Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Childhood, Creativity, Culture, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, England, Family, Goodbye America, Happiness, Home, Imagination, Innocence, Jill, Love, My Fatherhood, Otis, Parents
Yes I know today is the day where all the ghosts and ghouls are supposed to come out and play, but I thought I’d inject a bit of love and positivity into the World.
I know … who the hell am I?
Unsurprisingly, this new side of me is connected to my past life in LA.
While we are absolutely loving being in England and London, there are things about LA we miss.
One of them is Otis’ amazing preschool.
As I have written before, it’s an amazing, creative, inclusive place of learning and we were so happy he was there.
But leaving was always going to be hard – especially given we were leaving the country – so we asked the school if we could buy a piece of furniture for them on behalf of Otis.
Not just because it’s a school where the lessons are conducted outdoors but because we wanted Otis to know that while he was in America for a short time, his presence mattered to the community and the community mattered to Otis.
I’m so grateful they said yes which is why, while we’re thousands of miles away in the cold of England, there is a bench in sunny Manhattan Beach that allows Otis to always be in a place he loved while also letting his friends – and future students – always enjoy being in the environment they find themselves in.
The point of this post also relates to the people I’ve been lucky enough to call colleagues around the World, but that’s a post for another day [and does not relate to leaving stickers and badges around the place] so with that, I just want to say a huge thank you to Manhattan Beach Nursery School, the kids and parents who go there and LA as a whole.
Take that Halloween.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Childhood, Comment, Culture, Daddyhood, Education, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Innocence, Insight, Jill, Otis, Parents
I cry.
I cry a lot.
I cry at films.
I cry at memories.
I cry at just how much I love Otis.
Now I appreciate that’s not the sort of thing you should admit, but that’s what I want to change.
I get why it happens.
From the moment we are kids, we are told not to cry.
To be fair, it’s less to do with any sense of parental embarrassment and more to do with parents hating seeing their precious child being upset, but in my opinion, it’s still wrong.
But it gets worse.
Especially for little boys.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard a Dad tell their little man who has fallen over …
“Big boys don’t cry”.
I totally appreciate they’re not saying it to be mean, but I can’t help but worry for what we are teaching the men of tomorrow.
Especially in America.
I was lucky, I was brought up in a household that didn’t try to hide emotions.
I was taught it was healthy and was encouraged to express how I felt.
Now I know that was pretty rare, but fortunately for everyone else, there was the local pub.
The pub was more than a place for drinking, it was a place for men to express their feelings.
Sure, they did it through banter and jokes, but it was where you could reveal your feelings and fears to other men in an environment that was, ironically, none threatening and none judgemental.
I have no idea if that’s still the case but I know in America it’s not.
Here, you don’t go to a bar to talk, you go to a bar to sit with other men and watch sports.
There appears little outlet for men to express their feelings which means either the pressure of situations add up to unbelievable levels or the response to situations is disproportionate or overly aggressive and confrontational.
OK, so not everyone is like that, but until we teach our children – and especially our little boys – that crying is actually the act of someone strong rather than weak, then we are going to continue stopping people knowing how to navigate the challenges and frustrations that fill our lives. Or said another way, we’ll be stopping our kids from being able to be as good as they can be … which is a crime no parent wants to ever be accused of doing.
Which is another thing we could all learn from the values taught at Otis’ school.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Disney, Family, Fatherhood, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis
Following on from yesterday’s post, I’ve taken today off so I can take Otis for his first visit to Disneyland.
I can tell you right now he is going to absolutely bloody love it … and I have to tell you I’m glad he will because it has cost the equivalent of the GDP of a medium sized European nation and I’d be devastated to have to sell a kidney for something he won’t enjoy.
As much as I can be rather skeptical about Disney, I have to say they know how to capture kids imagination.
I still remember taking Otis to a hospital in Shanghai and – as soon as he clapped eyes on the TV showing Frozen – his pain and tears disappeared to be replaced with a hypnotic state.
So that’s where I’ll be today and then I’ll spend the weekend trying to recover from it as well as hope my beloved Nottingham Forest end the season on a high, which – given the position they were in last season – already feels like they’re playing in football Disneyland.
