Cool, not cool, and the perils when kids become Tweenagers - This Week's ReadItTorial

Our family car conversations are sometimes a bit esoteric, or just downright weird but on the way back home from a small break in Cornwall both my wife and I had a lot of examples of what happens when kids pass through that weird transitory period between being kids, to being "Tweenagers" - not quite the mobile-phone-staring-fashion-makeup-sleep-in-till-1PM Teenager, but a strange pseudo-version of that (11 seems to be the sweet spot for this but many parents say their 9 and 10 year olds are going through the same).

Having spent the weekend with our niece and nephew (who are both tinies, and still at the stage where they'll see a ladybird and be utterly transfixed by how amazing it is) going back home in the car there was one small glimmer of hope from C.

I can't quite remember what the conversation was originally about, but it transpired that she would be happy to be me for one reason and one reason only. "You can draw good, Daddy!"

See, I make no bones about this. I am not a brilliant artist, I'm not even a fair-to-middling one and I have a very narrow set of artistic skills and an even narrower set of subjects I like to sketch or paint. But to have that one tiny glimmer for a moment that my kid thought I was cool because I could do something they think no other dads can, that was worth hanging on to.

In other news, it's mobile phone time. We've tried to stave off this moment for as long as possible, and we're still being a bit stubborn and grumpy about internet / wifi access but C now has her first mobile - and with it I'm bracing myself for entertaining two non-communicative ladies in the house in a typical evening (as her mum, despite her protests, spends an inordinate amount of time on her phone in any given evening). I usually retreat to my room to cuddle a games controller or an art tablet when my efforts to try and get us all doing something as a family ultimately fail, but I wish this wasn't a symptom of owning a new communications device - basically everyone not communicating!

C usually doesn't take a telling from me on any given subject. Mum is the authority, we both know she wears the trousers and it's her way or the highway so I'm hoping that'll hold out for a bit longer at least.

Back to the original topic though - the last amusing anecdote is one about "Silly Daddy vs Serious Daddy". For a long while I've been telling C that I should probably be a lot more like the other dads of kids in her school. Most of them are quite sombre chaps. Possibly very career driven. Possibly don't have much in the way of hobbies or interests, perhaps spending their evenings shuffling paperwork for their businesses, or perhaps gluing themselves to whatever sport is on the telly. None of them would dream of turning up for school pickup wearing a Ghibli T Shirt (suit, or at the very least a shirt and tie and 'proper' trousers - not jeans), and you'd certainly never see any of them diving onto the swings at a playpark, or telling the most terrible jokes (and laughing at them loudly themselves).

So I gave her the choice. Should I grow up a bit and become serious daddy? Or continue on my merry brainless way being 'silly' daddy? The vote was unanimously for the latter!