It’s Father’s Day in Australia where we live  – so Happy Father’s Day dads! Here’s a little thing I wrote which tells a bit about my kids’ dad:

My children have a silly uncle. That’s what they say anyway. “He’s so silly, he’s always trying to trick us,” they say.

One time one of them lost part of a toy on our roof, it was one of those where you pull the plastic strip through the handle and the round twirly thing on top flies up into the air. Well, this uncle, he just climbed right up there and got it back, while they watched, gobsmacked.

“Dad would never do that,” they told each other, voices hushed in awe. It’s true, Peter probably wouldn’t, not in front of the children anyway, fearing that they would then try it themselves.

But their dad can be silly too (see the picture above!). Sometimes when the children run to him, to compete for the highly-prized ‘first hug’ when he gets home from work, he ducks and weaves and runs away from them, laughing maniacally. They all run after him, squealing, “Daddy, stop, I want the first hug!” and he answers, “No! Mummy gets the first hug today!” And I do. It’s pretty silly.

Now, me, I’m naturally serious and the children know this. But this works in my favour, because they find it so hysterically funny when I come out with something silly – like when I decided to talk like a robot all through dinner time.

Family life can be so serious – with work and bills, shopping and cooking, parent-teacher interviews and performance appraisals, sicknesses and accidents. That’s part of the parental lot. The problem is when things become deadly serious without us realising it, when we suddenly notice we’re being churned through the daily grind and there’s no joy in our time together.

Then it’s high time we turn up the music too loud, pull out some corny jokes or magic tricks, whatever it takes, but be a bit – or a lot – silly. The kids love it and we feel a lot lighter.

How about your family? Do you have a silly one that can usually be relied on to bring a bit of fun to things?