Jared is a full-time butcher, but on Thursdays you will find him at the Woolston Playcentre looking after his daughter, Ruby. Jared started going to Playcentre because he wanted to spend more time with his little girl to make sure she was enjoying herself.
“My original concern with Ruby was that she wasn’t making friends that well. She goes to daycare but never talked about people, so I really wanted to see how she was in action, with everybody else. I always thought I was too busy for it, and then I thought ‘well, if I’m going to come, I’m going to get involved and do what I can to help”.
Once Jared and Ruby started Playcentre there was no stopping them.
“Ruby adores it. When I said to her ‘do you want to keep coming back… ‘Yes!’ there was no question whether she wanted to keep coming back.. So, its evolved into me setting things up, playing with the other kids, getting to know them all a lot better and Ruby talks about them all ‘I did this with so-and-so, and I did this with so-and-so’. It’s great”
Jared says he has learned how important it is “to get involved, get to know people, listen to people, absorb from other people, like yeah, if you’re going to do something, do it, get fully involved”.