Learner Dad: My son and his friend showed generosity and empathy at Funderland

Picture: iStock 

We went to Funderland the other night.

It was like being sober in a nightclub. The minute I walked in the gate with my kids, I wished I’d had a drink. The clamour and music and lights are exciting for people aged five to 21, but anything over that and you’re the grumpy father looking for his teenage daughter in a GAA club disco.

I got used to it after a while, and then everyone had a ball. I went off with my son and his best friend, while my wife and daughter went off with her bestie and other friends from their old school.

You can learn a lot about kids in an amusement park.

The main thing I learned is that boys can be very sweet to each other, at least when they’re aged seven. My son’s best friend is the adventurous guy in their little twosome – my son warned me not to get in a fight with him because I would lose. True to form, the adventurous guy walked in the gate and straight into The Sizzler, a hectic spinner of a ride that attempts to answer the question, what would it be like to get inside a tumble drier? My son looked on in awe, amazed that anyone would go on The Sizzler, let alone a little guy aged seven.

His best friend came off and said he had a bit of a sore back after it but would like to try something scarier. This was tricky now because my son looked like the edgiest thing he was up for was a sedate little roller-coaster called The Caterpillar. I was about to suggest we find a middle-ground when his friend read the room and asked my guy what would he like to do.

Gambling, it turns out. We spent the next 30 minutes at Knock the Cans, Whack A Mole, and stuff like that, games which look easy but aren’t, playing on men’s tendency to over-estimate how good we are at hitting stuff. The boys had great fun and got little prizes whether they won or not. (A word here for the people in charge of the games – they were really sound and kind to us all night.)

Anyway, we ended up at a game called Roller Ball, which involves a horse race and rolling balls into holes, I’d recommend it. My son’s best friend won the first race and decided he’d like a snake. The two boys decided on a re-match for the last game of the night. My son’s best friend won again. 

I could see my little guy was hurting a little. And so could his friend, who read the room again and turned around to ask my son what prize he’d like. 

Maybe things were different when I was growing up, but I don’t remember that kind of generosity and empathy between boys. Back then, if you won, you won, and you walked home with the prize. Handing it over to a friend was a sign of weakness.

But most men have an incredible capacity for being sound. And I think something has changed in the way we’re rearing kids that allows men to express this without fear of being called a sissy. I think this is filtering through to older men too.

I caught up with one of my own best friends on Zoom this morning - he’s living in Australia now. We would have torn strips off each other for years, the way men do. But we clearly care about each other too, maybe even enough to share a prize in an amusement park.