Our Global Family blog series is about celebrating the differences and the similarities in the way we live our lives and parent our children throughout the globe. It’s a safe place to tell our stories and give us the privilege of gaining a small but hopefully informative glimpse into the lives of some awesome families. To find out a little bit more, read the introductory post on the Global Family blog series here. Otherwise, with no further ado, I introduce you to Theo (TheoGB451 on Instagram) and his beautiful family who resides in Melbourne, Australia.
So Theo, tell me a little bit about yourself
I’m Theo, an ageing dad who’s moved from London to Melbourne in the last 18 months.
My family consists of
We are living in
We live in Melbourne, Australia. The climate is warmer and drier than London, with winter barely getting to 0 and even then usually only in the middle of the night. We live in a single-floor wood-based Victorian style house with 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s large by London standards although possibly not much larger than our maisonette flat back home but better space use due to one level. It’s a very white area. There aren’t many indigenous Australians around here and very few black people generally. Most races you see are SE Asian followed by Indian sub-continental. But it’s overwhelmingly white and middle-class. This is a suburb called Yarraville that is pretty Stoke Newington-like except it has good public transport links.
Our weekdays
They are busy and structured. Up around 6.45am. I generally do the school run (leaving around 8.20) then go to work. My wife picks her up from after care 3 days and has half days the other two so takes her straight from school. We both have very flexible jobs luckily. When I get home we have dinner and try to get her into bed by 8pm which is a tough call.
On weekends we tend to
Visit my sister-in-law and her kids if we can or go out to the parks. Our daughter prefers to never leave the house and just force us to play My Little Pony with her. We have a swimming lesson for her every Saturday.
I’d describe my parenting style as
A losing battle? I’m not sure. I let her get to me too often in my opinion but there is only so many times you can repeat a request to do something before you have to raise your voice and get grumpy. She is pretty single-minded. Trying to get some reading done for school and stuff on top of everything else is a real battle, yeah.
The best thing about where we live is
It’s quiet and relaxed and there’s a lot of parks and things close by. We are close to her cousins for playdates and to other schoolmates.
If I had to recommend one place to visit in my town, it would be
For parents? I’m not really sure. I think the area around Federation Square is good, though.
If I won the lottery I would
Probably buy my mum and stepdad a house and then see from there.
