Sometime in the late ‘seventies, experts wanted girls to play with trucks, and boys to be given access to the kindergarten corner reserved for pots and pans. The wisdom of the day was that offering boistrous boys dolls would socialise and calm them; it was also thought that the genders would learn to understand each other at an age when they were the most easily influenced and it would help do away with stereotypes.
We have a female Deputy Prime Minister, now, whose partner is a hairdresser so the latter wasn’t such a bad idea as far as it went. But while the experiment of the genders moving beyond the stereotypical boundaries has been relatively successful, turning ‘slugs and snails and puppy dog tails’ into ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’ and vice versa is a harder ask and not necessarily desirable. Each gender has its own attributes and failings and as parents it’s our job to appreciate the former and work on the latter.
Girls tend to be less distracted than boys are. They hear you when you speak; they listen; which is why they express themselves better than boys do. My granddaughters draw, paste, paint and sit patiently for large chunks of time rearranging figurines and dolls house furniture. Their dolls have names and a back history; and Dezzy and Rachel have opinions on how the rooms should be arranged. They love the playground park and will see saw and swing with the best of them, but they will happily get back to something sedate once they get back home.
Belinda Neall, author of About our Boys: A practical guide to bringing out the best in boys, believes that it is ‘essential that boys be allowed to be physical and do activities that use up their energy...even those boys who don’t like sport or aren’t very active usually have active minds that are drawn to action and adventure in their imaginary play’ or in what they read or what movies they watch or video games they play. Boys run when they can walk, they shout when they can talk and they flip back their Superman capes and chase after real or imaginary objects. Stick a doll in a little boy’s hand and he will most likely turn it into an aeroplane and run around the house making zoom, zoom noises. Then he will pull the doll apart to see what it is made of. No amount of role reversal is going to change that for long. You can sit boys down for craft activities and they will even enjoy it in small doses, but after a very short while, just like a steaming kettle, if you plug the opening they will either find another outlet or burst in the attempt.
I had no luck distracting my boys from kicking a ball around the back yard or getting them off the monkey bars long enough to consider role playing with Barbie or one of her sisters. There was a tree in our back yard that was taller again by half than our house. One fine day, when things were quieter than I was used to, I looked out the kitchen window and caught sight of five year old David two thirds of the way up that tree; his younger brother stood nearby, looking on in admiration. My hair stood on end, as it generally does when terror and adrenalin kick in. The conversation went something like this:
‘Hurry down David.
No, no, take your time. But be quick
Be careful! Hurry up, won’t you? Be careful, darling.
There you go, nearly there. It’s all right. It’s all right.
You naughty boy! You naughty boy! What on earth got into you?!’
The answer was a tearful shrug. Had he been more articulate, Dave might, like George Mallory the English mountaineer, have responded with ‘because it is there’. Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine disappeared on their way up Mt Everest in 1924; Mallory’s body wasn’t found for 75 years. And that’s it in a nutshell. Some men and most boys just can’t help themselves. When they are attracted to danger and adventure, personal cost becomes irrelevant. Girls are cautious and too imaginative about the consequences to themselves, to risk doing something like that.
But if nature can’t be tamed, we can at least tweak it a bit. Thankfully it is not all pre-determined. Boys will be boys, as the saying goes, except if it’s relating to something that isn’t good for their health. In that case feel free to stick your oar in. In their late teens, my sons accused me of raising them to believe that it’s better to talk yourself out of a fight than to use your fists. Apparently they had lacked the belligerence required of the post-pubescent male to survive in the school environment; I had put them at a distinct disadvantage, they said, all the way through high school. Now they’ve come full circle and are grateful. And they no longer have a problem expressing themselves. Sooner or later most boys will grow out of leaping before they look, and hopefully some girls will have the self confidence to take a bit of a chance occasionally and leap. It’s all a matter of balance and of giving things a helping hand.
