – I’m good at getting people out of the house.
It’s all down to loading the car without getting caught. If I can get the wetsuits, bodyboards and towels into the boot on the sly, it gives me a super-power in the Battle of the Weekend.
For reasons that I don’t fully understand, my wife caves in if we’re ‘ready to go’. So the minute she gets in the shower, I’m out in the shed, rummaging through the wetsuits, cursing that we didn’t put stuff away properly the last time. All I have to do then is bribe my son with a KitKat, and we’re on the road.
It doesn’t always end well. The weather has landed me in it more than once – it can be an awkward trip back from Inchydoney in the rain. And there are one or two disappointing forest walks in north Cork - a place that looked like the Garden of Eden on the Coillte website can sometimes be a long boring mud road. But it’s worth the risk.
First of all, we’re a happy family in the car. The longer the drive the better, because the kids can’t bug you for treats or screen-time when they’re tied in a seat. Instead they put on a Disney song playlist on Spotify and we sing our way along like that Flanders family from The Simpsons.
Weather permitting we all get out in the fresh air and live a simpler life, whether it’s rummaging in rock pools or doing leaf races in a stream under a bridge. We arrive home and reward ourselves with a take-away and TV. Every one sleeps better and we’re ready to go for another week.
We don’t get out every day. My wife has her share of wins, and the house is tidier and cleaner because of it. But I think bad things happen when we stay in the house too often. Particularly coming after months of lockdown, when we all spent too much time staring at our walls or walking around Tramore Valley Park. I’m sure there are memes mocking it on social media, but there is a lot to be said for an old-school family spin.
Because my grandfather was right – you do have to get out and meet the people.
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