Bringing great shame upon this family
Bringing great shame upon this family
My Haribo habit gets me in trouble again
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Are you teaching your kids? Or are they teaching you?
This one’s coming in hot from the kitchen, late on Saturday night, perched over my laptop with a glass of wine. NOW who’s living?! The kids are asleep in bed. My wife is out having a drink with friends. I am currently debating—as I often will at this time of the evening—if I should treat myself to a piece of chocolate: dark, rich, topped with sea salt flakes. It’s like a reward for getting through another day. Just before I unwrap the foil covering, anticipating the joy and bitterness hitting my mouth, I think of my daughter, and the strange, fascinating habit she’s developed—from where I have no idea—when she gets her hands on sweets of her own.
She’ll stretch that sweet sugar high beyond the measurement of any normal child. A Haribo heart can last for an hour; a Chupa Chup will keep on chuping for almost a day
. I have no doubt she would ace Stanford’s well-worn marshmallow experiment—she’s already internalised its offering, delaying current pleasure for the promise of eventual bliss. Her languid pace at working through a packet of sweets will often be her downfall: more than once she’s forgotten about a half-eaten bag, which I’ve helpfully stored out of the way, and then not-so-helpfully “helped” her finish them.This backfired, big time, last summer, in a moment that sits very high in my league of fatherhood lows. It started in Hamleys in Central London: the world’s oldest toy shop, spread across 7 floors of delights, games and total chaos; employees scattered throughout, aerodynamic gliders thrown that magically return right back, bubble guns with a firing rate that conjures visions of Arnold Schwarzenegger leaning out of a smashed window with a minigun. It’s a must-visit on a trip to central London, and every parent knows it—with hundreds of children running around, overwhelmed with flashing lights, plastic tchotchkes and a burning desire to bring it all home.
I told the kids they could have £10 each to buy something they liked. Bodhi saw a Batman toy and was immediately done—no surprises there. Padme methodically worked her way through the store, picking up anything that crossed the “could purchase” threshold, holding onto it for a floor or two, trading up and down, before settling on some sort of a hybrid between a Rubik’s Snake and a fidget spinner. It was only a fiver, so she was still left with half her money and lacking a suitable target. At least until we arrived on the top floor and encountered their sprawling pick-and-mix section.
Five of the Queen’s English pounds—they were still her pounds last summer—to spend on a pick and mix is nothing to be sniffed at. She bought the shop—gummy snakes, pink and white teeth, jelly babies, cola bottles and flying saucers. One of everything, two of a few. She ate some—slowly, of course—over the next few days in London. And then we packed them into our suitcase and brought them back to Spain, where she proceeded to forget all about them.
Or so I thought. Whilst I had foolishly assumed her mind had abandoned the existence of this smörgåsbord of refined sugar, I started to work my way through them. Not all at once, like some kind of beast. But slowly, one here, another there. Before I knew it I was looking at an empty space where they’d previously been. After the paper cup holding them had long since been recycled, and she was celebrating something—some good news from school, or a solid few days of being a well-behaved big sister—she asked if she could have one of the sweets as a treat.
Even as I write this I can feel the heat radiating from my lower stomach. It’s physically uncomfortable. Shame. That’s what it is. Welcome back, old friend. She cried. A lot. I felt terrible about it. I FEEL terrible about it, still. Even now, months later, thinking back to her little face as she realised IT WAS HER OWN KIN who had eaten those sweets she was saving. Betrayed, by her own father. Shakespearean in its torment: Et tu, Papi? By my account, I chalked up four of the seven deadly sins—starting with envy, followed by a long, slow, sustainment of gluttony and greed, and ending with sloth as I lay on the sofa, the remnants of sugary goodness still coating my teeth.
I share this not because it helps me, or paints me in a positive light. Quite the opposite. You may well be reading this and thinking “what kind of MONSTER is he?” But I write these words because it helps all of us when we can open up about our parenting lows and fallible moments; those incidents that remind us that raising kids can reveal the very worst of ourselves in ways we would never have imagined.
So, was it a teachable moment? Well, my daughter has clearly learned from this incident. She has now taken to plastering Post-It Notes with “PAPI NO!” on any leftover sweets. My shame is on display to each and every guest who makes their way through our kitchen, emblazoned like a modern-day, Haribo-frenzy-fueled scarlet letter.
She learned to label her sweet boxes. I learned to label an emotion I hadn’t felt in a while. And on a Saturday night, many weeks later, wondering if I should open this bar of chocolate, my daughter delivered a lesson new to me. I’d heard a hundred different versions of “savour every mouthful” during my time on this earth—it’s tied to health, weight loss, mindfulness, gratitude and more. It never sunk in. Doctors say you should chew each bite “20 to 30 times.” Is that for real? Is anybody doing this?
