If being a dad has taught me one thing, it's this ...

To mark Father's Day, a group of Telegraph fathers share their wisdom

Always keep the show on the road

By Christopher Hope

I always liken parenthood to a football match. When my wife, Sarah, and I had our first, Barnaby, it was two against one: we marked him out of the game. When Sapphire came along two years later, we man-marked them - one each. Then, three years on, Pollyanna's arrival saw us adopt a zonal system. Often, this meant just keeping an eye on the exits and letting the three of them get on with it in the middle.

The game changed beyond recognition on April 25 2007. An out-of-control bus mounted a pavement in south-west London and hit Sarah, Pollyanna and Sarah's mother, Elizabeth. They were 200 yards from our house.

Tragically, Elizabeth, aged 65, died. Sarah suffered severe damage to her left leg and hip. Pollyanna, aged two at the time, had to have her leg amputated below the knee.

Over the following days and weeks I slept by Pollyanna's hospital bed, with Sarah in a bed on the floor below. Pollyanna had a dozen operations on her stump in the space of a month. We were all in shock. Now, looking back, I remember getting particularly upset when changing her nappies. I could no longer grab both ankles to wipe her bottom.

The bus crash - it was no "accident", as the driver went to prison - changed me in ways that only now seem apparent. I became fanatically emotional about attending important events in my children's lives.

I think I've missed one sports day, and not a single school play. Even if I could only be there for part of an event, I would be. Sarah and I have worked as a team throughout. She is a wonderful mum to the three children, and has taken Pollyanna to the vast majority of hospital appointments. I have tried to do my share.

I see my role as trying to keep the show on the road, support Sarah emotionally and be a dad to the children. It has been and remains an absolute privilege. There is no greater honour.

Christopher, Sarah and her sister Victoria set up a charity in memory of Elizabeth to raise funds to support amputee children. Support its work at elizabethslegacyofhope.org

Don't expect too many thank-yous

By Mick Brown

The lesson that I always tried to impress on my children about Father's Day is that it is nothing but a cynical invention of the gift and greeting card industry, and that they should resist any blandishments to part with their money for a "Best Dad In The World" coffee mug, or a once-in-lifetime skydiving experience.

It is a lesson well learnt. Or at least that's the excuse I have given myself over the years for the complete absence of any acknowledgement at all that it's Father's Day, beyond a cursory telephone call or email - "Everything OK, Dad?"

And after all I've done! Where's the thanks? The gratitude?

Here's how it works. For years you serve as an unpaid chauffeur, collecting from pop concerts and friends' parties. Having slipped the bounds of formal education you are plunged back into the horrors of physics and history homework. You worry about the company they keep, the places they go. They depart with a rucksack and for months afterwards you greet every ring of the telephone torn between joy and terror.

And yet you emerge from these years of self-sacrifice, ruinous bills, anxiety and fatigue feeling blessed to have had them, eternally grateful.

For what you have hoped to achieve, above all things, is for them to be not what you might selfishly want them to be, but utterly themselves, and while they're about it to be compassionate, considerate and kind - even to you. And they are all of those things.

They will cook you splendid lunches and bestow upon you the priceless gift of grandchildren. And one day your son will miraculously conjure up tickets for the Cup Final for the team you've followed all your life, and he has followed all of his, and, even when they lose, it will be one of the best days of your life.

It's all the thanks you'll ever need.

Ink is not unthinkable

By Andrew Baker

When my elder daughter said she wanted to get a tattoo, soon after her 18th birthday, there was a moment of panic while I ran through the options: F-I-G-H-T, a letter on each knuckle of the right hand? Jeremy Corbyn on her left cheek? Expansive angels' wings on the shoulder blades?

In fact she wanted a small cartoonish fox asleep on the inside of one wrist, a notion so charming in comparison to our worst fears that my wife and I not only agreed to pay for it but to accompany Lucy to the parlour to get it done.

It was a strange experience, sitting outside in the hipsterish ante-room of the Clerkenwell tattooists' while our child was voluntarily wounded on the other side of the wall. We leafed through the catalogues, suggesting designs for each other and trying not to listen for squeals.

We didn't pay for the next tattoo - indeed, we didn't find out about the next tattoo until Lucy revealed a six-inch representation of a bunch of red roses taking up most of one side of her ribcage. But by then she was at university, and tattoos were just one of many areas of her life that were no longer entirely our business.

