Our 452nd Dad in the Limelight is Jonathan Ervine. I want to thank Jonathan for being a part of this series. It has been great getting connected with him and now sharing him with all of you.
1) Tell me about yourself, (as well as how you are in the limelight for my readers knowledge)I live in North Wales with my wife and our son, who is almost a year old. We live in a rural village where most of the locals speak Welsh as their first language and we are bringing up our son bilingually in English and Welsh. I’m originally from Scotland and teach French at Bangor University and write a blog that can be found at: http://
2) Tell me about your family
My wife and I met here in North Wales and this is where we got married and where our son was born. My wife is from Bedfordshire in the south of England and I am from near Dundee in Scotland, but we’ve both become very attached to where we live. It’s a great part of the world for beautiful scenery and going walking as we’ve got both hills and the coast within easy reach.
3) What has been the largest challenge you have had in being a father?Getting used to have less sleep, or perhaps more interrupted sleep. I’ve tried to change my routine a bit and make sure that I get to bed a lot earlier than I would have before. I love to be able to spend some time playing with our son before going to work in the morning, and that means getting up quite early sometimes!
4) What advice would you give to other fathers?
I think that trying to be as involved as possible in preparing for the birth and finding out about what it’s going to involve is really important when it comes to supporting your partner and feeling ready to become a parent. It’s great that there are now quite a lot of books aimed specifically at dads and I also felt that I really benefited from talking to friends who had recently become dads and how it all was for them.
5) How have you come to balance parenthood and outside life? I’ve tried to be really disciplined about making sure that I don’t stay too late at work. I don’t like taking work home if I can avoid it, but sometimes it can be a good thing if that means that I can be home to play with our son and give him a bath. That way, I can finish off work things once he’s gone to bed.
6) What have you learned from the fathers that you have interacted with?
In some ways it’s hard to generalise as not everyone goes through exactly the same experiences, but I’d say that a lot of the fathers I know would say that just spending time with their kids is so rewarding and so much fun as they start to do new things and make sense of the world around them.
7) What else would you share regarding your experiences as a father thus far?
It can be a challenge getting used to a new routine but at the same time it’s been exciting and fun too. I enjoy silly little things like just going out on short trips to the supermarket with our son as it’s become a bit of an unlikely father and son weekend bonding ritual. I also feel that becoming a dad has been a great excuse to mess around to entertain our son and it’s so rewarding see him laugh at all sorts of silly little things.
8) What have been the most memorable experiences that you have had thus far as a parent?
The first time I saw our son do a really big smile and hearing him laugh for the first few times were really special. It was great to see him starting to interact and it’s amazing to see him develop little by little day by day and week by week.
If you have any questions for Jonathan, please leave a comment here and I will make sure that he gets them so that he may be able to respond!
Also, do you know a Dad in the Limelight? If so, please email me their contact information so that they too can be a part of this series!
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