Today FM’s Dave Moore Asks “How Does My Wife Cope With Four Kids?”

Dave Moore

How does she cope with four kids? The answer: brilliantly.

Tracy is amazing. Day in and day out, I go to work. I have meetings after work. I go to gigs. Football games. The cinema. Dinner. Drinks. I’m a busy guy. Meanwhile, Tracy is at home with four kids. Sure, for a few hours a day, they are in school or Montessori. Mostly, though, she has four kids under eight to deal with. Our toddler twins are mobile, opinionated and into everything. They would be more than enough to handle without the other two killing each other. Tracy cooks. She cleans. She copes. And I don’t know how.

Day in and day out, I call home or arrive home and ask how the day is and how everybody is. Day in and day out, I get the same answer: “all is cool.” She is a tour de force of a parent. I bow to her skills, her patience and her dedication. If I were in her position, the kids would be raised on a diet of cereal and Spongebob. But…

Oh, there’s a but?

Yep. In order for these days to happen and they do, 99 percent of the time, there needs to be other kinds of days. The universe demands balance and today is a day of balance. So, I call on the way home and ask how everything’s going. I don’t get “all is cool.” I get the following:

“Well, Nina has not stopped moaning at me since four o’clock. She has an eye infection and is so ratty. I had to take Sam out of Montessori early because he wet himself and was too upset to stay. Andrew has been giving out because I didn’t let him go on a playdate with Ryan. He then stood in Lorna’s (the dog) poo in the back garden and brought that into the house and stood on the rug in the dining room. I’ve had to Milton the rug and the floors and Sam gave his dinner to the dog and Nina has turned her nose up at everything and I couldn’t find the house phone but then I did find it in the sink in a bowl of water and now it’s broken.”

“Oh…kay… and how’s Anna?”

“Anna’s grand, aren’t you, Anna?” [Anna laughs in the background]

“Right, that’s good. Well, I’m on the way in a bit of traffic but will be home in less than an hour.”

“Right. See you then.”

CLICK.

So, I now know what day this is. It’s the “listen, nod politely and do whatever is asked” day. That rant above wasn’t for my ears. It doesn’t matter what the details were. I can’t do anything about any of the things that she described but that doesn’t matter. That’s not my job. My job is to listen. I don’t even have to react. She doesn’t care what I think. She just needs to vent. I need to just get to the end of the vent. So far, one out of one. Some of the pressure of the day will have already been released with the phone rant. But only some.

Right, I’m home. Time to turn the key.

Nina is moaning. Sam is in the nip (normal enough procedure) but he’s crying about being in the nip even though he took his own clothes off. Andrew is asking for more dinner. There is no more dinner. Anna is being cool. She came running over to the door, pointing at me. “Dah-Deeee! Dah-Deeee!”

In amongst the madness, I find her. There’s a quick kiss to say I’m home and then it’s back to listening.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Plan is to get this lot to bed and then I’ve to write my HerFamily article and do that report for that thing I’m doing. I’ve to call Martin as well, about coaching.”

“Right, well, you can add to that list. The bins have to go out. They’re overflowing. The roof of Lorna’s kennel needs to be felted. Anna and the lads all need a bath. Nina can’t have one because she’s under the weather. A bag of cement spilled in the shed and all your tools are in it and, if it rains, they’ll be ruined. Andrew has to do his homework, Sam needs to do jigsaws with his patch on and it’s time to give Nina some Calpol. The dishwasher isn’t filled because they were all going crazy and I took them out for a walk and a cycle but the two lads couldn’t get up the hill so I had to push them all the way up and the buggy too and then Sam went too fast down the hill and crashed into a wall. I think his bike needs to be fixed. The sound on that new TV system is broken and one of the girls’ beakers is under the sofa and I can’t get it. That chicken is out of date tomorrow too. And, before you do anything else, clean that dog poo up off the grass.”

I could tell her that I won’t get all of that done tonight. I could explain how to work the new SkyQ remote and that the sound isn’t broken. I could suggest that Andrew does his homework when he gets in from school, rather than waiting until he’s too tired and uncooperative. I could point out that the dog’s kennel has actually rotted a bit and we’re probably better off chucking it at this stage (it’s eleven years old!) and we’ll buy a new one at the weekend.

But I don’t. That’s not my job right now. I’ve done half my job. That half was to listen. The second half of my job is to say what she says to me every day when I call her on the phone and ask her how everything is.

“Cool.”

I gather the kids up. Baths, homework, jigsaws, jammies, beakers of milk, hugs, Calpol, nappies, kisses, lullabies and they’re off to bed. The SkyQ system is unmuted. Dishwasher, bins and the dog poo all get sorted. I start to write this article. Remember the chicken. Pop that in the oven with some root veg. Empty the finished dishwasher and reload. Write some more of this article. The kennel is untouched. The cement-covered tools are untouched. The slightly twisted handlebars of Sam’s bike are untouched.

She won’t mind. She won’t even remember. She’s gone to bed. A tall glass of cold water and a book. She’ll relax and sleep and, hopefully, I won’t snore enough to get a kick in the middle of the night. In the morning, I’ll be at the gym before the kids wake but they will wake. She’ll get up and sort bottles, nappies, Weetabix with honey, porridge with cinnamon and blueberries, the rest of the homework, lunches and uniforms. And that’s all before I even get back from the gym.

Then, the day will start again. I head off to work. She’ll go through all of the madness again. I’ll call her after the show, just before I leave the office, and ask how the day went.