Vaughan Smith joins One Day You'll Thank Me to talk about being the dad of two daughters. Video / NZ Herald
Welcome to season three of the Herald’s parenting podcast: One Day You’ll Thank Me. Join parents and hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.
Want to get in touch with the podcast? Email the team at odytm@nzme.co.nz.
When ZM’s Vaughan Smith isn’t lifting the early morning spirits of Kiwis via the airwaves, he can be found on his semi-rural property with his wife, Sharde, and their daughters Indie, 11, and August, eight.
The co-host of hit radio show Fletch, Vaughan and Hayleyknows he’s outnumbered by women at home, but that’s the way he likes it, he tells One Day You’ll Thank Me hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard.
“You joke about it, but I see families that are all boys, and it’s like chaos. It’s loud. Things are always getting broken. Things don’t get broken at our house. I’ll just be like, ‘There’s a Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon, just don’t touch that’. And they don’t touch it.”
Vaughan Smith (left) speaks to One Day You'll Thank Me hosts Jenni Mortimer (centre) and Rebecca Haszard. Photo / NZ Herald
“I don’t know if it’s all girls, but it can be quite calm,” he says of life at home on his family’s farmlet. “They’re quiet, and respectful. And they’re very caring, like super-caring kids, gentle, loving. I know that there are boys out there like that. They’ve got some friends that are just great little dudes, and you’re like, ‘Those are the sorts of guys you’ve got to be friends with’.”
Whenever he’s asked if he feels like he misses out on doing father-son things, he says the answer’s always no.
“I love being a dad to daughters. I don’t want to play rugby. So I don’t miss out on that sort of thing. Or I just do it with my daughters. They’re capable of anything. Anything that I would do with a son, I would just do it with my girls.”
But raising girls in a world where gender stereotypes still exist has brought up some challenges, Smith says.
“August came home from school once and said, ‘I can’t do that because I’m a girl’. I was like, ‘Show me the boy that said that’.”
Vaughan and his girls. (From left): Indie, 11, August, eight, and wife Sharde. Photo / Instagram
Hearteningly, he adds August was happily the only girl in her soccer team and “she was just one of the boys”.
“It didn’t really matter to them. She was just out there giving it her all and going to practice and everything.”
Being a father to girls, the radio star confesses he has had to get used to hearing them share - a lot.
“They’ll just tell us things, which is so nice,” he says, before admitting that sometimes he’s shocked and struggles to hide his chagrin. “Sharde’s like, ‘No, don’t react like that. They’ll think they’re not safe to tell you things. Hear them out’. And she’s far better at it than I am. I react and say, ‘What? Who? Give me his name’.”
Of his decision to move his family to a small farm, which he describes as “rural light”, Smith says he was inspired by his own rural upbringing.
“I grew up on a farm, and at the time, I didn’t like being on the farm. I wanted to move out there because, looking back on it, as soon as you don’t have it, you pine for it.”
He says Indie and August “loved it for the first little bit and then discovered YouTube families. And now it’s the constant, ‘Hey, it’s a really nice day’ - which hasn’t been the case too much this summer, but - ‘why don’t we go outside and do something?’”
Asked if he’s got a game plan for when his girls start dating, he says: “Not yet. Boys are still yuck.”
But like an old school friend who was allowed to do everything but somehow still played it safe, he says he hopes to give his daughters “freedom” but, somewhere in the back of their mind, a desire to not let their parents down.
For more of Vaughan Smith’s experiences as a dad of daughters, listen to this week’s episode ofOne Day You’ll Thank Me.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are out every Thursday.
