What are your kids to you?

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, 11^th 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.