Cool Dad Mark Tamhane - Dad of 6

Cool Dad Journey # 0028?– When you are a Dad to 6 kids, you don’t have the luxury to say – “Yeah mate, let’s catch up for that drink on Friday night”. But Mark Tamhane – a super cool dad, doesn’t need that drink. He’s busy enjoying life with his children.

Mark resides in Melbourne, Australia. Until recently he was a Senior Broadcast Journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and he’s the proud father of 6 amazing children.

We started our conversation by talking about the lack of role models in the fatherhood space. While there are many Dads out there working in the trenches every day, public acknowledgment and?appreciation are missing.

Since the time we connected on LinkedIn, I have been wanting to dig deeper into how Mark is able to do, what others think is next to impossible - wrangling half a dozen children.?

Me: How has becoming a father transformed you over the years?

Mark: I was a single child growing up and the whole idea of being around so many people in a noisy household filled me with dread. But the way things panned out – I now have 2 sets of 3 children each.

My eldest?is nearly 25 yrs old. He’s a Climate Scientist. I have three much younger children with my second wife, and the “baby of the family” is only 4.

My 2nd tranche of kids started to come along when I was 48. It’s almost like I am doing the “young family” thing for the 2nd time. But it’s definitely harder when you’re older.

When I met my 2nd wife, we talked about the things that were important to both of us. She was keen to have children. I told her - “I’ve done this before. See, here are three I’ve made already!”

So, we had Jack in 2015. At that time, we all were in Sydney, and my elder daughters used to spend several days a week with us. They’ve been around Jack since he was about three hours old and so he’s very attached to them.?

But my wife and I worried about what would happen if Jack ever fell out with his elder siblings. When we were gone, he would have no other immediate family. So, we decided to have another child a couple of years later. And then we got another surprise 14 months after that with our 3rd and my 6th child.

So, at that moment, I have a 25-year-old boy, a 21-year-old girl, an 18-year-old girl, a 7-year-old boy, and two young daughters who are 5 and 4.

With the three younger ones living with me full-time, it’s pretty busy.

I’m 55 now, and am in the process of retiring to look after the 4-year-old full time, and run the others to school and their activities.?

Both my elderly parents are still alive and that gives me - their only child - a bit more time to look out for them as well.?Luckily the company I worked for had a very good retirement plan.

My wife has also recently taken on a very demanding job where she can be working up to 16 hours a day, so I take the children to and from school, and take them to sports and birthday parties. I also do a fair amount of cooking, shopping, and other housework.

I guess it’s a traditional role reversal. It’s been interesting, but it also comes with a fair amount of judgment from some people.

Me: Considering how most of the parents get stressed out even with 1 or 2 kids, what has been your experience with raising 6 kids (in 2 different lots)?

Mark: Before our youngest child was born, my wife was talking to one of her friends who already had 3 small children, and she asked her?- “What’s it like having 3? This friend said – “You learn to care less”.

She didn’t mean loving your children less. But more in terms that the house may not be as tidy as when you were a single person or a couple.??The kids may not be wearing perfectly matched clothes and dinner might not always be on the table on time. You just stop worrying about less important things. You don’t worry about whether one child gets more TV time than they perhaps should.

You find that your time is challenged, but you make it fit.?

You also become less of a “hover parent”. I have noticed this in particular at playgrounds (we are quite blessed where we are, there are many great playgrounds nearby)

And my children will make a lot of noise and climb and hang off the equipment, and you can see other parents who might just have a single and quite timid child, looking at us in disbelief.?

My eldest daughter lives in Sydney, but she spends a lot of time in Melbourne with us.?She’ll help out with homework, getting the younger kids dressed and fed, playing with them, and putting them to bed.

So sometimes it’s like the younger ones are being partly raised by the elder kids.?

And it becomes not so much “parenting”, but more like “familying”. They pick up a lot of the slack so that I can get on with other tasks, like getting meals ready.

The main thing I have found is that what really matters is just being around. Being present. If you are an absent father, then it’s very hard to have a proper connection with your kids.

As a journalist, I could have gone to do bigger and better things, but I took a job where I could work early mornings so that I could be back early to pick up the kids from school and be there in the afternoon and evening and take them to sport and other activities.

