It's a Dad's Life Adam BrophyThe elder started school on a Thursday. The next Monday morning I heard a lot of parents in the playground commenting that the kids had been shocked they had to go back to school again the following week.

The chiselers thought, what with all the hype, the whole thing was just a one-shot deal. Mine included; she had looked me in the eye on the Sunday and informed me with touching sincerity, "I think I'll stay with you tomorrow, Dad. I don't really want to go to big school anymore." Tough. Welcome to working for the man.

She thinks she has it bad, but this is the first time in years I have had to be anywhere before 9am on five consecutive mornings. It's killing me. All this organisation and routine has me wound up.

Our family unit functions in haphazard mode, which is why bedtime and meal times have always been so chaotic, but that chaos is our norm. We don't hit deadlines, we arrive in places in certain time frames rather than at particular times. I succumb pathetically to repetitive nagging (every child's weapon of mass destruction) more often than not. The TV is used as a replacement nanny far too often and, as a result, dessert is often served before dinner sat in front of The Scooby Doo Show. And sometimes that dessert simply precedes another, with a couple of oven chips thrown in for nutrition. They go to bed whenever they collapse from the strain of chasing each other up and down the stairs, or when the younger goes into shock having ingested something from the bathroom on the elder's instructions. Perfect, organised chaos.

Now the real world is making demands on my little team. It wants a freshly pressed uniform, or tracksuit on Tuesdays and Fridays (missus's department, otherwise they're getting the "student" ironing technique - hanging them in the bathroom while I prune up in a hot shower). It wants healthy lunches including a portion of fruit and a non-carbonated drink. It wants hair to be brushed daily. It might want some level of involvement with the parents' association. But most of all, it wants us to be on the premises at ten to nine every morning.

So, off the elder goes, into the belly of the respectable-citizen-creating machine. She's learning to be quiet in the classroom, to put her hand up if she wants to ask a question, and that decking someone for disagreeing with you is not an acceptable mode of discourse. My Lord of the Flies child is disappearing. She is sprinting towards conformity and structure and discipline with gleeful abandon.

The younger and I are left alone together. We're eyeing each other up, wondering how we'll get on without the master of disaster that is the elder. I began casting my mind back to when we only had the one monster, and what creative methods of entertainment I employed to keep that baby smiling. Then I remembered what used to be a foolproof method of killing an hour and bonding simultaneously. I grabbed the younger, headed for the bedroom, picked up a good book and lay on the floor to read.

Instinctively she knew what to do: jump on my head. Jump on my shoulders, my back, legs, knees, bony bum. Jump off me and over me. I could stay still, soak up some literature, and smile, safe in the knowledge that I was being pummelled by a toddler who was having the time of her life.

I could belabour the point with a stretched image of the elder "jumping off me" onto the next trampoline, the school system. But no, kids just love jumping up and down on their parents and I love my kids battering me. When the elder got home that day, I had them both jumping on me. Despite the couple of broken ribs and some deep tissue damage, it was fantastic.

abrophy@irish-times.ie