DadTalk

Girls play different to boys

Everything is pink. There are dollies everywhere. I am constantly tripping over plastic tea sets. My eldest daughter won’t go anywhere without a bright pink handbag. She is four. My youngest loves to cuddle her teddy.

I am a little bit of a blokey bloke. I like fire, guns, ale, football, boxing, loud music, arguments and cooking meat outdoors.  If an evening consists of all of those things I am the happiest person on the planet. 

My girls are currently girls. 

Now that might seem like a stupid statement but what I mean is that I have mild meat head tendencies and women have often been a bit of a mystery to me. I was lucky to marry a woman who speaks slowly and will decode the strange language of woman for me. Honestly, without here I’d be all at sea. 

Anyways, know that I am the father of two daughters I guess that I worry about being able to relate! Make sense? Not really no. 

It is funny the things that occupy your mind as a father. As the girls play with toys they play in a different way than the boys that we know. They converse with the toys and each other, they construct narrative and they recreate things that Mum or Dad have said or done. Boys just seem to fight each other or break things. 

Not that girls are better behaved it just seems that they work out their misbehaviour in a different way. 

So I often find myself playing girly games that I never played as a kid. Vix has to explain to me what is going on and what Abi and Esther want me to do. For example we often play “school” at the moment because Abi is at school and is trying to process and articulate what she does for three hours a day. I am pretty sure when I started school that I just cried about it then went out on my bike. 

This is more of a collection of thoughts that a blog but I think I am trying to work out how to be a father of daughters.