Dad You Suck: And other things my children tell me. Tim Dowling

my wife’s life purpose to drain my self-esteem at every opportunity. Instantly, I feel lighter. My shoulders drop back, as if I were spreading invisible wings. My wife seems to notice the change. She is staring at me intently.

      ‘Your hair’s looking a bit thin at the front,’ she says. She turns to the boy. ‘Your father is losing his hair, I’m afraid.’

      ‘I’m married,’ I say. ‘I no longer need hair.’

      ‘He has to say that because he’s going bald.’

      ‘She’s just trying to flatten my self-esteem,’ I tell the boy. ‘She can’t help it. It’s her life’s purpose.’

      ‘She’s like a self-esteem roller,’ he says.

      ‘That’s very good,’ I say. ‘I can use that.’

      My wife glares at both of us.

      ‘No, you cannot use it,’ she says. ‘I’m not allowing it. You cannot write that I am like a self-esteem roller.’

      ‘Yes I can,’ I say. ‘I can use it if I want.’ I look at the boy. ‘Can’t I?’ He thinks for a minute.

      ‘Five pounds,’ he says finally.

      ‘Done,’ I say.

      People occasionally ask me if I find writing about my children in a weekly newspaper column ethically challenging. The truth is, I never really thought about it until people started asking, and by then it was too late to stop. I had never intended to write about my children – the column was always meant to be about me – but I soon found that it was almost impossible to keep them out of the narrative, because they talk all the time. They interject, they interrupt, they ask impertinent and largely irrelevant questions, and they repeat stupid things I’ve said in what they think is an amusing approximation of my voice.

      A domestic scene from which all childish input has been artificially excised, for reasons of privacy or ethics or being a good father or whatever, immediately loses its claim to veracity. Consider this brief dialogue between a husband and wife:

      Wife: You’re having supper with your family. Are you ever going to say anything?

      Husband: No. Can someone pass the salad?

      Wife: Oh my God. I can’t live like this.

      All very kitchen sink, but I think you’ll agree something is missing. Now read it again, with the omitted dialogue restored:

      Wife: You’re at supper with your family. Are you ever going to say anything?

      Youngest child: Can I get down?

      Husband: No. Can someone pass the salad?

      Middle child: You’re the salad.

      Wife: Oh my God. I can’t live like this.

      As the above scene illustrates, the real problem with writing about children is not a question of privacy, but one of passivity. The writer is meant to be a neutral observer of existence, a position not exactly compatible with fatherhood, which is generally considered a more hands-on business. My wife thinks I should do more about my children’s mealtime behaviour than find it column-worthy.

      I accept that writing about children has its grey areas. Perhaps, in assuming the role of narrator, I am altering my relationship with my sons in ways I don’t understand. It’s conceivable that by writing about my family I am experiencing fatherhood at one remove, like someone who films his life on his phone. It could be that instead of prioritizing my children’s happiness, I am simply prioritizing my version of events.

      Like anyone else, children have a right to ownership of their lives and may object to being traduced in print on a weekly basis, although in my experience it’s rarely a problem that £5 won’t fix. By a longstanding tradition begun on that evening when my wife came home from her bookshop, that is the fee payable to my children when I quote them directly, although it is their obligation to spot the quotation and claim the money. Since this would require them to read my column on a regular basis, it means that in practice I hardly ever have to shell out.

      For me the hardest task of fatherhood was always the oppressive obligation to lead by example. Nothing worries me more than the possibility that my sons are using me as some kind of role model. As it is they’ve been present on countless occasions when I have, as we say in my homeland, completely lost my shit. During these stressful moments I have often wished to turn to them as a judge might to a jury and say, ‘Please strike the next few minutes from the record’, but then, within the week, I will have committed my less than exemplary behaviour to print. Indeed, many of those instances are chronicled in the pages ahead. It’s not because I’m any less ashamed now; it’s because if I left them out there wouldn’t be enough for a book.

      Perhaps this is my life’s true purpose: maybe I’m here to teach my sons that self-esteem comes and goes – it can get rolled right out of you at short notice – but that you still can get by in life without any, as long as you don’t want to be a contestant on The Apprentice. That, at least, is my experience. And for what it’s worth, my example.

      TD

       CHAPTER ONE

      Whenever I hear the term ‘co-parenting’, I think back to those long-ago early mornings when my wife and I would try to lever each other off the edge of the bed, in the tacit understanding that the first person to hit the floor would be obliged to go and tend a crying infant. You couldn’t call it teamwork, exactly, but since we were both equally determined not to be the one to get up, it was broadly fair. Later I came to realize that the only real help one parent can give another is an offer to take the child – or the children – a considerable distance away for an agreed period of time.

      ‘Have fun,’ my wife would say, shutting the door on us. ‘Don’t come back early.’

      I should really use a separate word to signify the kind of parenting I do when my wife isn’t around to share in the joy of it. For lack of a better term, let’s call it ‘fathering’. These intervals tend to differ in tone and style from co-parenting, and often end with me listing things we needn’t tell Mum about. I don’t mean for it to undermine the parenting best practice we’ve agreed upon as a couple, but I won’t pretend that fathering isn’t characterized by a certain drift from established methods. I just do whatever works, even after it stops working.

      On a typical Saturday I find myself at a loose end in London with my three children and my friend Mark, who is visiting from America. My wife, meanwhile, is working in her bookshop all day. We have already dropped by for a visit, and we have already been asked to leave. I’ve made no further plans.

      Our options are subsequently curtailed by rain. The children are hungry. Hungry children can be cranky and short-tempered, but in my experience they are also listless and biddable, and this is how I like it. If you keep promising them food, they will keep walking. They might complain, but they lack the energy for real rebellion. So I am strolling through the pouring rain with three slope-shouldered boys moaning and dragging their heels behind me. This, I think, is about as good as it gets.

      Eventually, when I feel we’ve used up enough afternoon, we stop at a noodle bar for a late lunch. The children spot iced tea on the menu. To them, iced tea is an exotic American treat, like powdered pink lemonade or bubblegum-flavoured jellybeans. To me, an American, it is tea with some ice in it that costs £4, but I find myself in the mood to reward their patience. The food arrives, spirits lift and we all chat volubly. A strange sense of fatherly competence begins to steal over me. Only later in life will I come to recognize this feeling as a bad omen.

      There is a lull after the plates have been cleared when the waiter seems to forget all about us. I’m trying to carry on a conversation with Mark, but the younger two, their blood sugar levels restored, have begun to poke each other with chopsticks as part of a game that is rapidly getting out of hand. I threaten to separate them.