Girls are easier to raise because their primary carers are usually women and have some personal insight into the various phases that they go though; women identify a lot more closely with girls than with their male progeny. Unless there are experiences of brothers or male cousins to draw on, we see boys as strange entities to be dealt like ticking time bombs; gingerly and at a distance. They pick their nose and scrape their knees and neither they nor their hair is capable of staying down for too long.
My idea, of a good time, once upon a time, was to lie stomach down on the carpeted lounge room floor and work my way through all the fairy stories there were; the Grimm(er) the better. My boys wouldn’t leave me alone, for five minutes at a time; ‘hey mum, look at me, I’m doing a handstand’ or ‘mum can we keep this lizard / stray dog / bird with a broken wing?’ It’s necessary to encourage that wonder and to not crush their spirits when adding nurture to the mix. It’s important to keep their minds engaged and their bodies occupied.
Channel a boy’s energies into constructive activities like trampolining, bike riding and boy scouts and, as Belinda Neall, puts it ‘they won’t be lighting fires or throwing stones or take drugs to satisfy their sense of adventure.’ Encourage boys to climb monkey bars, and even trees if your ticker can take it. Get involved; play video games together and play board games. My brother banged his chest with his fists, tapped on doors and walls and drummed on our mum’s pots and pans with wooden spoons until our parents bought him his first set of drums. It didn’t do too much for their nervous system, but it kept my energetic brother occupied and all that practicing turned him into a first rate musician.
If you can exhaust your male children physically first, there’s always a chance that you can appeal to their cerebral side later. But there’s no use offering boys The Saddle Club or Ballerina Princess. They need a bit of J K Rowling magic, or Robert Muchamore’s child secret agents to stir their imaginations. Sue Bursztynski, school librarian and author of such nonfiction books as Your cat could be a Spy, and Crime time: Australians behaving badly, says that ‘ordinary boys as opposed to really good readers like information books ... about what they enjoy, whether it's cars or planes or sport or monsters. They love over-the-top information, which is why [borrowing] the Guinness Book of Records [at her library] is so popular. And when they do read fiction, it's often wacky fiction like Paul Jennings and Andy Griffiths. Or sports fiction - Specky McGee is very popular. But mostly, they like it true.’
My boys appreciated the energy consuming exercises of drama theatre. I welcomed their improved powers of concentration, their enhanced imagination and their self discipline. Young Mark wanted to skateboard. I offered to let him if he earned the money to buy it himself. It was a cunning ruse to buy me some time; if Mark was serious about earning a skateboard he would also appreciate and take care of it, and hopefully take care of himself. It gave me a chance to educate him in the dangers as well as the pleasures of skateboarding.
David took a child care course before he had children. His mostly female class cheered and whistled when he and fellow male graduates courageously mounted the podium and accepted their diplomas. I don’t think they had got the point yet that they’d ‘come a long way, baby’. Mark is capable of being his own man without sacrificing his tender (not his feminine) side. I’m still working on my granddaughters, but I hope I’ve succeeded in teaching my children to appreciate and respect it that although we are the one species there are two separate genders and both the genders and their differences deserve acknowledgement and respect.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
I didn't do it!!
On another matter, can I just mention that a father's group has asked if it could publish my piece: On a Mission from Melbourne. As soon as they have done so I will publish a link to the site.
I didn't do it is a universal cry coming from from the lips of little children wherever in the world they live. Certainly any child that I have either raised or had some experience with said it to me some time or another. Here is my second draft.
‘I didn’t do it’ said my granddaughter. It wasn’t a lie as much as an attempt to avoid punishment. Rachel was four years old at the time so she already understood what the consequences of being naughty might mean to her. But she wasn’t always sure what constituted naughty; it depended on the mood of the adults in her life. Safer to deny everything.
Rachel had done it of course, she had hurried from the dinner table to get to the front door and knocked over her water glass. There was water, water everywhere, including a liberal dose of it on a now sopping Rachel. Her favourite uncle had arrived and Rachel wanted to be among the first to greet him. Now she was stopped in her tracks watching anxiously for my reaction; getting into trouble was an occupational hazard. I could be a benign nanna or an angry giant. Which was I going to be?