But that night I asked myself "what would Padme do?" I made that tiny square of chocolate last 45 minutes. And never was so little enjoyed by so few for so long.
3 things to read this week
“I Left my Baby to Write This” by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian. I keep returning to this essay, which my wife discovered last month. Cosslett cuts through what it means to balance parenting and creativity in today’s world, and the pressure of creating work with a child who is wholly reliant upon you. A worthy read for anyone who is trying to proceed with any creative endeavour after having kids. “The temptation to put down one’s pen, or one’s paintbrush, can be immense, but, as the Swedish artist and writer Emma Ahlqvist writes in her book My Body Created A Human, ‘I don’t want my child to grow up having the pressure of having a parent who has given up everything in their life for them.’”
“Marie Kondo’s Life is Messier Now — And She’s Fine With it” by Jura Koncius in The Washington Post. Picking up a truckload of headlines this week was this interview with professional declutterer Kondo, who has admitted defeat after having her third child. Much joy was sparked by parents around the globe, who all breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Kondo says her life underwent a huge change after she had her third child, and external tidying has taken a back seat to the business of life. ‘I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home.’”
“I Was a Crappy Parent of Toddlers” by Vanessa Kroll Bennett in Scary Mommy. Searing truths from another parent can salve all kinds of emotional wounds, mum and dad alike. This essay touches on how we’re better and worse parents during different periods of our children’s lives, and that’s OK. “What the therapist told me changed my life forever. ‘Vanessa, different people are good parents at different stages of their kids’ lives. Some people are wonderful with babies and awful with teenagers. Some people are bored by toddlers but adore adult children. You have to give yourself permission not to love every second or every stage of your kids’ lives.’”
1-800-SEX-SURVEY
I’m on the receiving end of quite a few "can you share this survey with your dad community" requests. And I vigilantly protect you all from almost all of them, a human spam filter decked not in a cape, but in head-to-toe Uniqlo U. But this one is different—it’s from Emily Oster, whose newsletter ParentData is one of the greatest resources for all the data-seeking parents out there.
She’s working on an essay about sex after children and trying to understand the changes in sexual activity between couples after having a child. Emily has had a good amount of female responses after featuring the survey in her newsletter, but she’s somewhat lacking in data on the dad side of the equation. I know she will do important work for many parents with the results, so let’s do our part by taking this completely 100% anonymous survey of 15 multiple-choice questions. It’ll take you less than 2 minutes, I promise. I’ll be right here when you come back.
Good Dadvice
I Am Once Again Asking for Your Financial Support
Ah shit, here we go again. Year Three of The New Fatherhood. And I’m uncomfortably excited about it. This thing has grown bigger than I ever imagined, and will soon hit 100 issues, a small aftershock after my own odometer ticked across to 40 last month.
I started The New Fatherhood because I couldn’t find anything out there that communicated what it felt like to be a dad today. Even those things that got close were plastered in adverts, untrustworthy reviews and a blurred line between editorial and product placement. After a career spent in advertising—and seeing the damage it can do up close, by forcing creative round pegs into analytical square holes—I’m committed to keeping this an ad-free experience. Meaning it’s entirely reader-supported. And that’s where you come in.
Listen. I wrote a big chunk of stuff here hoping to get you to part from your hard-earned cash. And then I read it back and it felt like a sales pitch, which made me feel about as good writing it as you would have felt reading it. I don’t love asking for money, so here’s the shortened version: there are currently 167 people who pay for this newsletter and by the end of this year I’d like that number to be 400. The income from these extra subscriptions will allow me to remain committed to putting out this newsletter, ensure it’s stability, and enable me to take TNF to the next level by hiring a podcast editor, funding real-life meetups, and bringing in some external experts to run even better online events.
If you regularly read this newsletter and want to help contribute to its success (on top of getting access to lots of perks) then there’s no time like the present. And because I just turned 40, I’m dropping the price of an annual subscription to $40 this month. This will be the only time I discount the newsletter this year, before probably raising the price later in the year. Thanks for reading this, and thank you to those who choose to help keep it going.
A very good fact
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Did you know that chupar is Spanish for lick? The lolly is as a “licky lick.”
“If this is anyone other than Winston Churchill, you're stealing my bit!”
Great read! I'm not a father but I can definitely see myself doing this sort of thing one day. Perks of the job, surely? :D
We hated the American English slang for pacifier "binky" perhaps because it's so effing twee, so we looked up different language slang for them and liked "chupete" shortened to "chupie". Which is when we realized that Chupa Chups was pronounced "choopa choops" and not "choopa chuhps" as I had been. Which made me feel like a Chupa Chump.