I started writing this blog under the name Dystrophy Dad for two main reasons, I’m a dad with muscular dystrophy and alliteration just makes my brain tingle.

I’ve gradually found myself drifting from writing about parenthood because these days, parenting is no more a challenge for me than any other parent – my disability isn’t much of a factor.

When the wee one was, well, wee, there were obstacles to overcome. For a start, have you tried fitting a wheelchair and a pram, a baby, two adults and a dog in the same car?

Then there were other challenges like matching her energy levels with a body that likes to remind me I’m less capable, getting up through the night, managing alone when Tracy would have to work shifts.

It kinda feels like my job stopped on the day she learned to wipe her own ass. Or at least when she was capable of dressing herself.

She’s at high school, so her childhood is pretty much over – a horrible thought, and now we’ve got a teen.

The hormones and attitude have arrived just on time and we’re spending less of our day together.

That’s not to say we don’t take trips as a family, just that our evenings are quieter and sometimes movie night just doesn’t happen because she has a better offer.

And I’m okay with this, I’d much rather hear her laughing on the phone to her friends than have her sit in silence, feeling obligated to sit with us.

I recognise that this is her life, her free time, and if she’d rather spend that time in her own company, that’s fine too.

Although sometimes she tells us she’s bored and I wonder how people actually get bored these days.

I’m an 80s kid, but my childhood was spent in the 90s. Mobile phones were new, and costly, 10p a text and you had to hit the same key multiple times to get the letters you needed.

Imagine writing a blog like that! No thanks.

You’d go out of your way to pay for a ringtone, or key it in on your Nokia. Now if my phone rings I treat it with suspicion, then turn the volume off.

There were four channels, with a fifth on the way but now you can summon whatever you want to watch on a whim.

You can command a miniature robot to play whatever song you want to hear, no more multi-bus trips to town to buy your chosen music (Hanson and Eminem come to mind), reading the lyrics booklet on the way home.

And video games! The same trip as buying a CD to come home on a rainy Saturday and marvel at the fact that we were at a stage where we were able to depict Lara Croft’s triangular titties in Tomb Raider, and Cloud’s lego block hands in Final Fantasy VII.

What a time to be alive.

These days you don’t even have to get dressed to access the latest games – and the titties aren’t even triangles!

Forgive me for coming over all Uncle Albert there.

I have to admit though, I find the sheer amount of entertainment to choose from overwhelming, so I expect she does too, and spending 40 minutes trying to settle on something to watch is bound to get boring.

For now, I prefer to document our family trips, give her the room she needs to grow and be there when she needs me.

This new stage is very different, and our main focus is guiding her through physical and emotional changes.

The world is vastly different to the one I grew up in, and I’ll be honest, I struggle living in it, let alone helping a teenager navigate it, yet we try our best.
Yeah, our evenings are a lot more chilled and we get to watch what we want but a bit of me will always miss holding her in my arms as she giggled through In the night garden, and cried every time Iggle Piggle sailed off home.

The page isn’t going anywhere, but you’ll likely see more diversity in what I write about and that’s exciting.

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