Alexandra's Daddy

Increasingly dads are taking part in looking after the children, giving mums a bit of a break, or are they really?

Alexandra’s dad had a tendency to wake his girls up to make sure that they were still alive. It didn’t matter if the newborn was sleeping blissfully; he just had to give them a poke here and a poke there. Sometimes when he was not satisfied with the baby’s reaction, he would place his big cold hand on the baby’s front and shake until the baby opened her eyes to look at him. I had witnessed him doing this to Alexandra’s younger sisters. He explained that he had to do it to be sure. I used to tell him to observe the baby quietly and he would see that the sleeping baby’s tummy would rise up and down. At times, he managed to startle the poor baby. Not knowing how to calm the baby, he would pass the baby to me or to mum. What did his wife think? She told me that he was just being a caring dad.

In the evenings, the girls’ mum had to rush to get the children to bed after I left because dad would like her attention all to himself. He didn’t want the girls to distract him after a long working day. Bedtime for the two younger girls was easy because they pretty much stuck to their routine on most days, unless one of them was not well or if one of them was being kept awake by tricky Alexandra. Bedtime for Alexandra was a battle on most days. She would start to play up the moment I left. (The funny thing was that Alexandra stuck to the routine as expected when I babysat on some nights.) The idea was to have all girls sleeping, which was quite achievable on most nights. On some nights if tricky Alexandra was still awake, she would be told to stay in bed. Mum was under a lot of stress and I could always tell when she had had a stressful night when I turned up the next day.

The girls’ dad would usually come home at around 8:30 pm. This daddy could enjoy a little peace downstairs but he chose to go about it as loudly as possible. Apparently he would talk and laugh loudly. Without a special, private cinema or entertainment room, he would turn on the surround sound system to watch movies as loudly as possible in the living room. The downstairs living areas of this house were open plan and the noise travelled straight into the children’s bedrooms upstairs waking them up. This was especially hard for any babies who were sleeping in the office, which wasn’t really a room and had no doors to block any noise. (During my time working for this family, each newborn slept in the office. First Millie slept there and then Olivia.) He would then get angry because the children weren’t in bed and had ruined his evening.

On some nights when this daddy was in a happy or playful mood, he would invite the ‘offending’ child to come downstairs to join him. If the children were asleep, he would select one, two or three of the children to join him. He wouldn’t be content with just telling them a story or doing something quietly. He would wake them up totally by doing something silly like jumping on the couch or bed, playing hide and seek and watching movies. When he was exhausted, he would retire to bed and mum would be left to tuck the children back in bed again. The junk food and the fizzy drinks would keep Alexandra wide awake for hours and mum had to stay with her to make sure that she didn’t disturb Millie, who shared a bedroom with her. Mum was also always worried that Alexandra may ‘attack’ Olivia in the office.

This daddy didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He didn’t understand that children need to live within the boundaries of a regular routine to learn how to behave appropriately as an individual being on Earth. As a nanny, I am a strong believer in establishing a routine for each child. This does not mean designing a strict rigid routine. The routines I prefer are reasonably flexible to follow the child’s development. For instance if a child is expected to go to bed at 8:00 pm because that’s his routine, he is of course allowed to go to bed prior to 8:00 pm if he has had a busy day. He is also allowed to go to bed later if he has been fussing because he is teething. The flexibility depends on the child’s needs. Waking up a sleeping child (or a child who is trying to sleep) to play hide and seek is not respecting the child’s right to his bedtime routine. Children find it hard to gauge what is expected of them regularly and what is not. Those who do not see their dads regularly would prefer to stay up to play and would come to expect it every night. This was what happened to Alexandra. She didn’t understand that dad didn’t want to have anything to do with her on most nights. Just when she had sometimes gone to bed and least expected anything fun to happen, she might be woken up to play with dad. If children are sometimes forced with threats to stay in bed to give mum and dad the time to entertain themselves, and then woken deliberately to play with dad at other times, they are more than likely to become confused.

I had told Alexandra’s mum to ask her husband to turn down the volume of his own speech or the surround sound system. She told me that the house was also his home. She wasn’t prepared to tell him what to do and how to act in his own home. To do that was inappropriate.