The top tip is to stay home, look your kids in the eye, and play. Adventures will occur. Tell us about them in the suggestions box at the end. Here are some of the things we like to do…
1) Dance
Once a weekend, we like to crank the music up to Volume 50, and dance round the living room. Traditionally a dance off will always begin with Nancy Griffith “Lone Star State of Mind”. It begins with twanging banjos, and the rhythm is irresistibly jaunty. It makes you skip up and down and twirl around. Yes fine, that’s not the coolest way to dance, but it gets everyone going, and there’s no one there to see you jigging like a drunk teacher at a barn dance. After that we’ll almost always go for Louis Prima, The Original. We skip in and out of rooms. We wheel. We go for the Louis Prima World Record. We once managed to dance 15 Primas over the course of a weekend (8 on Saturday. 7 on Sunday). To our knowledge that record hasn’t been beaten, and we are undisputed Prima Champions. What is your Prima? Suggest more music for us. Suggest games. Suggest challenges.
2) Make them laugh
It’s said that the average Brit laughs twelve times a day. With children around, you should aim to be laughing ten times that amount. There’s really only one thing that makes a baby laugh: swoop towards them, and then recoil. To a baby, that’s funnier than the complete works of Oscar Wilde. If you want to take it to another level, put the tea towel on your head, and play peepoh! They’re thinking: “he’s gone… oh HE’S THERE… Oh, he’s gone… He’s THERE!” For a baby, humour simply doesn’t get better than this. From here onward, it’s all just a downward curve, which finishes finally with My Family. It’s very easy to make children laugh, if you see them at parties, or in playgrounds. You must respond dramatically to everything they say and do. Say: “What?… What are you doing? You’re dressed like a knight, and you’re holding a sword!” Already they’ll be cackling, and that’s before they’ve even stabbed you.
3) Laugh at them
Once children are two, they have become comedians themselves, and they want what comedians want: they want you to laugh at their jokes. They want attention. Yes, much of their humour is poor. Children make the basic mistake of assuming louder is always better. They over-estimate the surprise that can be generated by an upturned egg. But until they’re losing money at Edinburgh, allow them to think they’re comic geniuses. They will learn to enjoy performance, and learn not to fear laughter.
4) Get them painting
I don’t bother with those 99p sets of paints which just leave a grainy mess. I actually splash out on the full professional 12 quid watercolour set. And I don’t give them scrap paper to draw on, unless we’re doing quick designs. I buy them proper artbooks with proper paper and blank pages. Then they paint, and I ask them what they’ve drawn. Then I write the captions. Here’s one Grace did when she was four…
Do your own art, and scan in the pictures. If you can, email them in.
5) Get them painting you
If you’re tired, take off your shirt, and invite them to paint your back. You will feel like you’re being massaged by fairies. It will take them ages. You will be able to doze.
6) Make birthday cards
Children love sending letters, and making cards. If you want to make one for your friend, get your child to draw them, perhaps with their family, and, once again, do captions. Do this for an aged auntie, she will go wild with pleasure. Don’t do it for a friend who’s got kids. They will find it subtly annoying.
One we did of my family:
7) Make baby cards
If your friends have a baby, make a card. Get your children to draw the baby. Then inside, you can write a message for the baby.
Baby letter
Dom and Rachel were my first friends to have a baby. Everyone was sending them flowers, but I didn’t have money for that. Instead I wrote a letter to the baby. Dom liked it so much, he framed it, and put it on the wall. When I heard that, I was so proud. So when Lucy had a child, I did the same thing. Then I did one for Tif. By now the baby letter was getting really good. I wrote it another ten times, changing it slightly each time. But then a few months ago, I had a party. I saw one lady say to another: “Andrew is so sweet. He sent Milo this letter…” And I tried to intervene, since she was talking to someone who’d got the same thing, pretty much word for word. I haven’t felt more embarrassed since I was back at school and I accidentally called the teacher Mummy. So now I’m admitting everything. Here’s the letter…
“Dear Baby *****,
Congratulations on getting such excellent parents. Your mother is beautiful, your father is popular, they are well worth spending a lifetime with. I say lifetime, you’ve really just got to stick them till you’re twelve, then you can pretty much avoid them.
In the meantime, here are a few tips…
Try to get lots of sleep. Best to do it in the daytime. If you wake at night, you get a better class of attention. Lure them to your bed by pretending not to breathe. Then go purple. Then, when Mum is holding you, and you are screaming like an angry dinosaur, puke in her hair. (It’s fine. She loves cleaning. She has nothing else to do.) Keep screaming till Dad is naked in the kitchen, searching desperately for the Calpol. Then, as soon as you’re passed to him, stop crying instantly, and fall asleep. This will make him conclude he’s a world expert on childcare, whereas she’s just a worrier making life difficult for everyone. Divide and rule, that’s the key.
