For the past week and a half my wife has been away in Montreal taking a course.  This has left me as a temporary single father.  Now, I realize this is nothing at all like what real single dads go through, but it may have given me some insight.  It also has allowed me to understand how much my wife does around here.

We have two kids, Jon who is 8, and Maddie who is 15.  John has high functioning autism, so he is always a bit of a challenge, whether his Mom is here or not.  Maddie is perhaps the most low maintenance cool kid ever (and that is not bias, it is the truth, seriously…).

Isabelle has gone away before and I have done this before.  That said, this one is for a month, so this is a bit more of a challenge.  

First off the good.  You know, there are things I just love to eat.  Two of those things are chili dogs and pork chops.  These are not really in Isabelle’s culinary wheelhouse, so well, you know, it is not that big a sacrifice to not cook these items (I do most of the cooking at home).   The first night that Isa was away,  chili dogs, to which Madeleine let out a “wOOt”.  The next night, grilled pork chops, and Maddie and I polished off about oh 2.0 kg of pork…  Jon was impressed with neither, which was no big deal, but he did sit down to dinner with us, which was pretty cool (usually he runs around at top speed yelling about helicopters and recon planes as he is a bit of a Call of Duty fan…)  I attribute Jon’s behaviour to the fact that he cannot play one parent off against another.  It would be the same if I was away.

That night though, well, things were a bit, oh shall we say, different.  Maddie came to me and told me she needed, oh what is a good euphemism.. let’s go with “feminine hygiene products”.  So, off to the store, about 1.5 km away I went.  Now, the thing is, I am legally blind, so no driving, so I walked.  The cool thing was, you know what?  She was totally comfortable asking me to go, and I was comfortable talking to her about something that I imagine she would usually ask Isabelle.

The next day Maddie and I recorded our podcast with Jon talking in the background.  This was our first episode together (Maddie just replaced Isabelle on the show) and it seemed fitting that we do our first show while Maman is away.

So far so good.  That said, Maddie just left for a school trip to Chicago, so I am on my own with the boy for a few days.  However, let’s leave that to my next post.

Dr. Dave Brodbeck is a professor of psychology at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie ON.  He is married, and has two great kids.  Dave is the host of Why? The Science Show For Kids, thunderbird six, and co hosts Broca’s Area and Tangential Convergence. He can be found on twitter, usually making sarcastic comments.