Cracking the Mummy Code

I found Neil Keene’s article in Kidspot in the Daily Telegraph from last weekend most interesting. In the article entitled “The Father of all dilemmas” he looked at some of the problems stay at home dads face in developing their support structures.

Much of the article rang true for me as there have been times I have found it difficult to accepted into other groups of Mums who are at various activities I attend with my son. On the flip side of this I am also very lucky in that I know a couple of other dads who are at different stages of being stay at home dads and I also get to go to footy training a couple of nights a week and games on Saturdays.

These allow me the opportunity to experience plenty of what you could refer to as my ‘man’ time.

So, yes; I am very lucky in being able to have this ‘man’ time. However, that’s actually not what I really want when I’m out with other kids and their parents (in this case most likely Mums). I want some help! I want to talk about things such as what their one year old eats, how do you stop them ripping books off the shelf or do you leave the toilet door open or not? “Suck it up,” I hear you say, “Talk to Bread Winning Mum when she gets home.”  Well I do. I even read the internet and look at what people say. However, I’ve learnt that getting a breadth of opinions from different people by talking to them is the best way to glean information.

Thanks to Neil’s article (provided for me by my very helpful Father-in-law) I have started to make some changes this week. In my first four weeks I have sat back a bit and let things happen. This week I have made more efforts to engage the mothers I have encountered at the play centre, at story time, at swimming lessons. In fact anywhere I have been with my son. Some stand off a bit and don’t want to chat while others are really great. I had one mum at the play centre this morning tell me all about how her husband took time off when their first son was born and she gave me some great advice.

I’m going to continue to ask questions of all the Mums I meet out there. I’ll try not to be a pest but it’s important to share and help the dads out too. In return I might even share my footy tips with you!