I could have shouted and said ‘now look what you’ve done’. It’s the obvious and most automatic response that comes to the fore when disaster strikes. Possibly it’s because in any house where toddlers live calamity strikes and strikes often; it can be tiring for an already exhausted adult. Rachel is not an exception to the toddler rule; she slips, trips and sometimes breaks things. Rachel touches things she shouldn’t (once it was a hot plate). As my granddaughter sees it, there aren’t enough hours in the day to have fun and she is not about to miss a minute of it. Why walk when you can run, is Rachel’s philosophy? Why check first if you can rush in where Angels fear to tread? At four there’s a lot of exuberance and energy involved but not much life experience to draw on. Behaviour is a learned thing.
‘Why don’t you change your clothes; then you can help me clean up,’ I said. The response she had dreaded wasn’t going to eventuate. A reprieve! The colour came back to her cheeks and she tripped off happily to the bedroom. I watched her go, and remembered her father. He hadn’t done it either. David hadn’t knocked down my best china coffee pot playing ball in the house; it wasn’t his fault that his brother’s favourite toy was broken. The toy was a fragile bit of plastic, so he’d had a point there, but I seem to remember that David hadn’t had asked his brother could he play with it. Most of my waking hours had been spent juggling responsibilities and two boisterous boys so I wasn’t always capable of calm but I did sometimes succeed. I explained that playing ball in the house when he’d been told not to, required a consequence; and asked what did he think would fit the bill?
‘It wasn’t me, mum’ echoed down the corridors of time to arrive at this de ja vu moment. I am more rested, alert and a lot more composed these days and able to draw on experience. As a grandparent I get to revise some of the things I may have got wrong the first time round. Rachel sponged down the table and I mopped the floor. We talked as we worked.
‘Did you do it on purpose, Rachel? Or was it an accident?’ We had distanced ourselves from the disastrous moment. I wanted Rachel to take ownership of the situation and I felt I would get a more considered answer now. Rachel needed to take ownership of the situation and to understand the consequences.
‘It was an accident, nanna.’ I had witnessed the incident but even if I hadn’t I think it’s more a positive way to deal with things if you give children the benefit of the doubt until they prove you wrong. ‘Well, that’s okay then,’ I said and explained that it might be better next time to put her water glass in front of her instead of to the side. It was another experience in Rachel’s repertoire that I knew that she would not repeat.
The word consequence has two meanings. There was the consequence of the hotplate incident for instance. Rachel is a lot more cautious around heat now. The second meaning depends on adults dealing with each situation on its merits. Do we shout? I sometimes did when I was tired or if I had allowed outside pressures to influence me. If a toddler senses that consequences are fair, they learn from their mistakes. And although there are plenty more mistakes to be made, chances are they won't repeat them. Rachel learned that she needed to focus on her present actions and let the future take care of itself; I bought a plastic table cloth the very next day. Now that Rachel is a mature aged 6 year old she has left childish things behind. She's experiencing a brand new set of mistakes and consequences at school.
I didn't do it is a universal cry coming from from the lips of little children wherever in the world they live. Certainly any child that I have either raised or had some experience with said it to me some time or another. Here is my second draft.
‘I didn’t do it’ said my granddaughter. It wasn’t a lie as much as an attempt to avoid punishment. Rachel was four years old at the time so she already understood what the consequences of being naughty might mean to her. But she wasn’t always sure what constituted naughty; it depended on the mood of the adults in her life. Safer to deny everything.
Rachel had done it of course, she had hurried from the dinner table to get to the front door and knocked over her water glass. There was water, water everywhere, including a liberal dose of it on a now sopping Rachel. Her favourite uncle had arrived and Rachel wanted to be among the first to greet him. Now she was stopped in her tracks watching anxiously for my reaction; getting into trouble was an occupational hazard. I could be a benign nanna or an angry giant. Which was I going to be?
