Learner Dad: I love it when people comment on my kids' ability to grow

A growing child is a strange thing – turn your back on them for a few minutes and suddenly it looks like they are on stilts

Picture: iStock 

‘Is that Patrick? God, isn’t he after getting very tall.’

I heard of a lot of that as a teenager, back before I changed my name from Patrick to Pat because any time I’d introduce myself as Patrick Fitzpatrick when I moved to Dublin for work, people would just burst out laughing into my face. (I don’t blame them – my comedy name is all on my parents. I still bring it up with my mother.)