Andrew Clover - Dad Rules: How My Children Taught Me to Be a Good Parent

FIG TREE
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PENGUIN BOOKS

FIG TREE

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First published 2008
1

Copyright Andrew Clover, 2008
Illustrations copyright Andrew Clover, 2008

Extract on page 279 from The House at Pooh Corner, text by
A. A. Milne, The Trustees of the Pooh Properties. Published by
Egmont UK Ltd London and used with permission

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
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978-0-14-191775-7

Its a Saturday. Im standing in Foyles bookshop, and I find three walls of parenting manuals. Theres one two hundred pages long! called Everything You Need To Know (in the first months of a childs life). Im thinking: Is there that much I should have known? I have, twice, lived through a childs first months. I could boil my experience down to three sentences of advice:

1. Dont be reading two-hundred-page books. Try to sleep.

2. Dont let them suck too long, or mums nips will really hurt.

3. Get out the way when they puke.

I find several glossy volumes, which originated on TV, so they do what TV does best: concentrate on the freaks. I open the first book. It plunges me into a world of chaos and fear. Im smelling the sick stuck to the seatbelt. The next one features photos of Supernanny, whos clearly been styled by a whole team of Style Experts, so she looks strict but sexy like a frisky Mary Poppins, whod wipe your surfaces, then give you a spanking. I want to push Supernanny in a big muddy puddle. The childcare guides are making me feel depressed, and angry, and inadequate. I leave.

I head homewards, and find Liv in the park with the girls. She goes straight off to make lunch. People say kids bring parents together. They do, for about sixty seconds the length of the average handover. At the playground, all the parents seem to have been reading the same books I have. The mums are mainly looking furious. Their body language is screaming: If ANYONE else asks me to do something, I will start screaming, and I wont stop. The dads are worse. They are trying to make phone calls, and are getting tetchy because theyre losing the connection. Or theyre following their kids saying Careful, Molly! with that silly, soppy expression on their faces, like they want to play, but they are embarrassed.

I feel really depressed. Im thinking: Whats the point of life? Whats the point of kids? They shout at night, they drain all your money and then they leave and blame you for everything that goes wrong with their lives.

At this point Cassady arrives. My second daughter. Shes three and a half. Shes wearing blue pants on her head. Shes pulling the rope of this brilliant go-kart weve got. My humming granddad made it fifty years ago out of wooden orange crates and two pram wheels. Cassady says: Daddy, we need to get to our castle. You are a magic horse and you are called Barry the Magic Horse and youve got BIG BLACK HAIRY HOOVES! My daughter is very forceful. Its like dealing with Paul McKenna, disguised as a small girl.

I immediately start to feel quite horsey. The other daughter arrives. Grace. The lanky one. Shes five. She steps gingerly into the go-kart. They both shout, Giddy-up, Daddy! Giddy-up!

I grab that go-kart, and I canter off at some speed. As I leave the playground, I do a neiiiigggggghhh of pleasure. They cheer. I gallop off down the woodland path. Im seized by a moment of horsey pleasure. I leap over a tree trunk, for the sheer joy of it.

Then I realize Im out of breath. I walk. I think: How did those little witches get me to pull them home? I turn and look at them. Theyre doing clip-clop noises and singing that mad song they learned at school, the one where they chant: Brush your teeth with bubblegum! Belly flop in a pizza! They are happy. Children complain that ketchup is touching their peas; they never complain that life is pointless. It occurs to me: life never had any meaning, because its not a maths puzzle that can be solved. The secret of life is to play.

The problem with parenting manuals, I reckon, is that they tell you about the rules you impose on your children: Share, Wash Your Hands, Do Not Post Toast In The DVD Player. This is useful, but it doesnt make you eager about hanging out with your offspring. Which is bad, because kids copy their parents moods, and their outlook on life. So it doesnt really matter what you feed them, or how early you start teaching them French. What matters is that youre actually happy yourself. My parents taught me a lot about how to read; they taught very little about how to be happy. I had to learn it, from my daughters.

So thats what this book is about. I tell you the parenting rules that Ive learned by telling you the stories of how I learned them. I hope youll pick up a few tips. Example: If youre really tired, take your top off, and invite your children to paint your back. Youll feel like youre being massaged by fairies. Ill tell you how weve coped with the big issues: sibling rivalry, choosing a school, getting them to eat something thats not a fish finger. Ill also tell you how Ive coped with the big fears: Will I ever see my friends? Will I turn into my dad? Will we ever have sex again? So I hope youll find that, in its own mad way, this book is curiously complete: it covers almost everything a modern parent might think about.

But, most of all, I hope the book does justice to the two small girls who inspired it. I hope that, like them, its short, playful and shockingly intimate. I hope it makes you laugh. I hope it makes you cry. I hope it sprinkles glittery fairy dust on your life.

Me and Liv on the muddy beach, the day before the incident I mention

July 1999. Were on West Wittering beach. Kites are flying. Dogs are chasing balls. Liv squeezes my hand. Andrew, she says, would you like to have children? I know instantly this is a huge, historic moment. I know I must respond like a man. So I ignore her. Suddenly the wind is blasting sand against my legs. Its overcast. I walk off towards the car. She follows after me, saying: You cant ignore the subject forever, you know. Shes wrong about that. I reckon I can ignore it for two more years at least. The trouble is she keeps bringing it up