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Stories of Incredible Comebacks · The World Knowledge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Well, good morning, listeners. Thank you for listening to Lament
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of Hope podcast. And thank you for listening, watching, whichever
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: platform you're on. Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: And also the fact that, I mean, I don't want
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: to obviously, the last thing I want to do is
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: to blame anything on my kids, but having three young
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: children in the family obviously adds to the, in this
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: modern age, the way I feel now with my children
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: is that At the age of nine, they almost need
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: a PA with all the activities that they have to
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: cater for during the week. Every day there is one
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: different requirement, request to the parents. My children are in
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: three different schools at the moment because they are three
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: different ages. So I get three streams of emails, newsletters
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: coming from three different schools, requests from three different sets
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  Speaker 2: of teachers, three different WhatsApp groups with all the parents
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: or the children, just, you know, putting up with that
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: requires some, it's a full-time job. Thankfully, my wife is
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: looking after that mostly. She's out for the school run,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: as we speak. But otherwise, if it was, if I
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: had to do that as well, I would have to,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: you know, I would have to go down part-time because
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: it's literally another job to us at least.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: How do you spend intentional time with your boys? Because
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know when I saw, you know, when
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I was watching, obviously, the Great British Bake Off, they
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: show little clips of your life and you were cooking
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: with your children. And that seemed ways you were connecting
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: with them and enjoying that. Is there intentional ways that
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: you maybe connect with them that may not involve cooking
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: or something they really enjoy that is a sacrifice to you,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: but you want to do that?
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Not as much as I'd like, is the honest answer.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I think that I'm one of those parents that lives
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: daily with that sense of guilt that I'm not spending
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: enough time with my children and that their childhood is
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: flying away at the speed of light. So I keep
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: telling myself that I should do more of that. The
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: reality is that I hardly find any time to do
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: anything of value. The sort of sacred space that I
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: have allocated to that is when we go on holiday.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: So we spend almost the entirety of the summer, certainly
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: all of August, in Italy and in the summer house.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: And that's family time. 100%. So I try to make
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: up the time that we haven't spent together throughout the
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: winter when we are, you know, on the seaside during
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: the summer. And we have the opportunity to go out
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: on holidays also throughout the year. So for Christmas or for,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: we have a birthday season in the family, which is
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: in February, where everybody celebrates their birthday. And we try
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: to go somewhere every year to celebrate together as a family.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: So there are some times that I've managed to safeguard
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: for family time. But the reality is that is not enough.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: It's not enough because, you know, If you want your
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: children to connect with you, you want your children to
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: speak to you, to find you as a person that
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: can say everything without any fear of being judged or
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: being demonized, etc. But the only way to do that
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: is to speak to them and spend quality time with
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: them regularly. That's the bit where I think I'm failing
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: miserably as a parent.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, this is something, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not a parent yet, but it's something I thought
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  Speaker 1: about is like, I have so many loves of my own,
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  Speaker 1: you know? And so when you have children, it's a
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: new love that has entered into your life, a very
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: deep love, but you have competing loves. And so it's
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: this really difficult, that's something I worry about is like
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: how to, and there's not a formula, like how to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: balance all of these loves well. And I'm guessing for
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: you too, like from what you've said, like it is,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: it's so hard because cooking too has been your love longer,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: if that makes sense. So it's even harder, I'd feel like.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And unfortunately, parenting
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: doesn't come with manual. So, you know, you learn on
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  Speaker 2: the job. Personally, the approach that I'm having to this
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: is that I acknowledge that I am not a perfect parent.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: And I think that having that sort of external perspective
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  Speaker 2: on how you are performing as a parent helps you
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: also see how your parents performed as parents for you.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: And I can see that my parents weren't perfect. I
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: can see now that they made lots of mistakes, which
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: they were perfectly entitled to considering that I was born
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: in the 70s, so they didn't have internet to bounce
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  Speaker 2: off ideas in case they had anything. All they had
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  Speaker 2: around them was people that at best were just corroborating
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  Speaker 2: what they were doing. Yeah, you're doing, that's exactly how
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  Speaker 2: it's done. It's always been done like this. This is
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  Speaker 2: how we do it here. Keep doing what you're doing.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: So they never had that critical view to tell them, well,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: you might approach this in a different way. So I
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: can see the fallacies in my own parents. I can
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  Speaker 2: see the fallacies in the parents in general in my family,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: also extended families, my wife's parents and my cousin's parents,
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  Speaker 2: et cetera. And all that I try to do is
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: to be slightly better and not repeat for my children
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: the same mistakes that my parents did with me. I
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: will be making my own mistakes, there is no doubt,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure that I'm making my own mistakes, but
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: it's a recurrent exercise, and I'm hoping my children will
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: improve on me whenever it's better.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I was going to ask you too, I've wondered
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: with all of the cooking, and do you... Does the
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: passion or the love for the cooking fade sometimes when
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: you're doing it so much?