Commando dad

For six years Neil Sinclair served as a commando with the British army. He had been in lots of dangerous situations, but nothing prepared him for the day when he brought his first baby home from hospital. ‘I put the car seat containing my two-day-old son Samuel down on the floor and said to my wife, ‘What do we do now?’

When he left the army, Sinclair and his wife agreed that he would stay at home and look after the baby, while his wife went back to work.

‘I have done a lot of crazy things, but when I put that baby down I thought: I have a tiny baby and he is crying. What does he want? What does he need? I did not know. It was one of the most difficult days of my life.’

It was at that moment that Sinclair had an idea.

'I found myself thinking how much easier life would be if I had a basic training manual for my baby, like the manual you get when you join the army. I realized

that somebody needed to write such a manual, and who better to write it than me? I had been a commando, but I was now a stay-at-home dad. I was the man for the job.’

His book, Commando Dad: Basic Training, is a set of instructions that explains with military precision and diagrams how new fathers should approach the first three years of their child’s life to become a ‘first-rate father’.

Adapted from The Times

Glossary

commando noun one of a group of soldiers who are trained to make