I could have shouted and said ‘now look what you’ve done’. It’s the obvious and most automatic response that comes to the fore when disaster strikes. Possibly it’s because in any house where toddlers live calamity strikes and strikes often; it can be tiring for an already exhausted adult. Rachel is not an exception to the toddler rule; she slips, trips and sometimes breaks things. Rachel touches things she shouldn’t (once it was a hot plate). As my granddaughter sees it, there aren’t enough hours in the day to have fun and she is not about to miss a minute of it. Why walk when you can run, is Rachel’s philosophy? Why check first if you can rush in where Angels fear to tread? At four there’s a lot of exuberance and energy involved but not much life experience to draw on. Behaviour is a learned thing.
‘Why don’t you change your clothes; then you can help me clean up,’ I said. The response she had dreaded wasn’t going to eventuate. A reprieve! The colour came back to her cheeks and she tripped off happily to the bedroom. I watched her go, and remembered her father. He hadn’t done it either. David hadn’t knocked down my best china coffee pot playing ball in the house; it wasn’t his fault that his brother’s favourite toy was broken. The toy was a fragile bit of plastic, so he’d had a point there, but I seem to remember that David hadn’t had asked his brother could he play with it. Most of my waking hours had been spent juggling responsibilities and two boisterous boys so I wasn’t always capable of calm but I did sometimes succeed. I explained that playing ball in the house when he’d been told not to, required a consequence; and asked what did he think would fit the bill?
‘It wasn’t me, mum’ echoed down the corridors of time to arrive at this de ja vu moment. I am more rested, alert and a lot more composed these days and able to draw on experience. As a grandparent I get to revise some of the things I may have got wrong the first time round. Rachel sponged down the table and I mopped the floor. We talked as we worked.
‘Did you do it on purpose, Rachel? Or was it an accident?’ We had distanced ourselves from the disastrous moment. I wanted Rachel to take ownership of the situation and I felt I would get a more considered answer now. Rachel needed to take ownership of the situation and to understand the consequences.
‘It was an accident, nanna.’ I had witnessed the incident but even if I hadn’t I think it’s more a positive way to deal with things if you give children the benefit of the doubt until they prove you wrong. ‘Well, that’s okay then,’ I said and explained that it might be better next time to put her water glass in front of her instead of to the side. It was another experience in Rachel’s repertoire that I knew that she would not repeat.
The word consequence has two meanings. There was the consequence of the hotplate incident for instance. Rachel is a lot more cautious around heat now. The second meaning depends on adults dealing with each situation on its merits. Do we shout? I sometimes did when I was tired or if I had allowed outside pressures to influence me. If a toddler senses that consequences are fair, they learn from their mistakes. And although there are plenty more mistakes to be made, chances are they won't repeat them. Rachel learned that she needed to focus on her present actions and let the future take care of itself; I bought a plastic table cloth the very next day. Now that Rachel is a mature aged 6 year old she has left childish things behind. She's experiencing a brand new set of mistakes and consequences at school.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Tooth Fairy
Fourth Draft.
Thanks to my regulars who keep on visiting. I haven't given up this site, or given up writing. It's just that a number of outside influences have conspired to get in my way and have slowed things down for me. (Slower than usual, that is.) I will revive!
'Will the Tooth Fairy find me in Melbourne, Nanna?
Rachel is a Sydney girl who pays regular visits to her Melbourne grandparents. Her questions come thick and fast the moment she steps off the tarmac at Melbourne Airport and are usually more demanding; they can range from how do aeroplanes stay up in the air to how many lollies can you fit in your mouth? Rachel’s front tooth was hanging by a thread and was causing her a fair bit of mental agony. I could see the mental cogs whirring and the questions forming. Thankfully the tooth fairy and I had done business before so were well acquainted. This time round I had all the answers to Rachel’s questions. I breathed a sigh of relief and got on with the necessary explanations.
