Living in lockdown with small children means distracting them with the same thing, over and over again, until you – like Ben Jenkins – are driven insane
Every parent of a young child in lockdown either knows this fact or is about to learn it: you don’t get to choose where they find their joy.
For example, my two and half year old son likes to listen to the Thomas and Friends Storytime podcast. It is, by some margin, his favourite thing to do. By a similar margin, the opening “toot toot” of the podcast is my least favourite sound on the entire planet, which now activates my fight or flight reflex every time I hear it. But due to some quirk of evolution, I find myself unable to deny my boy his train show, as it gives him the kind of happiness unattainable to adults without the use of class-A drugs.
