Talking fatherhood with Jay Reeve

My amazing little family consists of the matriarch, wife, angel, glue and all seeing eye, Anna. She has three children, Oscar, Hunter and myself who all punish her on varying levels of annoyance whilst trying our best to make her proud.

Are twins twice the trouble, or twice the fun?
Fifty times the fun! They are best friends, worst enemies, the most annoying and hilarious person all at the same time. They have huuuge love for us but even more for each other, they are crazy crazy fun. They have each others backs at all times, long may that continue.

What’s the best part about being a father?
It is a special responsibility being a father, especially two boys. Trying to keep them on an even keel with my questionable moral compass is a great journey to be on. Respect, empathy and manners are big focuses in our family. Being a gentleman, an advocate for equality all starts at a young age. There is two of them so they can achieve twice as much by working together.

You’re just about to move home to Mt Maunganui, after raising the twins for their first three years in Auckland. How’s the change going?
We are heading to Mt Maunganui at the end of September, I am really excited about the move, it’s my home town, all my family are there, the boys cousins are there and heaps of my school friends have recently moved back as well. I’ve been trying to sneak home from Auckland for the last decade and finally everything aligned to make it happen. We are going to be living across the road from the beach so i'm looking forward to getting back in the water and seeing the boys do the same.

You’re a natural born trouble maker and the twins appear to have inherited this from you, is it hard finding a balance of being the cool fun dad, and doing discipline too?
It would be a fair assumption to say I know how to enjoy myself. I have lines that are clearly defined and expectations on how people behave in a family. My mother is a early childhood teacher so I have learnt a lot from her and I was a primary teacher so i kinda feel like I have developed the skills to see a problem before it arises and give the boys all the information they need to make good decisions. You can never be right 100% of the time, kids need to learn their own lessons and limits. It breaks my heart to see nets around our trampoline, but every son has a mother.

I don’t think we talk enough about how hard becoming a parent is, what are some lessons you learnt that you would share with new parents?
We have been pretty open about how hard it was for us to have a family, I guess it has just made us realise how lucky we are to have our amazing boys in our life. Children complicate and simplify your life all at the same time. They bring you the biggest joys and sleep deprivation. Anna and I were either gonna be made or broken on our journey to becoming parents, we are closer now than ever before. At the end of the day, it’s not easy, nothing ever worth doing is, take the responsibility seriously. There are enough shitty people doing shitty things to people, be the example you want to see your children become.