I'm on a local media fast, just so I don't have to hear commentary on The Slap, an eight parter starting tonight on the ABC based on Christos Tsiolkas' novel of the same name.
For those who have somehow missed The Slap, firstly, give thanks. Secondly, listen up. Breastfed four year old ( apparently the writer's master stroke ) unleashes his inner brat at a suburban barbeque. Friend of family gets fed up with permissive and ineffectual parents and gives him the titular slap. Mother takes him to court for assault (not so ineffectual then), friendships fracture...
Leaving aside the master stroke and any quibbles you may have about whether this scenario truly represents the concerns of 21st century Australia, if I hear one more person share the idea that a little bit of physical discipline is just what our modern darlings need or another parent laugh self-deprecatingly, knowingly - oh yes, I smack sometimes, aren't I naughty! - I will have to go and slap myself until senseless.
In a post-Dickens world, hitting children - yep, even the humble slap - is all kinds of wrong. Having a special category of humans we can physically assault at will ? Wrong. Sure, there are annoying kids. Sometimes they may even be your own. Deal with it. Use your words, as we are so fond of pointing out to our little ones.
When it comes to parenting, there's a lot of ideas in the mainstream I disagree with. Breastfed four year olds as rampaging monsters would be one of them. Very little actually shocks me. Even an adult who hits, in the depths of frustration, fear and helplessness, is explicable. An adult, however, who hits and goes on to justify their action, shocks me almost into silence.
Watch if you like - I've heard the production values are terrific - but the argument is done and dusted. Hitting a kid ? That slap ? That smack on the hand or the butt or back of the legs ? The hurt you administer for their own good or blame on the child - he drove me to it ? Just wrong.
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Perfect ?
It’s in the genes. It has to be. Why else would a six year old quit ballet exams because her excellent result this year was slightly lower than her fabulous result last year ?
Or later, upon coming second in the yearly school exams, feel so mortified that she would claim to have done it deliberately, so as to have the experience of not coming first?
Or as a young adult, fail her driving test once and never take it again ?
A couple of on-line conversations and blog posts have me thinking about the curse of perfectionism. Of how our own failure to live up to our internal standards causes us – the perfectionists among you - such trouble.
I didn’t grow up in a tiger mother home. No-one had anything riding on that ballet exam, besides the hope I’d do my best and be pleased with my result. It’s a temperament thing, passed down to my own children.
One of my children refused to draw for years; the drawings weren’t as good as a sibling’s, despite receiving no such judgement from me. Another doesn’t want to go to an outside class. The child explains it to me: I don’t want to go, because I don’t know how to do it properly yet. The child is deaf to my explanation that classes are for learning, not for performing. Another weighs the conversation with peers, thinking of the perfect response, fearful that an immediate answer or comment will be found wanting – and the conversation passes that child by, despite being surrounded in daily life by people who find that child delightful, mature.
My own perfectionism and the choices I’ve made because of it have both hardened and become less visible. They seem part of who I am rather than impediments to a full life. Not finishing a book of poems seems a philosophical decision. I know there are so many good books of poems; if mine are not better than good, is there any point to their production ? Behind the thought lurks fear of failure, confirmation of a lack. Better not to try at all.
I’ve been thinking about how to find the enemy of perfectionism, of how to retrain the brains of children whose desire to do perfectly isn’t yet hardened and part of who they are. And all I can think of is becoming the change you want to see, of learning to attempt things at which you might fail and of letting the world – your children - see how you fail and how you pick yourself up again, unbroken.
Or later, upon coming second in the yearly school exams, feel so mortified that she would claim to have done it deliberately, so as to have the experience of not coming first?
Or as a young adult, fail her driving test once and never take it again ?
A couple of on-line conversations and blog posts have me thinking about the curse of perfectionism. Of how our own failure to live up to our internal standards causes us – the perfectionists among you - such trouble.
I didn’t grow up in a tiger mother home. No-one had anything riding on that ballet exam, besides the hope I’d do my best and be pleased with my result. It’s a temperament thing, passed down to my own children.
One of my children refused to draw for years; the drawings weren’t as good as a sibling’s, despite receiving no such judgement from me. Another doesn’t want to go to an outside class. The child explains it to me: I don’t want to go, because I don’t know how to do it properly yet. The child is deaf to my explanation that classes are for learning, not for performing. Another weighs the conversation with peers, thinking of the perfect response, fearful that an immediate answer or comment will be found wanting – and the conversation passes that child by, despite being surrounded in daily life by people who find that child delightful, mature.
My own perfectionism and the choices I’ve made because of it have both hardened and become less visible. They seem part of who I am rather than impediments to a full life. Not finishing a book of poems seems a philosophical decision. I know there are so many good books of poems; if mine are not better than good, is there any point to their production ? Behind the thought lurks fear of failure, confirmation of a lack. Better not to try at all.