Parenthood is a constant process of letting go, from the very first day. My daughters are now 18 and 20, so in one sense I no longer have any children - that is, I have two young adults.

Helicopter parenting is no longer an option. That is not to say that we are out of touch. When I was at university there was one payphone between 250 students and I spoke to my parents once a week.

Now my elder daughter is on Twitter and/or Facebook more or less constantly, and via social media I may be more in touch with her than her younger sister, Emily, who is upstairs (and also on Twitter, and probably Snapchat).

We can still come in useful. My wife has become expert in the texting of puppy memes to quell nocturnal unhappiness. I am diligent in retweeting the less outrageous of my daughters' posts, and have learned not to rise to their online bait (#TorySnake). But ink and piercings? Out of our hands ...

Record EVERYTHING

By Michael Deacon

Write it all down. And I mean all. What they say, what they do: the funny, the cute, the banal. Write it all down.

A friend of my father-in-law's gave me that advice, just after my son was born three years ago, but it's only recently that I've realised how important it is. Keep a notebook: a record of your child's childhood, and your fatherhood. Because when you're older, you'll want to remember. Without that notebook, you may find you can't. Your memory is smudged. The details have faded. The past is mist.

I want to remember everything. I want to remember my son's love of snails, swings, wearing his swimming goggles in the street, and above all trains: watching them, riding them, being them ("Look, Daddy, I'm a train! I'm chuffing!").

I want to remember the pride with which he'll point to a capital E, and say, "Daddy, that's the letter three! I'm three!" And I want to remember him scampering towards me, throwing his arms around my legs - then wiping his runny nose against my jeans.

They're funny, toddlers - mainly because they never mean to be. Freewheeling eccentrics, unhindered by self-consciousness, wobbling and babbling like tiny drunks.

I want to remember my son's insistence on cuddling a spare pair of his own trousers, the way other children cuddle a comfort blanket. And I want to remember the morning Mummy was feeling tired, so he offered her his trousers - because he thought it might help her to cuddle them, too.

He's so determined to grow up. The awe in which he holds bigger boys: worldly, urbane young men of five, six, seven years old, playing pirates together in the park, occasionally glancing down in puzzlement at the toddler following them around in silent admiration, eager to be included. "Daddy," he'll inform me, "I'm not a little boy. I'm a bigger boy."

He really will be, one day. And when he is, I want to remember what it was like when he wasn't.

I'm not sporty enough to keep pace with my sons

by Ben Ross

As the older brother of two sisters, I wasn't quite prepared when it came to fathering two boys - now aged 15 and 12. I'm not saying that my sisters made me effete, but there does seem to be a lot more rough and tumble in our house than I remember. And actual tons of Lego.

The early years were easy. I understood the parameters back then: I gave love and shoulder rides; they gave cute in return. A fair exchange.

These days, things are more complicated. Instead of shoulder rides, they want arm wrestles. My older son spends at least two afternoons a week in the gym, a place that holds utter horror for me. When it comes to arm wrestles, he wins, er, hands down.

Him: "Daaad: try harder!"

Me: "But it hurts! Stop it!"

He's doing GCSE sport, my eldest, where I would have been listening to The Cure in a darkened room. He's proud of his six-pack, where I am sagging in the middle. His relentless focus on athleticism means I've been forced to take up skiing (both boys are better than me) and even my sofa-based interest in football has been called into question. "WHY are we playing GIROUD up front, Dad?" Honestly, I don't know, son. Arsène (almost certainly a proper dad) knows best.

The younger one plays cricket and has a backhand that floors me at tennis; his brother can outsprint me, out-American- football me, and certainly out-"play fight" me.

I find myself resorting to the worst sort of puns and dad jokes in an effort to keep up. They counter with professional-level eye-rolling and an invitation to celebrate Father's Day by taking them on in an Ultimate Frisbee challenge, when all I want is a lie-in.

My sisters, as you may have guessed, are no help at all.

Patience, patience, patience

By Rhymer Rigby

What has being a dad taught me? I'm not sure - other than the obvious stuff, such as being able to change a nappy (which, now my children are 10 and six, I am hoping to unlearn).

I'm not a great learner of life lessons. So I put the question to the 10 year-old.

"What have you taught me?" I asked.

"That you have no life," she replied.