Now I know finishing mid-table in the Championship may not seem the sort of thing anyone should celebrate, but when you’ve had the turmoil we’ve had over the last 20 years – and especially the last 5 – it’s feels really good to have a team that is occasionally in the news for the way they’re playing football rather the way the terrible ex-CEO was playing with the club and it’s finances.
So in a way to honor Nottingham Forest being slightly less shit than they were last year [when they were super shit] I hereby reproduce my ‘everything for a £1’ shop version of one of my favourite Nike/Wieden ads ever.
Horrific isn’t it?
Especially compared to the original.
Putting aside the fact I’m wearing something ‘Adidas’, it’s a bit like comparing a pair of Hi-Tec trainers to a pair of NIKE’s, but then that’s like comparing the current Forest side to the team that dominated Europe in the early 80’s.
Or – said another way – how it feels to be a Forest fan for the last couple of decades.
So now I’ve ruined your weekend, I’m off … see you Monday.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Confidence, Culture, Dad, Daddyhood, Education, England, Family, Happiness, Innocence, Insight, Jill, Love, Mum, Mum & Dad, Otis, Parents, Relevance, Resonance, Standards, Unexpected Relevance
As I’ve written before, I didn’t go to University. I knew pretty early on that I didn’t want to continue my formal education.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t/don’t like to learn, it just means I find it far more powerful when it’s not in an academic environment.
I still remember telling my parents my decision and being slightly scared.
They desperately wanted me to go so I was worried they would see this as a slight on them – which is absolutely not what it was meant to be.
They asked for my reasons and when I told them, they said that they would support my decision as long as I applied in case I changed my mind.
So I did.
And I got accepted.
But I was still sure not going was the right thing for me, so my parents – while obviously disappointed – supported my decision and never brought it up again.
Looking back now, I feel that must have been very hard for them.
At that point, going to university was the fast track to a career and yet – as another act of their love and confidence in me – they pushed me to follow the things that genuinely interested and excited me and hoped it would all work out.
I’d say it did.
But now I’m a dad and while Otis is only 3, the thought of education looms large.
Would I do the same thing as him?
Of course I want to help equip my son in the best way possible for the life he wants to lead and one of those ways is to provide him with a good education. But the fact is I’m vehemently opposed to private education and while general access schools can be very good, the reality is private tends to offer better opportunities simply because of the funding and the facilities … which leads to an interesting conflict.
What’s best for my son versus what’s true to me?
Given Otis is so young right now, the decision will ultimately be mine and his Mum’s, but once he’s older, what do I do if he chooses a path I feel is not in his best interests.
Sure, it worked out for me, but the World was different back then and then I saw the ‘god’ instagram above – a sentiment that was absolutely reinforced by our recent America In The Raw research – and realised that by the time he has to make some choices, he will be far more aware of what he needs to do to increase his odds of success than his Mum or me.
But then I realised something else …
It’s not just about acknowledging their view of their World will be better than yours, it’s also backing your parenting.
When my Mum and Dad supported my decision, they were ultimately supporting how they raised me.
They believed the values and smarts they’d instilled in me were the right ones to enable me to make the right choices … and while I know they would have been there if it all fell down, that sense of confidence and belief probably enabled me to go to places I might otherwise not have done. Places I might not otherwise have felt I deserved to be.
And that’s why backing your team is everything.
Of course you have to instill values and standards into them, but once that’s done, you have to back them including what they think is right – even if you don’t – because if that doesn’t happen, you’re literally stopping their potential rather than liberating it.
Thank you Mum and Dad. Again.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Childhood, Comment, Family, Fatherhood, Happiness, Innocence, Jill, London, My Fatherhood, Otis
So we swapped living next to the beach in LA to living next to a park in London … and because of that, we spend a huge amount of our time there … hanging out while he goes off to explore.
Watching him is awesome.
The way he throws his entire energy and enthusiasm into everything.
From the swings and slides to the way he interacts with the other kids … bonding over nothing but the fact they’re around the same age and want to play.
Recently I caught him at the top of the slide with a couple of kids he had just met.
They weren’t talking.
They were just staring.
At a leaf …
Sure it didn’t last a long time, but for a moment, that single leaf held the attention and wonder of 3 kids …studying its shape, it’s colour and guessing which tree it had fallen from.
No electronics.
No lights.
No sounds.
Just nature showing she still has it … exemplified by Otis looking at it like I look at gadgets.
Long may that continue.
Thank you park.