I’ve been thinking about how to find the enemy of perfectionism, of how to retrain the brains of children whose desire to do perfectly isn’t yet hardened and part of who they are. And all I can think of is becoming the change you want to see, of learning to attempt things at which you might fail and of letting the world – your children - see how you fail and how you pick yourself up again, unbroken.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Career Advice for Second Grade
Me: Fantastic!
Snowy: As soon as I turn fifteen I'm going to start saving up the money to build it.
Me: Awesome!
Snowy: I'm not going to work at K-Mart any more though.
Me: Really ?
Snowy: I'll need a better paid job. I'm going into advertising.
Me: You are ???
Snowy: You can make a lot of money just from one account Mum.
Me: So...how did you find out about advertising ?
Snowy: (like I'm a little bit slow)...Bewitched, of course!
Only the best life coach for my kid!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Free Range Fail
I was on the phone to my sister. She was talking about prams. The girls were talking to me. I heard them say they were going to fetch L's newspaper; L is away.
I heard a door close. I heard a door open. I finished the call to my sister. I thought the girls were home.
The girls weren't home. It doesn't take ten minutes to fetch the papers from across the road. I thought they'd be out chatting to the neighbours. I put on some shoes and went out to see.
The girls weren't there. The girls weren't in L's front yard.
This is the point in the narrative where a good free ranger would think to herself: I wonder ? Perhaps they've walked down to the park ? I'll wander down and take a look
Instead, high on sudden adrenalin, I thought: They're gone. Someone has taken them. The default position of fear.
C went to look. They were in the park. I yelled, they cried.
Where were you ??
We told you - we were going to get L's paper and go to the park!!!
I didn't hear them. I missed that part of the message. I was listening to my sister describe her pram. I heard them say they were going to fetch L's paper. That's all. Nothing happened.
But my heart races like it did.
As Arwen would say, it's a fail. An epic free range fail.
I heard a door close. I heard a door open. I finished the call to my sister. I thought the girls were home.
The girls weren't home. It doesn't take ten minutes to fetch the papers from across the road. I thought they'd be out chatting to the neighbours. I put on some shoes and went out to see.
The girls weren't there. The girls weren't in L's front yard.
This is the point in the narrative where a good free ranger would think to herself: I wonder ? Perhaps they've walked down to the park ? I'll wander down and take a look
Instead, high on sudden adrenalin, I thought: They're gone. Someone has taken them. The default position of fear.
C went to look. They were in the park. I yelled, they cried.
Where were you ??
We told you - we were going to get L's paper and go to the park!!!
I didn't hear them. I missed that part of the message. I was listening to my sister describe her pram. I heard them say they were going to fetch L's paper. That's all. Nothing happened.
But my heart races like it did.
As Arwen would say, it's a fail. An epic free range fail.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Pen Portraits Thursday morning
Lucy is like a young Queen, straight from one of her historical novels. Kind, still, steady, her dark hair in waves to her waist. She thinks of duty and acts with solicitude. Sometimes she is timid and longs for a quiet room, a place away from the world. She is at home in silence with her pencils and pens, with worlds appearing from the nothing of the paper, in colour, detail.
Arwen is our leaven, light with words and quick with wit. Our competitor, our girl on a quest. Light on her feet as well, a dancer, one eye on the audience, the other on the dance, an acrobat, our everything. She wears her costume, her camoflage - jeggings, gloss, a purple flower in her hair - she's my girl of the moment. She shines. She dreams of London. She wants to be away. Somehow away but here, somehow in my arms and not, at the same time.
Snowy's real name means comfort and rest. He is always moving, always speaking and in the sphere of his love and his action I find it. My comfort and my rest. He is from another century than mine, he is rapid, he is technological, he is like a heart beating inside a sculpture of golden wires. He is my arms around him and love whispering.
Arwen is our leaven, light with words and quick with wit. Our competitor, our girl on a quest. Light on her feet as well, a dancer, one eye on the audience, the other on the dance, an acrobat, our everything. She wears her costume, her camoflage - jeggings, gloss, a purple flower in her hair - she's my girl of the moment. She shines. She dreams of London. She wants to be away. Somehow away but here, somehow in my arms and not, at the same time.
Snowy's real name means comfort and rest. He is always moving, always speaking and in the sphere of his love and his action I find it. My comfort and my rest. He is from another century than mine, he is rapid, he is technological, he is like a heart beating inside a sculpture of golden wires. He is my arms around him and love whispering.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Clash
When I write a poem, I like to stay up very late while everyone else in my house is asleep. I like to write at the kitchen table, drinking tea and eating chocolate, and reading my drafts aloud, making changes as I go. I like to lie awake in bed, even later, and think about writing poems and about particular images which have made their way into my drafts. In the morning I like to sleep late, rising only to make a cup of tea and bring it back to bed so that I can re-read last night's draft and see what survives of it in the stronger light of morning and what, in contrast, needs to be cut.
