Ant Middleton has revealed he let his 13-year-old son touch an electric fence to ‘teach him a lesson’.
The former SAS: Who Dares Wins presenter has brought aspects of his brutal training attitude from the Channel 4 programme into his family life, it appears, with the former soldier sharing the parenting incident.
The 44-year-old has five children, including daughters Shyla, 17, and Priseis, nine, and sons Gabriel, 15, and Bligh, eight, with wife Emilie, and son Oakley, 22, from a previous relationship.
Recalling a trip to a national park when Gabriel was 13, Ant said: ‘I could see an electric fence up front.
‘My son was running ahead and jumping over fences, even though I’d told him not to.
‘He came up to what he thought was a wired fence. I could have said: “Stop!”’ but I thought: “Do you know what? I’m going to let him learn.”
‘And he grabbed hold of this fence and got an almighty whack from it.’
Speaking to The Sun, Ant went on to say that he started ‘laughing’ at the time, despite Gabriel being ‘extremely upset’.
He said: ‘Obviously we just started laughing and he was extremely upset – I think it was quite a powerful one to be fair.
‘But trust me, he didn’t do it again. You’ve got to let children figure things out for themselves and I thought I’d let him learn the hard way.’
Ant has previously spoken about worrying he failed as a father and concerns about balancing parenthood with the military.
‘My fears are sort of failing as a father, or of you know, failing as a husband,’ he told Rachel Botsman on her podcast Trust Issues in 2019.
‘Don’t get me wrong, you know we all make mistakes along the way and whether that’s as a husband or as a father.
‘But you know ultimately, my children turning to me and saying…you’re not my dad or you know something like that, that’s really what scares me.’
The former soldier continued: ‘And I only say that really because I have failed as a father and I have failed as a husband when I was in the military.
‘Because, especially in the special forces, I prioritised the military, everything was military, military, military.
‘As soon as a call came up…”Yep I’m going on that” and almost you think you’ll prioritise your wife and children but you don’t.’
He admitted: ‘It’s not until I left that I got my priorities straight and you know when things started to happen around me and I looked around me and my wife and children were there every single time.
‘I realised, “Wow how wrong did I get it?”‘
Ant who had hosted SAS: Who Dares Wins since 2015, was axed from the Channel 4 show in 2021 due to ‘personal conduct’.
He has since appeared as Chief Instructor on the celebrity version of the programme in Australia, and has made several other TV appearances including on Dancing With The Stars Australia and hosts a podcast.
SAS: Who Dares Wins is available to watch on Channel 4.
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