My daughter started secondary school last week. I feel old now.

It always seems like she will never change and that things in the future are going to be impossibly difficult, but when it gets round to things it always goes ok.  I spoke to her on the phone the other day and in the few days since I had last seen her, her voice had changed.  She really is growing up now.

Her capsule review of her first big day at big school? “Boring.”

That’s my girl

I had the pleasure of having to sit through my daughter’s DARE graduation on Monday. While an attempt to educate kids about the dangers of drugs is laudable, the method is laughable.

For starters, the course she took focused on smoking, drinking, glue sniffing and cannabis. The more damaging drugs were left out. Error. We live in a drinking culture, and it is no good telling kids not to drink and smoke when these extremely harmful drugs are socially acceptable. She has seen her mum getting hammered for the last ten years. How hypocritical is it of DARE to say that is wrong when millions of people get wasted every weekend?

The cannabis section was full of lies. The dangers they warned of are due to the smoking of tobacco with cannabis without using a filter. That information is misleading and plain incorrect. When they tried to give reasons for not doing cannabis, all they could come up with was the lame “you might stop being interested in after school clubs”. FFS.

Rather than trying to scare kids into not doing drugs, a more informed approach is required. DARE is trying hard, but their “facts” are not correct, and teaching moderation is likely to be more successful than scaring people into abstinence.

The only upside to the whole painful event was all the kids singing the “DARE song”, which made me laugh out loud. I will be sure to remind my offspring of that song when she is hungover one day

Ok, she knows all the swear words now and I have heard her and her friends swearing like navvies. I decided to swear in front of her to see what would happen, and we both found it hilarious. She found out that her head teacher swears too.

Now the more traditional readers may think that this is the beginning of the end of morals, and that my offspring will become a crack smoking teenage mother. However, after the novelty had worn off, she now swears in front of me very rarely. In her own words “there is just no point in swearing all the time.” This implies that regardless of what I do, she is starting to choose her own behaviour. She is not a copying monkey. Sure, it’s nice to set a good example, but I think she might be old enough to make her own mind up now

The topic of disgruntlement this week has mainly been gold digging women who are out for a free ride. This can be out of plain laziness, or lack of earning potential. More specifically, what is getting me this week is those women that can do nothing apart from have kids and sponge off either the state or some mug of a bloke. This situation makes me see red.

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I’m a weekend dad. I’m introverted, cynical and blunt and so is my kid. Trying to find things that fulfil the following criteria is proving difficult:

• She has to enjoy it, because she has a short attention span and no tolerance.
• I have to enjoy it, because I have a short attention span and no tolerance.
• It has to be cheap, because I live on a student loan.
• It has to be in the East Midlands.

Now, cheap things to do are plentiful everywhere, but we think they are all shit. She is growing up fast, and enjoys horse riding and playing on her abundance of computers and consoles. If I take her riding, she buggers off on a pony for an hour while I stand around waiting for her to come back (and hoping she hasn’t been thrown and/or trampled). If I let her play games all day, we hardly speak. Neither are ideal.

I really struggle to find things to do when I see her. I fell asleep while she was playing Sims 2 last week, and now she thinks I hate her. Oops.