When I am being the kind of mother I think I would like to be, I rise at least as early as the second child. I make a decent breakfast. I supervise vitamins and teeth and hair and choice of clothing and I do my chores and make sure the children are doing their chores and settle everyone at the kitchen table to do their maths and provide them with meals and an education and love and concern and playdates and excursions till night falls and I ease them all into sleep and then I go to bed early and make lists in my head called Things To Do Tomorrow.
And even thinking about that contrast is so Western, so decadent, so much the spoilt complaint of a woman who has running water and food and a house and an education and children who are safe -
And yet. It's as though the mother and the poet are Babushka dolls of the same size, and neither can fit easily in the other.
When I am being the kind of mother I think I would like to be, I rise at least as early as the second child. I make a decent breakfast. I supervise vitamins and teeth and hair and choice of clothing and I do my chores and make sure the children are doing their chores and settle everyone at the kitchen table to do their maths and provide them with meals and an education and love and concern and playdates and excursions till night falls and I ease them all into sleep and then I go to bed early and make lists in my head called Things To Do Tomorrow.
And even thinking about that contrast is so Western, so decadent, so much the spoilt complaint of a woman who has running water and food and a house and an education and children who are safe -
And yet. It's as though the mother and the poet are Babushka dolls of the same size, and neither can fit easily in the other.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Scary
Arwen changing her political allegiances upon finding out that one particular leader is a fan of The Lord of the Rings. Let's hope it's not true, because otherwise she's lost to The Other Side for all time. Can't work out if she's loyal ( devotion to J. R.R Tolkien ) or fickle ( abandoning the family culture on a whim ). Lucky she doesn't get the vote for another 7 years...
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Family Rules
Snowy and I took our lunch round to the oval today, to get a bit of sunshine and to have a change of scenery. Saturday afternoon soccer was in full swing.
Now, I have recently commented on someone else's blog that it is a good idea to confine your comments to what works for your own family and not run around the net making uniformed comments about others, be they homeschoolers, schoolers, religious, atheist....or soccer people.
So in that spirit, I'd like to say that:
1. In our family, it's considered rude to take one's vuvuzela to a soccer match and toot on the stupid thing every three minutes.
2. In our family, it's considered rude to shout at your children whilst they are trying to concentrate on a task. It's also considered rude to put one's head in hands when child fails to respond to shouting.
3. In our family, we like to watch our children take part in an activity, rather than film it to watch later.
4. In our family, it's considered rude to leave your filthy Fanta cans and chip packets at the oval for the council workers to clean up on Monday.
But just to show you we're not complete killjoys, in our family it is absolutely appropriate to cheer wildly when a child scores a goal!
Now, I have recently commented on someone else's blog that it is a good idea to confine your comments to what works for your own family and not run around the net making uniformed comments about others, be they homeschoolers, schoolers, religious, atheist....or soccer people.
So in that spirit, I'd like to say that:
1. In our family, it's considered rude to take one's vuvuzela to a soccer match and toot on the stupid thing every three minutes.
2. In our family, it's considered rude to shout at your children whilst they are trying to concentrate on a task. It's also considered rude to put one's head in hands when child fails to respond to shouting.
3. In our family, we like to watch our children take part in an activity, rather than film it to watch later.
4. In our family, it's considered rude to leave your filthy Fanta cans and chip packets at the oval for the council workers to clean up on Monday.
But just to show you we're not complete killjoys, in our family it is absolutely appropriate to cheer wildly when a child scores a goal!
How to Make your Mother Mad
Whilst your mother is out, snack on handfuls of Rice Bubbles taken straight from the packet, leaving Hansel and Gretel type trails all over the carpets and floors that were newly vacuumed and mopped by your parents only hours before. Run to your bedroom to sulk when told off by your mother, crushing all the little Rice Bubbles underfoot as you go.
How to Make your Mother Happy
Snuggle up in bed with her and volunteer to read aloud all 12 of your Magic School bus readers. Read them, breaking off occasionally to exclaim "I love reading!" When done, offer to read her favourite one again.
Your prize ? Devoted mother- love and a weekend trip to the bookshop! I love teaching my kids to read.
Your prize ? Devoted mother- love and a weekend trip to the bookshop! I love teaching my kids to read.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Moshi World
Last week Snowy was Bored. Not the whiny kind of lazy-bored though. It was a bit too existential for that. He was bored of being in his own skin, living his own life, with its own duties and pleasures.
Now, if I was a very good mama, I might have helped him deal with this unsettling feeling by talking about it, drawing it, living it with him. Last week I wasn't a good mama, I was the kind of fed up woman who, upon hearing the 'B' word for the nth time, got straight to googling free online games for children.
