On Parenting : Changes, the Slow Day, and the Timer

Musical Messages on My Mind

A short while ago I had a tune stuck in my head. It went something like whop-whop whop-ding, whop-whop whop-ding and had to be some kind of dance music, but I just couldn’t put a name to the tune or remember what the rest of the beats were. A couple of days went by whilst I was passively humming the tune. Then a week or so later I heard the tragic news that Keith Flint, the lead singer of the electronic band The Prodigy, had passed away.

The news was all over the radio as his death was somewhat unexpected and he had been such an icon in the music industry. That same night, driving home from work up the M1 I thought I should listen to some Prodigy, so I tuned my Spotify to their top hits and the first one was Breathe – the track gets going and then blasting out my car speakers comes exactly the same tune – whop-whop whop-ding, whop-whop whop-ding! The coincidence sent a tingle through my spine.

Not Quite Entering a Trance

On the same car journey, I listened to another of their tunes, Smack My Bitch Up, which I remembered well as the music video had been one of my favourites when I was a teenager. Its portrayal of a crazy night out was the kind of hedonistic enjoyment I aspired to back then. There is a musical bridge in that track which is very trance inducing and as it hit I thought I would race home, I had my eyes glued to the M1 and I pressured the accelerator. I couldn’t get much pace going for long though as I realised driving recklessly to loud music is something that a new father shouldn’t be doing… the reality of my current life hit me.

It made me think how much of my behaviour is curtailed by the recent addition to my family. I have more of a stake in the world now and as such, I can’t take the same risks I used to, even if they seem trivial. It’s like I have a stronger sense of what I consciously can and cannot do. I had been talking to a good friend about this recently and he sent me a book in the post which seemed to come from the past. The reason I say that is, it is so dated, although having been written only around 25 years ago.

Moved by such a short Book

It’s a very small book about fathering called the Sixty Minute Father and I wasn’t expecting too much from the read, but it moved me, really it did. The tagline reads; take an hour to change your child’s life forever. These are ambitious words.

The idea is the book would only take an hour to read but if you put into practice the suggestions and aim towards the goals then fathering will be more rewarding, worthwhile and your relationship will be stronger for the rest of your life. I read the first half whilst my car got its MOT and the second half I read out loud to my son, and the following is why it moved me.

It is full of stories of fathers who thought that one day would come that isn’t fast-paced and full of demands. It would be a ‘slow day’ when they could just pause and spend that time they had missed in the previous days, weeks and months with their child. On this day they could catch up with their children, and spend quality time, rather than quantity time.

That is the illusion. That the pace of life will let up, that events will somehow cease to unfold with such rapidity and the pace will subside enough for us to take a deep breath and spend several straight hours playing nonsensical games with our cherished little ones.

The clock ticks down to the end of childhood

What the author says is that you actually need quantity time with children to get quality time. The more I read the book out loud, the more I saw myself missing out on my son’s life in the near future, simply out of the energy that I put into pursuing my own interests, work and hobbies; casually thinking that there would be some Sunday, or a chilled day off spent at home somewhere along the line. I felt fully emotional by the conclusion of the book.

As the book points out there is something of a timer – when your child is born till 18 years of age there is 6570 days in it, but by the time your child is just ten years old, 3650 have already gone. That’s 2920 days left, and no amount of money, power or prestige can increase that number. The recommendation I have received and that I wanted to relay here is, if you’re lucky enough to have a child, don’t miss one day with them!