I was pretty exhausted and I may not have been actively playing with them every single minute,?but at least I was around.??When I’m gone, they’ll probably remember me as that boring guy in the corner who was always ready with a bad Dad joke!?

I’m lucky I’ve been able to organize my work life around the children. A lot of Dads haven’t got the flexibility with their work to do that. And some of them just aren’t prepared to take on a lot of family stuff, preferring to leave that to their wives and partners. Some even use work as an excuse to avoid family time.?

And it can be tough. It’s really hard to have a decent conversation with my wife without being interrupted by the little kids – but that’s how just it is. You just have to take that in your stride even if it is very challenging.

Me: How do you shift your mindset from taking care of your younger children who are very small, as compared to your older kids who require you to become a friend or a mentor?

Mark: It's actually quite seamless. I don’t view any of my 6 children necessarily as just “children”. The secret is to treat each one as an individual - because they are unbelievably different, with totally different personalities.

Jamie, my eldest son is a really independent young man with a strong aptitude for study. He has a Master's degree. I barely scraped through university because I wasn’t a great student.

So, there is nothing much that I can guide or mentor him about in terms of study. All I can do is be there for him when he needs me.??We tend to chat a lot about science and beer!

My eldest daughter Juliette was very active in a range of sports as a teenager. She even represented Australia in rope skipping. As she grew older, we realized that she had some major health issues. So, her challenges are very different from the other children.

My 2nd eldest daughter Mia is very organized and motivated. She is a self-starter. Because there were other children to manage, she quickly figured that no one was going to do everything for her.?

Same with the younger three children. 7-year old Jack is intelligent, but also very sensitive. His younger sister Charlotte is quite sporty but very stubborn.

And we all joke that 4-year-old Grace is the most annoying child in the history of the universe!

So, it’s not so much about shifting gears between older and younger kids, it’s more about how I deal with each as an individual.

These are 6 very different people, and I have to think of it in those terms.

Me: This requires a lot of introspection about yourself when you are dealing with 6 different personalities. How do you get into the mode of preparing yourself to get into that avatar?

Mark: I think it’s just going with gut instinct. To be honest with 6 children, I never had time to read parenting books. And a lot of the time, the advice was just irrelevant.

I am not a parenting expert or guru. I just try to be what’s termed a “good enough” parent.

A lot of advice from “experts” just creates a lot of self-doubt for parents. Social media doesn’t help either – you get the impression that no other family ever has problems.

At this point, my own 6-year-old walked in to say Hello to Mark. They exchanged a few words. He had come to check with me whether he can have a chocolate. He knows when I am on a call, I will usually give a “Yes” to his request.

Kids have this great knack for asking you for things (that will otherwise get them a No) absolutely at that time when you are in the middle of something important.

But as Mark put it, that’s what parenting is all about – interruptions and catering to your kids’ needs.

He also promised to email my son a bad Dad joke – which he did.!

Me: You grew up as a single child, why do you think you were able to do all this with your children?

Mark: I had a very demanding job when my 1st child was born and was working in London as a correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. When Jamie was about 4 months old, I was sent away on a work assignment for a week.

When I came back home, I walked into the kitchen where my wife was feeding my son. He looked up and I could see that he could not register who I was.

And at that point it hit me; I didn’t want to be an absentee father who only ever seemed to be around on weekends and holidays.?

Over the next few years, I was able to step away from frontline reporting and take up senior editorial roles behind the scenes.

And that enabled me to spend more time with my children and be a much more present, involved father.

But the crucial turning point was that one moment in the kitchen.

Me: Mark, this has been a very enriching and insightful conversation for me, and hopefully for many Dads out there.

You are absolutely leading it from the front every single day. Being a Dad of 6 is not an easy job at all, but you made it sound so very much doable. You are a natural.

I hope your story inspires other Dads out there who are striving to become better Dads every day.

Mark: Thank you Rupesh for having me on Cool Dads' Club to share my experiences and journey as a father. It was such a pleasure talking to you.

Say Hello to your kids and tell them to be on the lookout for those bad Dad jokes from Mark.?