Dad Stuff [antikvár]

IntroductionWHEN STEVE'S FIRST CHILD was born, a friend gave him a mug inscribed Anyone can be a FATHER, but it takes someone special to be a DAD. This slushy, saccharine sentiment mystified him at the time. When you're up to your armpits in a sea of disposable nappies, pushchairs and bottle sterilizers, and everything reeks of baby oil and vomit, it's hard enough just to keep going - let alone contemplate the forthcoming joys of fatherhood.But as your children evolve from babies into kids, they cease seeing you merely as a supplier of powdered milk and poopless Pampers and acquire an interest in your bottomless fund of knowledge and experience. Almost from the moment they begin to talk, kids are asking questions. Questions to which you, no longer just their father but now their Dad, are expected to have instant, accurate, relevant and entertaining answers.And this is the problem. When our kids expect us to know everything, we really can't disappoint them. That can wait until their late teenage years, when they'll come to believe that everything we ever told them was either misguided nonsense or a cunningly constructed farrago of mistr uths calculated to repress their freedom of expression.Until that fateful day, we have their full attention. We owe it to them, as well as to the whole of Dadkind, to preserve the myth that Dads are infallible, all-knowing, and as near omnipotent as a mortal can be.We need to be able to fix their toys when they break, cheer them up when they're down, entertain them when they're bored.