And that is the inglorious story of how we stumbled upon 'Moshi Monsters, a virtual world that Snowy and I have spent far too much time in, creating our monsters, dressing them, feeding them, decorating their rooms. You can visit us if you like! Just go to www.MoshiMe.com/boydetective
It's a long way from my vision of screen free, Steiner influenced, crafty, rainbow parenting, of what I aimed for with the girls. It's true, Snowy is no longer bored. 'Moshi' broke the spell somehow; suddenly everything is interesting again. That's not where the comfort lies.
The comfort lies in realising that I met my boy where he was, stuck in his Boredom, and that I treated it not as a moral failure ( here, you're bored, do some work, that'll teach you to be bored! ) but as a problem to help him solve. Yes, bush walking or gardening or building something together would have done the same thing and been better for us, but you work with what you have, with the energy and resources available to you at the time.
Parenting philosophies mean little to Snowy. All that matters to him is that that I helped him out of the quicksand... and that I was prepared to parent a Monster alongside him!
Now, if I was a very good mama, I might have helped him deal with this unsettling feeling by talking about it, drawing it, living it with him. Last week I wasn't a good mama, I was the kind of fed up woman who, upon hearing the 'B' word for the nth time, got straight to googling free online games for children.
And that is the inglorious story of how we stumbled upon 'Moshi Monsters, a virtual world that Snowy and I have spent far too much time in, creating our monsters, dressing them, feeding them, decorating their rooms. You can visit us if you like! Just go to www.MoshiMe.com/boydetective
It's a long way from my vision of screen free, Steiner influenced, crafty, rainbow parenting, of what I aimed for with the girls. It's true, Snowy is no longer bored. 'Moshi' broke the spell somehow; suddenly everything is interesting again. That's not where the comfort lies.
The comfort lies in realising that I met my boy where he was, stuck in his Boredom, and that I treated it not as a moral failure ( here, you're bored, do some work, that'll teach you to be bored! ) but as a problem to help him solve. Yes, bush walking or gardening or building something together would have done the same thing and been better for us, but you work with what you have, with the energy and resources available to you at the time.
Parenting philosophies mean little to Snowy. All that matters to him is that that I helped him out of the quicksand... and that I was prepared to parent a Monster alongside him!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Do As I Do!
Just to let you know that Arwen is now blogging (or plans to!!) at Hobbit Happenings - click on 'my profile' to find the link. It will be a great read once it is off and running - recipes, quizzes, movie reviews and more....
Friday, July 2, 2010
Definition of luxury
Lying in the bath at 10am, listening to Snowy vacuuming the lounge room. Sounds like child labour ? I swear he volunteered.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
High Falutin'
Of course, mothers are also for more mundane things than that high falutin' Peter Pan nonsense. Like dealing with screaming 10 year olds who have fallen off their scooter outside - while their mother is blogging about motherhood inside - and broken off a front tooth and who need their mama to hold them while they swish out mouthfuls of blood and tooth fragments and get whisked off to the dentist and the doctor and the dentist again and need reassurance that their 'fake' tooth will look just as good as their old, smashed up tooth and that breathing in between the screaming is a good idea and that it will all, in the end, be OK. Which it will. But I bet you Germaine never had to tell that story.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
There is a limit
To how frugal even I can be...
I cleaned out the veggie drawer before I went grocery shopping and made veggie and pasta soup for lunch.
The soggy tray of tomatoes everyone turned their nose up at went into a saucepan and got cooked down into a tomato sauce to be used later in the week. Hey, I even mooshed it through a strainer to get the seeds and the skin out.
But the pile of socks Arwen has just unearthed from her drawer - lonely socks, holey socks, stretchy and too small socks - these I can do nothing with. I know I could make them into puppets. (Don't ask me where, but I have heard of a thing called a Sock Monkey. ) There is probably a chic and thrifty project out there on the web just perfect for using up the odd sock or twenty. I could make the children use them as beeswax-polishing mittens.
But I just rolled them up into one giant sock and put it in the bin. As I said, there is a limit...
I cleaned out the veggie drawer before I went grocery shopping and made veggie and pasta soup for lunch.
The soggy tray of tomatoes everyone turned their nose up at went into a saucepan and got cooked down into a tomato sauce to be used later in the week. Hey, I even mooshed it through a strainer to get the seeds and the skin out.
But the pile of socks Arwen has just unearthed from her drawer - lonely socks, holey socks, stretchy and too small socks - these I can do nothing with. I know I could make them into puppets. (Don't ask me where, but I have heard of a thing called a Sock Monkey. ) There is probably a chic and thrifty project out there on the web just perfect for using up the odd sock or twenty. I could make the children use them as beeswax-polishing mittens.
But I just rolled them up into one giant sock and put it in the bin. As I said, there is a limit...
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