Today Extra host David Campbell on the challenges of parenting twins
Today Extra host David Campbell opens up about the unique challenges of parenting twins.
Stellar
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When singer and Today Extra host David Campbell released his first children’s book Stupid Carrots last year, he needed it to be a success.
That’s because the book was based on his daughter Betty, 5, and her reluctance to eat vegetables – and her twin brother, Billy, was expecting a book of his own.
“When you’re a twin parent, you have to evenly appease each one,” Campbell tells Stellar On Friday. “If Stupid Carrots didn’t work, I would have had to do some self-published manifesto online book, that I’d drawn myself, to appease Billy. And then pretend sales are going through the roof with my own charts.”
Luckily, Campbell didn’t have to do that. Stupid Carrots was a success and now he, and Billy, have followed it up with Bedtime Is Boring, a story about Billy Bunny and his reluctance to go to sleep.
“Up until a year ago, bedtime was a struggle with Billy,” Campbell says. “This is Billy in book form.”
While Betty has been boasting about her book, Campbell – who returns to performing with his big band on Sunday, March 20, at Sydney’s Sunset Piazza – jokes that Billy has been quietly gleaming.
“Betty was very much like, ‘This is my book. Read it again’, whereas Billy has been quietly proud. It’s like he’s saying, ‘All is right with the world, I’m not the neglected twin anymore.’
“Now Leo [Campbell’s eldest son, 10] wants one.” Campbell laughs, adding that while being a dad to three never gets easier, it’s speeding by before his eyes.
“Parenting is a juxtaposition of acknowledging that I really need more sleep than I’ve been getting in the past 10 years but then saying, ‘I like getting up at 1am because they hold my little hand!’ And this won’t last forever and I should cherish this.”
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