Dear Future Sprog

Letters to my unconceived child, from a man who wants to be a father.

[dearfuturesprog-blog]

Bullies

Dear Future Sprog,

In my last letter, I told you that sometimes it’s best to ignore somebody who has a negative impact on your life. There is an exception to this, and that is bullies.

You will encounter bullies throughout your life and in many different forms. The most common, and likely the first that you will encounter, are schoolyard bullies; fellow children who, for reasons best known to themselves, decide to make life difficult for you with name-calling, cruel pranks, and even psychical violence. You will hear plenty of people making excuses for these bullies - parents saying stupid, ignorant things like “kids will be kids” and so on. You will hear plenty of people in authority telling you to ignore them until they go away.

I’ve got a secret to tell you: all of this is rubbish. There is only one way to deal with bullies, and that’s to give them a bloody nose.

You may be surprised to hear me say that. As you have grown up, and even on this very blog, you will have heard me speak out against unnecessary violence. Well, my child, the key word there is “unnecessary”. There are very few sets of circumstances in which violence is necessary or appropriate, but almost all of them involve bullies of some sort.

Bullies rule with fear. They need everybody to think that they’re powerful but they don’t actually want to have to prove it, and they certainly don’t want to put themselves in harm’s way. Given the choice between picking on somebody that will punch them in the face and somebody who will just stand there and take it, they will pick the latter every single time.

But here’s the caveat; you should never walk away and leave them picking on the person who won’t punch them in the face. It is the moral duty of those with strength to lend it to those without it. So when that bully starts picking on the other kid, you punch him in the nose again. You bloody his nose over and over again - only ever when he does something to deserve it, but every time he deserves it - until he learns that bullying other people comes with a painful price.

I give you my solemn vow that if I am ever called into school because you have hit another child because he was bullying you or somebody weaker than you I will never, ever be angry - because when you grow older, you will learn that if somebody is allowed to bully as a child they will keep bullying as an adult, and right now, as I write this, the world is in a horrible mess because nobody will give bullies a bloody nose.

As always, I remind you to be brave, be kind, and always strive to be better than you are.

Lots of love,

Dad

[dearfuturesprog-blog]

Ending Friendship

Dear Future Sprog,

I suppose that it seems a little backward, talking to you about ending friendships before I’ve spoken to you about starting them. How you conclude a friendship, however, is just as important - if not more so - than how you begin one, because your last conversation with somebody will be their last impression of you, and you deserve to be remembered kindly.

There are, broadly-speaking, two ways in which friendships end. Either it will be your choice, or it will be somebody else’s; either you will be in control of what happens, or you will not. Both are hard on the heart for entirely different reasons.

I have recently ended a handful of friendships, none of them by choice. Only one of them, when I look back on it now, was actually genuine; the others were associations of convenience which ended when the convenience did. In all cases, the people involved no longer had a use for me in their lives and so abandoned all pretense of liking me, which made it incredibly painful to deal with.

I’m sorry to say that this will almost certainly happen to you several times in your life. When it does, it will feel like a knife in the heart; people whom you trusted, respected, maybe even revered will start acting unkindly towards you, as if you had done something wrong. This, I’m sorry to say, is because some people in this world cannot stand to think of themselves as a “baddie”, and will seek to cast you as the villain in a situation that doesn’t need one. These days it’s tremendously likely that they will do so using social media; they will say things that are not true, and which will make you angry, and desperate to respond. You’ll want to set the record straight.

Well, to put it bluntly, don’t. Don’t respond. Don’t let yourself be goaded. If somebody is working this hard to convince other people that you are a bad person then nothing you say, however well-intentioned or clever, will dissuade them. If you stay silent, however - if you block them, ignore them and refuse to engage in gossip with other people - you will starve them of ammunition. Eventually, they’ll get bored, and move on to their next victim. They’ll start building a reputation for themselves, and not a good one. The best revenge is to live well.

They will talk to others. They will try to get a reaction from you. They may even cost you other friends. If they do, consider the fact that if somebody will so readily believe that you are a terrible person without any solid evidence you probably don’t want them in your life anyway.

Of course, there will be times when ending a friendship is your choice. If that happens, you need to ensure that it is not ended without compassion; it’s okay to end a friendship that is causing you harm but never cut somebody out of your life just because it’s easier than keeping them in it. If you have befriended somebody with problems, try to help them through those problems. If you were going through a tough time you would want somebody to help you too. When you do end that friendship, however, be firm and don’t renege on the decision. Don’t let that person back into your life lightly. People CAN change, but they rarely do.

Despite everything else that I’ve said, however, never ever be afraid to stand up for yourself. Be kind, but don’t let people abuse that kindness. Help others, but learn to tell the difference between need and laziness. Put others first, but never at the expense of your own well-being. Taking on other people’s problems is a choice; whenever you do, be certain that it was the right one.

All my love,

Dad

[dearfuturesprog-blog]

Dear Future Sprog...

Dear Future Sprog,

As I write this, you don’t yet exist. You haven’t even been conceived, in fact, although your mother and I are trying. We’re older than people usually are when they try this sort of thing, and it’s proving difficult to bring you into the world.

Nonetheless, I think of you often. I wonder who you will be, what you will look like, what gender you will choose and how you will express it. I wonder if you will be nerdy, like us, or whether you’ll be sporty and athletic. I worry that you might be into football, which is something that I will not be able to relate to. I worry that I might not be a good enough father for you.

And that, I suppose, is the point of this Tumblr. I want to write down the things that I would teach you, as they occur to me, so that I can read them back to myself when you are born and check that they still make sense. I want to make sure that whatever scant wisdom that I have accrued over the last few decades is fit to be passed on to you. And, just in case something ever happens to me, I want to make sure that whatever advice I have for you is recorded somewhere, for you to refer back to in times of stress and unhappiness.

You don’t exist yet, but I love you. I can’t wait to meet you, whenever that may be.

All my love,

Dad