‘Sure she will find you, honey.’ I said. ‘Tooth Fairies have antennas.’ They are like little divining rods that lead them to wherever the teeth are. And not only was there a Melbourne Tooth Fairy, I explained, there were hordes of them plying their trade worldwide and hauling their stash to their corner of Fairyland each night.
When we got home, I gave her the traditional apple to help things along. I mused that growing those teeth had taken up a third of Rachel’s life and caused many sleepless nights for all concerned, now she was happy to shed them without a backward glance. She munched and then we spent an exciting afternoon checking out the unattractive object of the Tooth Fairy’s desire.
‘Why do they want my tooth, Nanna?’
In typical Rachel fashion she was not going to be satisfied until everything was known to her on the topic, especially as there was a whole dollar involved in this transaction. More questions were asked and answered. Fairies grind the teeth and sprinkle it on their cereal for calcium and they dust their wings with it to give them more staying power on those long journeys to and from Fairyland. (When her daddy had asked that question tooth power included fuelled dump trucks and locomotives.)
And where was Fairyland? For those of you not in the know, Fairyland is up Enid Blyton’s Far Away Tree. If you are lucky enough to find that tree it is right up the top, where a different and ever more exotic country lands each day.
Rachel and I spent a pleasant afternoon discussing the most effective place to put her tooth. We checked out and rejected several locations, including under the pillow: too easily lost and the mantelpiece in the lounge room. How would the Tooth Fairy know who it belonged to? We finally settled on dropping it into a glass of water and putting it on Rachel’s bedside table.
Ten year old Dezzy, Rachel’s sister, was at the other end of the room during this discussion, busying herself with something arty-crafty. She had her head bent low throughout it all but I could tell she was listening. She had long since extracted the last dollar from the tooth fairy, but being the nice child that she is, she wasn't about to spoil it for her sister. Dezzy just smiled and kept her counsel.
‘Tooth Fairies are shy, Rachel, yours won’t turn up until you’re asleep.’ It had been an interesting and exhausting afternoon, but Rachel wasn’t quite done yet. She clutched her tooth to her, Rachel had a request.
We added a letter to be placed under the glass. ‘Dear Tooth Fairy,’ Rachel dictated, ‘this is me, Rachel. You can have my tooth for your breakfast cereal. Could I have an extra fifty cents so I can buy a chocolate ice cream with sprinkles? Do Tooth Fairies have teeth?' Love, Rachel.’
Thanks to my regulars who keep on visiting. I haven't given up this site, or given up writing. It's just that a number of outside influences have conspired to get in my way and have slowed things down for me. (Slower than usual, that is.) I will revive!
'Will the Tooth Fairy find me in Melbourne, Nanna?
Rachel is a Sydney girl who pays regular visits to her Melbourne grandparents. Her questions come thick and fast the moment she steps off the tarmac at Melbourne Airport and are usually more demanding; they can range from how do aeroplanes stay up in the air to how many lollies can you fit in your mouth? Rachel’s front tooth was hanging by a thread and was causing her a fair bit of mental agony. I could see the mental cogs whirring and the questions forming. Thankfully the tooth fairy and I had done business before so were well acquainted. This time round I had all the answers to Rachel’s questions. I breathed a sigh of relief and got on with the necessary explanations.
‘Sure she will find you, honey.’ I said. ‘Tooth Fairies have antennas.’ They are like little divining rods that lead them to wherever the teeth are. And not only was there a Melbourne Tooth Fairy, I explained, there were hordes of them plying their trade worldwide and hauling their stash to their corner of Fairyland each night.
When we got home, I gave her the traditional apple to help things along. I mused that growing those teeth had taken up a third of Rachel’s life and caused many sleepless nights for all concerned, now she was happy to shed them without a backward glance. She munched and then we spent an exciting afternoon checking out the unattractive object of the Tooth Fairy’s desire.
‘Why do they want my tooth, Nanna?’
