Graham Daniels: Parenting is ‘a long game and of course a game that we ultimately are not in control over’

Director of Christians in Sport, Graham Daniels, takes a long view of parenting and extols the virtue of being normal

Graham, let’s start with a bit of your background

OK well whilst I might sound like the most Welsh Welshman you’ve ever met I was actually born in England - my parents adopted me and brought me to Wales. Mum’s first husband had died of cancer and so by the time she’d married again it was late to have children but the Minister’s wife of the local church helped my parents think through adopting and the rest is history. My parents were brilliant, just brilliant. They were so good at being normal. My dad was a steel worker, my mum working in a factory canteen and in those days it took a town to raise a family. And it did. It did raise us, and our upbringing was absolutely brilliant. I cannot remember an unhappy time at all growing up.

And in terms of faith?

Growing up we went to a liberal Welsh speaking baptist church church every Sunday morning and Sunday School in the afternoon and it was a lovely community, great people. It was just normal. It’s what we did. My mum had a living faith, she had a little chair in the corner of the kitchen where she had a radio and a notebook for shopping and so on, and a Bible was there. So, she’d read and memorise Bible verses. We didn’t have a discipline of saying prayers or reading the Bible together but faith did permeate the home nonetheless. I’d say it was ……