I’m not entirely sure when it happened but at some point all three of my kids, from the 9 year old to the 4 year old, have learnt how to drive an insanely hard bargain. It’s now next to impossible to ensure that the eldest actually puts his socks on when he gets dressed without entering into some sort of prolonged and tortuous negotiation process.

Of all the three, he is definitely the hardest to deal with in this respect. For example, a trip to the dentist saw all 3 children rewarded with a small Beanie Boo soft toy for not throwing a tantrum. His starting point was the LEGO Star Wars Death Star, a retired set, that goes for £400 on ebay at the moment, and he wasn’t happy when I told him that having his teeth checked over didn’t warrant that sort of investment.

Currently we have sporadic wheedling over the Deadpool movie. My view on 15 certificate movies is much like my view on 15 & 18 certificate videogames, and that’s an outright no. Further though, there are a broad range across certifications, so there are 12s that are closer to the PG end of the rating and there are 12s that you scratch your head in puzzlement as to why they didn’t get an 15 rating. View Full Post

Iron Maiden’s The Trooper

When the boy got 93% on his first drumming exam I was surprised to say the least. He refused to practice for almost a month before the actual exam, froze in the practice room before the exam itself, and didn’t say a word for an hour and a half afterwards. We spent the 3 weeks between the exam and the results arriving on our doormat prepping him for failure, telling him that we were proud of him for even doing it (we never thought he’d manage to go to an unfamiliar exam centre and follow an unfamiliar examiner) but we were blown away. 20/20 on two of the three composition pieces, 18/20 on the third, 6/10 on the listening test, and one other mark dropped in the rest, it was nothing short of incredible and his teacher was blown away too. View Full Post

I watched everyone posting their back to school photos the other week with interest but didn’t get involved myself. For me back to school isn’t/wasn’t a landmark event. Yes, obviously my kids are a year older than they were when they started a new school year 12 months ago, and the creep towards finishing primary school has begun for our eldest as he enters year 5 (Junior 3 in old money) but for me Thursday 15 September 2016, is the really important landmark date. View Full Post

Choosing which charities you support is often daunting, in recent years we’ve involved the children to help choose which charities will benefit from what little we can afford to donate. Nacoa aren’t a large or glamorous charity, they don’t benefit from a dedicated PR team that can do blogger outreach but Nacoa do very important work and they’re a charity I’m happy to support. View Full Post

A photo posted by Alex Walsh (@daddacool) on Sep 4, 2016 at 11:19am PDT

I think I’ve always known our eldest would be cool. I’m most definitely not cool and have never pretended to be. My younger brother was cool and hung out with some of the cooler kids in his year at school. I remember I used to always have to put up with one lippy kid called Kieron coming up to be and getting really in my face and saying things like, “Alright Ben Walsh’s brother? How are you Ben Walsh’s brother?” with a big smirk on his face. The best I could manage in response to that was a “Ha, good one.” as I turned bright red and slunk off.

Both our lads seem to have an excess of cool. Ned likes to stand in front of the mirror posing, and looking at his essence of 4 years old cool t-shirts he’s made us buy him, and the oldest is similarly fashion conscious- the haircut recently inflicted upon him is still a point of distress almost half a week on!

So what’s my place in all of this then? I need to find a way to not be the embarrassing dad that makes the kids toes curl up in shame every time I so much as appear. My selection of final clearance £4.99 Marvel Superhero t-shirts from Uni-Glo help, as does my general love of Star Wars but long term I’m going to need to work on this some.

Perhaps there is an online course I could take in putting the cool back into Daddacool. Maybe it’s a course I should write, based on a yet to happen life experience. Who knows but the clock is ticking and I need to figure it out before I’m made to wear a sack of shame when I go out with the kids.

I’m not entirely sure where the concept of the secret cuddle originated. It was probably with Ned. It’s the sort of thing that his 4 year old mind would come up with. And it’s made things tricky.

But let’s rewind things a tad and deal with the paradoxical concept of a “secret” cuddle. Basically it involves snuggling up on my lap for a nice cuddle and shouting as loudly as you can “Me and Daddy are having a secret cuddle!!!”, complete with the multiple exclamation marks (they’re important you see). This usually brings at least one other child running and causes what might be considered a fracas in true Top Gear style- punches are often thrown.

The secret cuddle itself stems from a bit of child oneupmanship (is that one word or three or even four? I can’t be bothered to check). They all like to have a bit of attention but after a while that’s not enough and they have to have the attention at the expense of someone else. Any of my kids could theoretically turn out to be a modern day Conan the Barbarian, who when asked what was best in life, replied, “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!” They all seem to have that ruthless streak in them…

I was emailed about an exciting new campaign to celebrate young dads from under privileged backgrounds recently. For various reasons, mostly focused around i) me being useless and ii) rather a lot of actual work, I’ve sat on it longer than I should have. Working on the principle of “better late than never”, here we are.

The Family and Childcare Trust has a group called the Young Dad’s Collective who look to address the challenges facing young dads.

The Young Dads Collective (YDC) is launching the campaign #52DaysofDad to raise awareness of young dads, aged 25 and under, who are among the most isolated and economically deprived parenting groups in the UK.

The campaign will bring together high profile bloggers, personalities and supporter organisations to make dads visible and celebrate dads who love spending quality time with their children.

YDC will release 52 exciting free and fun activities to do with children, one for every week of the year. There will be prizes for those families who take part in a number of activities.

About the YDC

The Young Dads Collective (YDC) is an award-winning program that works to reduce the levels of isolation and poverty experienced by young fathers and at the same time develop their employability skills.

Research shows that young dads are amongst the most isolated and economically deprived parenting groups in the UK. Many come from disadvantaged backgrounds and are more likely to have been excluded from school, brought up in care or lived in poverty.

YDC works with young dads aged 25 and under recruiting, training and supporting them to be agents of change. As experts by experience, their team works to highlights the issues of a community often regarded as ‘hard to reach’. The YDC aims to affect change and raise awareness of the specific challenges that young dads face.

If you’re interested and would like to know more, you can follow the campaign here:

• Twitter: @YoungDadsCo @FamChildTrust
• Hashtag: #52DaysofDad
• Facebook: Young Dads Collective
• Instagram: YoungDadsCo

I have long been know to use unorthodox methods for dealing with my three children. Unorthodox but entirely legal and safe, I should add.

No, I’m not suggesting any parenting from the Cersei Lannister school of mothering, The Caitlin Stark approach or indeed pretty much anything from Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire.

No, I’m going relatively old school with the bits of epic fantasy I’m gleaning my parenting skills from.

Since I’m 41 now, a lot of the epic fantasy I read in the 80’s was written before the current obsession with gritty violence. The movement itself has been coined Grimdark, and contains a fairly diverse bunch of authors, from Game of Thrones author Martin, to guys like Joe Abercrombie, who wrote the brilliant First Law novels (but does come across as a bit needy on social media).

So without further ado, I’m going to plunge into the epic fantasy of my youth for some parenting tips. I make no apology for the twee nature of some of the books mentioned, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as a reading list! View Full Post