Adrian Melrose

It’s customary for our two daughters to leap out of bed long before I’m forced to. Recently I’ve been left wondering whether it’s the joys of a good morning kiss/cuddle that draws them into our bedroom or whether it’s the prospect of playing with the iPhone or iPad.

This morning there was hardly a pause between the kiss and the iPhone request/demand which prompted me to curse our 5 year old’s addiction to the dreaded device and a bout of self-restraint kicked in allowing me to settle for this:

Me: “Leave that silly iPhone alone”

Her: (in a stern and serious tone) “Daddy, how can you call it silly when it’s so useful? You spend the whole day reading your messages!”

Me: “Don’t you want to tell me about your dreams rather than play with the useful iPhone”

Her:  “Sigh, oh dad, don’t worry, mummy told me that girls can do two things at once”

I’m off to audition for  “Outnumbered” except I’m outnumbered by girls too. 

Childcare guidelines need to be given to our childrens’ carers to govern many things including how to deal with our beliefs.  Beliefs emanate from our upbringing and the environment in which we are nurtured. When we decide to bring up children: many of us partner with someone with similar beliefs and our children grow up in the midst of those beliefs. Inevitably, our children grow up under the influence of others too: hence the need for guidelines on this subject.

Personally, we’ve found a fantastic person to look after our two young, inquiring children when we aren’t with them. She’s a brilliant combination of Nanny McPhee and Mary Poppins and she’s a Sexagenarian too which means, arguably she has far more life-skills and experience than we do. She’s also been a nurse in a previous career.
She perfects the balance between fun and discipline and the girls love  her to bits and have thrived under her care. Admittedly they see a a lot of their two parents but we have unpredictable and sometimes manic commitments-  so *our* Nanny McPhee  is a critical pivot we trust and on whom we rely.

We’ve recently been a little blindsided by a set of questions that our almost 5 year old levied on us and it seems as if some of the answers have already been given by her nanny. By their nature, they’re personal so I won’t blog about them but there is a good chance that due to the complexity of the subject Nanny McPhee may have answered them in a different manner to the way in which we would have dealt with them. We’re learning about this parenthood thing all the time! How to handle this?

I don’t think its complicated if managed consciously and clearly. We have decided to supply Nanny McPhee with a list of subjects that we’d like her to get the girls to talk to us directly for the answers. If she’s hit with a question she merely answers “that’s an important question that I think you should ask Daddy or Mummy about” then she needs to alert us immediately and we’ll deal with it based on the way we have agreed to as parents. That’s definitely our right, don’t you think?

Where I also need your help is in compiling a list of the subjects. So far I have:

1. Religion


2. Birds and the bees: aka Sex


3. Divorce


4. Adoption


5. Marriage


6. Homosexuality


7. Violence and


8. Death.

I decided to run a quiz at the breakfast table for our two girls. Imogen is 5 in September and Clara turned 3 a few weeks back.

Question 1 - What’s the tallest animal?

Imo hits the buzzer first and offers me “Giraffe”. Clara shouts, no Imo, it’s a Whale. I pause to think (knowing she may be technically right) IMO argues Giraffe and clara replies- No IMO, what if the whale stands on it’s head?

So that’s a point scored by each.

Question 2 - how many notes in an Octave?

Imogen asks me what an Octave is - I can’t really explain quickly so I choose to sing a scale. She looks puzzled then replies  “Well… an Octopus has eight legs so… Eight?! Clara was left repeating the scale I sung, counting the notes on her fingers.

That’s when I realised that we are truly truly blessed having the responsibility of bringing up these two children. They dazzle and amaze me every single day. Thank you girls!