It’s less than a month to my son’s first birthday and whenever anyone asks me about my experience of becoming a father, I feel like I have nothing new to offer tens of thousands of years of established observations and discourse.  

“I just feel,” I say.  

“Like all the cliches are true. The intensity of the love. The joy. The exhaustion. It’s all true!”  

But one of the things I’ve come to appreciate more is the difference between theory versus experience. There’s stuff I knew about parenting. I understood the theory. But it has taken experiencing it to properly get it, to appreciate it in my marrow.  

Case in point: newborn babies almost never look very good. They’re always a bit squished or alien, a bit like a bald marsupial. And yet, when you’re a new parent, you’re sure that your baby is different. Perfect and symmetrical and gorgeous in every way.  

I knew this before we had our son. I had observed the phenomenon in close friends. And yet when our boy arrived, I was convinced.  

‘He really is gorgeous. I know it’s a thing. I know new parents get new parent goggles. But this is different!’ I thought.  

I look back now, and I’ve sobered up a bit. In the photos he looks like a newborn. It took experiencing that to properly get it.  

I’d love this to be a funny little story but sadly it’s not. I just wanted to use the point to illustrate something else. Before having our boy, other parents told me how having a child changed they felt when they heard about accidents or tragedies affecting children in the news.  

I could understand it, but I couldn’t understand it if you know what I mean.  

This last year, I’ve really noticed the change – for someone who’s worked in news all his life, it’s quite something. This morning, I just cannot stop thinking of the poor families at Mt Maunganui, especially the parents of the young people who are still missing.  

Could there be a more iconic Kiwi campground? A happier summer spot?  

The response effort is ongoing. But the thought of those families enjoying a summer holiday and all of the joy that brings, the ice creams and the card games and the memories... and for that to end in a moment, in a freak accident, like this... it’s just hideous.  

This really isn’t about me. It’s just to say that after Mt Maunganui, I couldn’t help but think a lot about my own boys and just imagine how awful these days and this waiting will have been for those poor families whose kids are missing. It’s another dimension to parenting I had to experience to fully understand.  

I love my boys so intensely, but we all know there’s nothing any of us can do to fully protect anyone in this world. Some things are left up to chance and luck. And freak accidents happen. I just hope the poor families at the centre of this have every last bit of support that will possibly help them in any way.