Are you the invisible parent?

Or the default?

Credit: Nadezhda1906

The invisible parent

It was a Sunday afternoon, one of those winter days where the pale sun streams through the windows as if to say spring is coming. I was sitting on a stool in my kitchen, getting a bit of admin done.

My daughter Megan was at the kitchen table nearby. She loves a bit of crafting.

This time she was working on a model caravan kit she got for her birthday, the natural gloss of her hair framing her blue-grey eyes. Picture perfect concentration on her face as she tried to glue some bunting around the caravan's door.

Other than the dog we were alone in the kitchen. Jo was upstairs and the boys were playing somewhere else, a white noise of giggles and Pokemon chatter.

A beautiful everyday moment of family life.

Meggy was mostly managing to build her caravan independently but there some bits she got stuck on.

There came a point where she needed some help. She stood up, walked straight past me, and shouted “Mummy!” up the stairs.

Like I was invisible.

The default parent

Jo didn't respond at first. We try to encourage the kids to come and find us if they need help, rather than summarily summoning us like tyrannical rulers ordering a court jester about.

And frankly, with four kids, it's impossible to respond to every demand for help like that.

Jo is the default parent for our kids, and that can be exhausting for her.

Their default to asking her for help seems to be pretty hard wired for them. It makes sense, psychologically - both in evolutionary terms, and from their early experiences.

The mother-child dyad is an established term to describe the biopsychosocial codependence between a mum and their newborn. Babies don't even realise they are independent, separate, people until 6-7 months old. In most cases babies attach to their mums as though they are one single symbiotic organism.

In our case, Jo has been the primary carer for our kids for their whole lives. There are several other adults who care for them - me, my in-laws, Jo's brother and his wife - but their primary reliance on her has been embedded since the day they were born.

Our childhood experiences, the things we go through while our early brains are developing, stay with us forever.

No amount of hands-on Dadding from me is going to overcome that.

The impact of invisibility

Eventually Megan went upstairs to ask for help more politely.

Jo has said it a hundred times before. She said it again: “You have another parent, he's right there, and he's perfectly capable of helping you”

Meggy laughed. She gets it. She's not consciously ignoring me, she's purely acting on instinct. It literally hadn't entered her mind to ask me. The shout of ‘Mummy!’ was an unconscious default.

Even with no malice these behaviour patterns can be difficult to process, especially when they are happening a dozen times a day.

I estimate for every “Daddy!” our kids shout there are at least 10 shouts of “Mummy!” Maybe more.

From needing their bum wiping at 5am to a missing water bottle before leaving for school to help with homework to finding them bath toys to reading a bedtime story. It never stops.

(To really picture the effect of this, make sure each of those words is drawn out into a 3-4 second noise - “Mummm-eeeeee…” and repeated immediately until they hear some kind of response)

This gets pretty draining for Jo. And, honestly, a bit frustrating for me.

I don't want to be invisible. To be the second choice parent.

I'm here for them a lot of the time. I'm not totally useless at most things.

There's no way of materially shifting their behaviour, even if they were motivated to. We can't undo that early conditioning and thousands of years of evolutionary psychology.

Eventually they'll grow out of it, and soon enough won't ask either of us to help.

Then we'll miss these days.

For now, I've trained myself to respond to their shouts of Mummy as much as the occasional times they shout Daddy. That's a small step to make myself a bit more visible. We'll keep reminding them that they have two parents who can help them.

And hopefully, every now and again, they'll come to me first when they need their laces tying.

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If I Could Turn Invisible

Pradip Chattopadhyay

If I could be invisible

So when I ruffled your hair

And they fell on your eyes

You would know it’s the blowing wind.

If I could be invisible

So when I strobed in the dark

And it showed you the way

You would know it’s the firefly.

If I could be invisible

So when I planted a feathery kiss

And you felt the moistness

You would know it’s the morn dew.

If I could be invisible

So when I sat on your heart

And it felt heavy

You would know it is love