It’s warm, it’s well-meant, and the person giving it has absolutely no idea that what they’ve just said reveals more about them than it does about you. It lands with a smile and leaves you nodding politely, with a slightly complicated feeling you can’t quite name.

I got one of those recently.

It was a day out with Sophie’s dad — the twins’ grandad. We’d found a good spot in a restaurant, the four of us, and we were each holding one. A boy and a girl, content for once, not simultaneously demanding something. We were just sitting there, two men, going about our day (out).

A woman stopped at our table on her way out. She leaned in slightly, looked at the two of us, and said that she just had to say that she was impressed.

And then she left.

She meant it as a compliment. Unfortunately, she missed the point entirely.

I looked at Sophie’s dad. He looked at me. We did the thing where you smile until someone is out of earshot and then have the actual conversation.

Impressed. She was impressed. By two men sitting in a restaurant holding babies.

She was kind. She genuinely meant it. But what she was really saying was that she hadn’t expected this. That two men, out with babies, holding them competently, not visibly struggling, was somehow beyond the baseline of what she’d assumed she’d see.

So much so that she felt she had the right to come up and tell us.

Nobody has ever walked up to a mother in a restaurant and told her they were impressed. They’ve walked up to twin mums and said “ooh double trouble” and “you’ve got your hands full” but even with twin mums no one is saying “I just have to say I’m impressed”.

Earlier that same day, different café. Sophie’s dad and I walked in with the double buggy, found a table, got the twins out. And I became aware, gradually, of the room. The small smiles from strangers that nobody was directing at the table of mums with toddlers in the corner.

Not in a hostile way. Not even in an unwelcome way, really. People were charmed. But that’s almost the point — we were charming them by existing. By being there. By doing, in public, something that mothers do every single day without anyone finding it remarkable in the slightest.

I find it funny, mostly — the absurdity of being treated like an exhibit for taking your children out for lunch. But underneath the funny there’s something that doesn’t sit quite right. Because the low bar isn’t just about me. It’s about what we still expect of dads.

Holding your baby in a restaurant is not impressive. It’s just lunch. Even with two babies, if there’s two adults, it’s still just lunch.

Thankfully, in some parts of life, I can see it changing for the better.

Later that day I had to take a work call. Halfway through it, my son decided that whatever I was saying to my colleagues was deeply offensive to him personally, and he let everyone on the call know about it at considerable volume.

I apologised. The kind of apologetic, slightly mortified apology you make when something has gone wrong that you can’t control. And the response I got back was… heart emojis. Completely easy, completely accepting, the kind of response you’d give a colleague who had a child screaming in the background because that’s just life and of course it’s fine and we all get it.

No “impressed”. Just “We got what you were saying, go help your son”.

And I sat there afterwards thinking about the gap between those experiences. A stranger in a restaurant treating me like I’d done something remarkable for holding my own child. And a group of colleagues treating a screaming baby on a work call as completely unremarkable, because they know I’m a twin dad now and of course this happens. And by the way, thanks for showing others you can be an involved dad and contribute at work.

One felt like the world we’re coming from. The other felt like the world I’d like us to be moving towards.

Here’s the thing though. Although she shouldn’t have said it, maybe “impressed” is actually the right word.

Not because two dads were doing it. But looking after small children, any small children, one or two or three (or more), is genuinely impressive. It is relentless and exhausting and beautiful and hard in ways that nobody fully prepares you for. Every parent in that restaurant was doing something impressive. Every mum who has ever been completely ignored while wrangling a toddler into a highchair was doing something impressive.

The problem wasn’t the “impressed”. It was that the only time she has said it was to two men with twins.

So yes. Impressed. Just say it to everyone, or no one.

Has anyone said something to you — well-meaning, kindly meant — that revealed exactly what they expected of you as a dad? Hit reply. I read every one.

— Arthur