Children need their parents. Parents provide support, comfort, wisdom, structure, someone to look up to, and all that mature adult jazz. Parents are important, they matter. Right?

Amused horse is amused.

Yeah, well, my precious daughter, who just turned 12, doesn’t need me for a whole lot, it seems. It’s great that she’s independent and can take care of herself, of course, and that I can rest easy leaving her to her own devices. (This is not a humblebrag.) The less she needs me, the more time I have for other stuff, which is great in principle. But given how much time, effort, care, and worry I’ve invested in her over the past 12 years, I feel a bit cheated and sidelined here. I realize and appreciate that my purpose as a parent is to make myself redundant, and that’s fine, but come on, I always imagined parental redundancy wouldn’t hit until your kid is about to leave the nest.

But, hey, I’m still definitely needed for a few things. I am not redundant yet. So, for the record, and in the interest of adding my small (and unoriginal) contribution to the annals of parenthood, here are the critical functions I still fulfill for my daughter, in alphabetical order (because it just looks nice):

Alarm clock

Daughter: Dad!

Dad: Daughter!

Daughter: Alarm!

Dad sets the morning alarms in his phone.

Dad: Set!

Daughter: Time?

Dad: 07:00!

Daughter: Well done!

From Sunday to Thursday, that is our evening script (loosely translated from Finnish). I am my daughter’s default alarm clock. She does own an actual alarm clock, and she has a smartphone, so it’s not like she lacks humane options. She occasionally even sets an alarm herself, but all that usually amounts to is her killing the alarm on the first ring and dozing off to wait for Dad to come wake her up. I’ve (almost) never failed to wake her up at the correct time, and she’s never been late to school on my (or anyone’s) watch, but somehow that “Well done!” always sounds a little bit like a warning.

Discretionary fund

My proverbial purse strings are famously looser and my grasp of judicious spending hilariously less developed than my wife’s, and our daughter picked up on this very early on. My wife is absolutely no Scrooge, but when it comes to fun money, that’s definitely more my department. It also doesn’t help that I very much relate to the non-essentials that Julia likes to spend on, whereas my wife does not: digital goods in video games.

Of course you need to purchase Star Coins to buy the latest magic horse, and of course you need to purchase Robux to buy cool gear to wear when you murder people in Murder Mystery 2. I get it. Which is why Julia always comes to me. Now, she does have to use her own money – I’m nothing if not a responsible parent. But should she sometimes lack that money or just not want to spend her own on digital goods in a video game, well, what’s a 1000 Star Coins here, a 1000 Robux there. I’m also a very reasonable parent.

IT support

Obviously. I’ve been into computers since I was a teenager. Of all the people Julia knows, kids and adults alike, I’m almost certainly the most literate in all things computer hardware and software. So of course I’m the IT support.

If only she would take the occasional opportunity to learn something from my vast pool of nerdy knowledge. Like, who doesn’t want to know what a file system is, how the CPU makes a computer tick, why it’s important to keep your software up to date, or why password managers rule? But, man, if she sniffs even the slightest hint of “Dad’s teaching a lesson”, she clocks out.

Night watch

On the increasingly rare occasion when Julia has a nightmare and can’t fall back to sleep, it’s me she comes to wake up. Because I’m more comforting? Nah, it’s because Mom is more important and needs her sleep more than Dad needs his. Which is fair because a sleepy Mom is way grumpier in the morning than a sleepy Dad. In fact, between approaching my wife in the morning as she’s trying to wake up after too short a sleep and, say, kicking a sleeping lion in the middle of a pride of sleeping lions, I’d risk the lions any morning of the week.

Sass test dummy

Julia has a strong cheeky streak that often spills over into playfully snarky. Especially with me. I suspect my fatherly mission to instill in my daughter a healthy disrespect of male authority has something to do with this. But I’m also sure it’s mostly just her. And if she wants to use me as a safe training environment for trying out assertiveness, I’m happy to oblige.

By way of a “thank you”, she could acquiesce to a few computer lessons here and there, though.

Screen time dispenser

This is like a temporal discretionary fund. She knows I’m an easier mark for this because I also enjoy my healthy share of quality screen time (TV shows, movies, video games). So, when her phone is about to lock while she’s still in-game at a friend’s, it’s me she calls, almost never Mom. And when she does call Mom, it’s to tell her to get hold of me to call her about more screen time. (More often than not, I didn’t hear my phone ring because I had my headphones on while playing a video game or watching a movie.)

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There are a few more, but I think that covers the important ones. Like I said, not redundant yet!

For the record, too: It goes without saying that Mom really is more important than Dad, and that Mom is more needed than Dad, which is fine by Dad. But this also means that the parental responsibilities are a bit lopsided. Which, in turn, means that Mom, unlike Dad, actually has legitimate grounds to complain. Albeit in the other direction. However, this is Dad’s soapbox. Mom can go write her own blog.

(Fun fact: I struggled to come up with a topic for this year’s post because the broad strokes of Julia’s year were much like those of the previous year, and the one before that, and so on and so forth: school is going well + increasingly independent + horses. So I asked my wife to do a guest post. What a twist! Well, she declined.)

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2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021 / 2022 / 2023 / 2024 / 2025 / 2026

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Even horses get free hugs. Unlike some Dads.

Speaking of hugs and dumbass Dads. I made a deal with Julia: For every piece of old junk she was willing to sell at the flea market, I would take -1 hugs. She counted every friggin little thing. By the end, I was at -823 hugs.

I don’t even notice the fist anymore.

Start of summer is the best.

Warrior princess. (Her uncle buys the coolest shit.)

Joy to a parent’s eye.

Of course we went rollercoastering again at Linnanmäki.

No camping this year. But we did sleep on the balcony on one hot summer’s night. (It was apparently too cold for Mom.)

Beautiful things deserve a photo.

I just can’t catch a break: “Julia’s. DO NOT TOUCH. Especially you, Dad. I’m watching you, Dad.”

Interlude: Dad catching a break by the Mediterranean on a work trip (which included almost zero work).

She’s been riding for like four years now. So I guess she knows what she’s doing.

Lux Helsinki 2026 was… brilliant.

She ordered the regular adult portion. The serving lady was surprised and skeptical. Not pictured: Massive minute steak.

12 years to the day. What a great ride this is.