I must tell you… Your mum has plans to get you into a routine - you know, feeding every three hours, with snoozes in between. Needless to say, this is Fascistic nonsense. Play your own game. If God didn’t want you to suck on those things He wouldn’t have filled them with hot creamy milk, and fashioned nipples to look like jelly beans. Hmmm warm booby num num! Suck till her nips are sore, and then just suck some more! Suck, and get strong.
You need to get mobile as quick as possible so you can forage for things to lick. Wait till Mum has left the room, then crawl behind the bin chanting in baby language: “Find Things. Lick them. Put them in your mouth.” I recommend plugs, dustpans, and dogs.
If you need anything, just shout. Shout if you’re tired, shout if you’re hungry, shout if the lego tastes of marmite. Don’t worry! Your shouts make perfect sense to us! Don’t worry about anything! The world is noisy, it has flashing bright lights, but it is still a beautiful world. At least once a day, lick a chair leg, stare at Mum with sheer amazement, and just smile. Then, when she picks you up, puke in her hair again. Keep her on her toes.
I can’t wait to meet you,
8) Cut up apples
Children are endlessly fascinated by the star thing. And, once chopped, apples become much more tempting to eat. Alternatively, you can play with them, by using them to splodge paint.
9) Do the blue bubble trick
- Announce to the children that you are all witches who can make Blue Bubble Water.
- Dress up as witches. (Allow two hours for this step. But be creative with your outfit. You could make a wart, out of marmite).
- Get a cauldron (big mixing bowl).
- Squirt in some blue paint. (It’s best if you all have a go).
- Squirt in washing up liquid and a splash of water. (It’s best if you drink the water first, then spit it out).
- Get out the straws.
- Let them choose the correct colour of straw. (Allow ten minutes for this step).
- Do some cod witchy spell. (“Bats wings and frogs / Small yappy dogs / Don’t give me trouble / Make mixture bubble”). It doesn’t really matter what you say. It’s essential, however, that you do a witchy cackle.
- Blow into the mixture down the straw.
- It will bubble up like a glorious witch’s confection.
- Get paper.
- Hold the paper lightly over the bubbles and lift it up.
- Now the paper will be covered in blue bubble shapes which look like the sea.
- Now you are all ready for some underwater art.
- Draw fish, and cut them out, and place them in the sea.
- Draw octopuses.
- Draw mermaids. Draw mummaids.
- Make more blue bubbles, just for the fun of it.
- Make sure, at all times, that you don’t suck the straws. My gran used to say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” but even she didn’t make us drink paint.
10) Make a children’s book
Many parents are quietly hoping for an artistic renaissance. It takes ages to write a novel, it takes money to make a film, but it’s easy to make a children’s book. Children’s stories are just 29 pages long, and they don’t have much writing on each page. Write a story, then illustrate it, while you’re hanging out with your kids. This will make you much more interested in the kids’ books you’re reading them. You’ll marvel at Michael Foreman and Ian Beck, but you’ll find their style impossible to rip off. It requires way too much skill. But Meg and Mog – that’s much easier. And a mentalist could do a Mr Man book. (Only a committed one would still be doing it, 136 books later). Eventually you may make something that can be sold to Puffin books, but it’s almost better, if you don’t. You’ll be making a book which your kids will love because it will be all about them. If you like you can read one of mine. It’s called Fun Things You Can Do.
11) Watch a film
Yes, I said you shouldn’t watch TV. It’s a drug. It tranquillises, even when blasting out Lazytown. But what’s the point of rules, if you can’t break them? We love spending Sunday afternoons watching a movie. Here are our top films…
- Mary Poppins
- The Little Mermaid
- Babe
- Disney’s Winnie the Pooh. (I love the “and the rain rain rain came down down down” song)
- Toy Story
- Toy Story Two. (They don’t like the scary bit, when the man steals Woody. You may say that misses out a vital plot point. I’d say that mentioning Woody’s kidnap is like mentioning your former lovers to your partner: we all know something’s happened, but it’s best not to go into it).
12)Read
I’m doing a whole campaign about this, which is being run by Ladybird. This is what I was going to suggest for the Ladybird Home Page. Ladybird rejected it. I think they foresaw way too many legal issues. But I thought it was funny…
The Dad Rules reading questionnaire
Now, you all read bedtime stories, once in a while. Sometimes it’s annoying. Sometimes you’re heckled by children saying: “But ducks do NOT talk like that!” But sometimes it’s sublime. Sometimes you put on great accents, and your children ask great questions, and then fall magically silent. What makes that happen? I want to find out. I’ll begin with a questionnaire, and to get you pondering, I’ll answer the questions myself…
What is your all time favourite book?
Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
What is your children’s all time favourite?
Tatty Ratty by Helen Cooper. When the rabbit bounced down the cliff we liked saying Boing Boing Boing Donk”. We loved the end when the rabbit says “About time too.”
Which book do you love, but they don’t?
I love Ferdinand, the bull who likes sniffing flowers. They don’t. The only bull that would interest them would be one who’s secretly a princess.
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