Fair point. Holidays spent climbing Indonesian volcanoes; skiing; a working knowledge of London's best restaurants: all have fallen by the wayside. But discovering that you have more responsibility and less disposable income isn't really a life lesson. It's just ... life.

Next, I asked my wife. "They have taught you patience," she said, with a look of real satisfaction.

And she's right. I am not a patient person. "For God's sake, hurry up," could be my motto. But my children have taught to me wait and not hate it too much.

It's pragmatic patience. It's not a small orchestra playing in the background while my second daughter methodically laces up her shoes. It's patience that recognises that no matter how much I chivvy her along, she's going to do it in her own time. It's patience that recognises that if I'm stupid enough to drag someone who is four feet tall up Snowdon, we won't be walking at my pace.

I suspect it has been good for me - even made me a better person. It's certainly made me better at taking buses and sitting in meetings.

It has also made me profoundly grateful for smartphones.

I'll always be an outsider on the Mum circuit

By Michael Hogan

My oh-so-modern status as a semi-stay-at-home dad happened by accident. When the arrival of our son Charlie coincided with me becoming a self-employed writer who works from a "garden office" (OK, glorified shed) at home, it made logistical sense for me to do the lion's share of the parental gruntwork when it came to nursery.

Fast-forward eight years and we have two children at our lovely local primary: Charlie and his five-year-old sister Kitty.

My job is to get them there in the mornings, scoop them up in the afternoons and generally keep them alive until their mum gets home from work. I'm by no means the only dad at the school gates, but we're still the minority. Mums outnumber dads by four to one, I'd guess. (I haven't actually counted, that would look weird).

Mums are the queen bees: chatting to teachers, competitively comparing homework, setting up bake sales. Dads are the self-conscious gatecrashers. Mums air kiss and linger. Dads dash straight in and out.

We feel awkward, like we've accidentally stumbled into the ladies' powder room. Even though I'm there every day, the school still reflexively call my partner if the children get sick.

After school, the playpark is full of mum cliques. Go to a children's party at the weekend and there might be prosecco or white wine for the grown-ups, rarely beer or red. Hi mums. Me again. I know, sorry.

I don't expect the world's smallest violin to be playing. I'm lucky to spend more time with my children than many parents of either gender.

But don't believe the hype about co-parenting equality. It's still a mums' world out there. Us dads are just allowed to rent a small corner of it.

It's fine to be clueless

By Richard Moynihan

At what point does the wonder of fatherhood fade? It's two and a half years since my daughter arrived on Christmas Day. Usually by Boxing Day, I'm bored of most gifts but she becomes more charming and marvellous as she evolves. Is that just the hormonal flush of a new parent or is my heart so permanently, hopelessly hers now? Have my own parents always felt like this about me? If my dad is still as enthralled by the tip of my 34-year-old nose, he's got really good at downplaying it.

Fatherhood is a never-ending series of questions. Will I ever not feel tired again? Is my expensive mobile phone predominately a locket now, full of treasured photos of her? What if she wants to go backpacking in eighteen years time? Would it be weird if I insisted on going too?  Early on, I realised that there aren't any definitive answers. Somehow this precious cargo is ours to safely escort to whatever destiny awaits her. And my god, have I been winging it from day one.

Of course I skipped the parenting books. If I didn't need to read the instructions when I set up our new TV, surely I didn't need any for a baby? They sleep, they eat, they howl. And then suddenly, my daughter was no longer a baby but a "big girl". She's inherited her very best qualities from her mother and some unknown quirks from god knows where. Who taught her to burst in on me in the bathroom and yell "Hellooooo shopkeeper!" as I try to keep aim and throw diversionary toiletries at her to 'buy'?

With no prior qualifications, and largely thanks to my loving wife's patient support, I think I've done a passable job as a dad so far. Rose is a happy, curious, determined toddler, with an adorable empathy for other people. No other child can go without a toy or a cuddle in her presence. When I'm done drying her hair in the evening, if she sees her mum brushing her own, my daughter insists on tenderly raking a brush over my bald head so I'm not left out. She stands on my lap, her little nose close to mine, with her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth, just like my dad and I do when we concentrate. And again, the questions: I should probably tell her this really hurts my scalp, shouldn't I? How will I cope when she grows out of this and finds a new game? We'll see. And the absolute honour is mine.