What are
your kids to you?
By Michael
Casey
My small
daughter always gives me a hug and a kiss before she goes to bed. She’s 11 now,
her bigger sister just blows a kiss to me, she’s 13, so too gig to give hugs, but
I treasure this kisses. My small daughter has also taken up the anthem we had
when I was a child 45 years ago, when I was her age. “Nighty, nighty” she recites and waits for me
to reply “Pyjamas, pyjamas.” It’s very simple and silly, but now it will be passed down the
generations.
It would
have been my dad’s Birthday today, 11th November, so I smile and
thing back and think forward. At the end of this century my daughter’s
grandchildren will be saying “Nighty, nighty” and waiting for “Pyjamas,
pyjamas.” We have Chinese and Irish blood in the family now, what more will be added to the mix only time will
tell.
We were
watching the show on tv about compulsive cleaners and how they are matched with
the really really dirty hoarders. Tonight they cleared a children’s bedroom, it
made us smile. If they had a Chinese mum they would never ever get away with
having a tip for a bedroom. Bad habits have to be broken and in fact they
should never be allowed to begin.
I was
talking to my small daughter about her reading and did the other kids at school
read as much as her. She is part bookworm. They don’t have the time was her
reply, too much Xbox and computer stuff, no time for reading. Parents have to
switch these toys off and even switch the family tv off, and make their kids
read. My small daughter reads 100pages a day in the main. Which is a lot, even
if you consider the fact that children’s books have less words per page than a
regular book. So if she can do it, why can’t every parent do the same?
Making hot
chocolate for my girls, which has to be made in the correct mugs, the cat with
the mouse on its head is my small daughter’s mug, the princess mug for my other
princess. Simple little things while they are doing homework or just reading,
dad keeps them watered while they are studying.
Kids need
things, like school shoes or school blouses or just “things” so as a dad you
have to go online to seek out what they need, and what their hearts’ desire.
Then you say it’s a race to see if this will arrive before that. Online
shopping is easy, you end up knowing all the couriers. We have a mum courier
who fits in her work between the school-runs, she works for all the couriers.
When this or
that arrives your daughters will give you a hug, she has got what she needs, or
a bit of extra treasure. Kids also make noise, but the alternative would be a
quiet house, kids are a heartbeat to a home, just as a grandfather clock is.
At the moment one daughter is learning all about
the heart, coinciding with me suddenly and unexpectedly getting a bit of
angina. The bigger daughter is thinking about GCSE choices, she has a Science
brain like her cousin, my generation had Arts brains, so I cannot really help
her on these subjects. And where did the science come from? Well grannie was
the bus company accountant in Shanghai, and my wife has a bio-chemistry degree.
As for my
small daughter, she just loves David Attenborough, and wants to be an animal
biologist whatever that it. She just adores his voice, and Barry White’s voice
too. So this is a snapshot of what my kids are like, I just hope I am ½ as good
a dad as my dad was to me, Happy Birthday dad.
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