In typical Rachel fashion she was not going to be satisfied until everything was known to her on the topic, especially as there was a whole dollar involved in this transaction. More questions were asked and answered. Fairies grind the teeth and sprinkle it on their cereal for calcium and they dust their wings with it to give them more staying power on those long journeys to and from Fairyland. (When her daddy had asked that question tooth power included fuelled dump trucks and locomotives.)
And where was Fairyland? For those of you not in the know, Fairyland is up Enid Blyton’s Far Away Tree. If you are lucky enough to find that tree it is right up the top, where a different and ever more exotic country lands each day.
Rachel and I spent a pleasant afternoon discussing the most effective place to put her tooth. We checked out and rejected several locations, including under the pillow: too easily lost and the mantelpiece in the lounge room. How would the Tooth Fairy know who it belonged to? We finally settled on dropping it into a glass of water and putting it on Rachel’s bedside table.
Ten year old Dezzy, Rachel’s sister, was at the other end of the room during this discussion, busying herself with something arty-crafty. She had her head bent low throughout it all but I could tell she was listening. She had long since extracted the last dollar from the tooth fairy, but being the nice child that she is, she wasn't about to spoil it for her sister. Dezzy just smiled and kept her counsel.
‘Tooth Fairies are shy, Rachel, yours won’t turn up until you’re asleep.’ It had been an interesting and exhausting afternoon, but Rachel wasn’t quite done yet. She clutched her tooth to her, Rachel had a request.
We added a letter to be placed under the glass. ‘Dear Tooth Fairy,’ Rachel dictated, ‘this is me, Rachel. You can have my tooth for your breakfast cereal. Could I have an extra fifty cents so I can buy a chocolate ice cream with sprinkles? Do Tooth Fairies have teeth?' Love, Rachel.’
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Our responsibilities
Second draft.
Roman Polanski is a brilliant film director who also happens (in 1977) to have raped a 13 year old girl. I need not go much more into that as all the sordid details have been available for decades and in the news recently. Polanski was on his way to the Zurich Film Festival in 2009 to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award and was arrested. His friends and many of his colleagues were outraged. As they saw it, Polanski has been a model citizen and a productive one, since that one lapse. It seemed only reasonable to them that someone who had such an illustrious career should be excused.
It does sound reasonable put that way until you consider that the type of rape that took place was not done (inexcusable as it would have been) in the heat of the moment but was coldly calculated. Polanski gave this girl alcohol and a relaxant type of drug to make her compliant.
Polanski has charmed his colleagues and friends and even his film going audience, but the fact remains that there’s a darker side to Polanski. And that’s the one who has to pay for the crime, no matter how rehabilitated he seems or how brilliant his directing work. He doesn’t want to do it. Polanski allows his friends and colleagues and even his wife to justify him. Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski’s wife, blames his actions on the ‘crazy age of sexual permissiveness’. I would have thought that even in the ‘70’s sexual permissiveness related to two consensual adults, not between a grown up and an unwilling child.
Polanski stole a young girl’s innocence and wrecked any trust that she would have had for adults. I can’t help thinking of that as I watch my young granddaughters move slowly away from their childhood. In a handful of years we’re going to have less control over their ever expanding world. Stranger danger is easy when they are five or six, how do you go about preparing children on the threshold of puberty. When I started going out to teenage parties my mother told me not to drink anything that I hadn’t poured for myself, as my drinks might be spiked. I thought that was hilarious at the time.
Last year there was an uproar about a photographer who made a living by taking photographs of young girls in sensual poses (with the permission of the girls' parents.) The community in general thought it was despicable but his artistic friends hotly defended him.
Times change as do fads and fashions, but what sort of society is it that finds preying on young innocents acceptable?
We have a responsibility to our vulnerable children to keep them safe from predators who come in all sorts of shapes and sometimes pleasing guises. If we can't push past the seemingly plausible rhetoric and recognise these people for what they are, what hope have our children got? It’s up to us to make sure our children are left to develop at their own pace and be allowed to keep their innocence as long as they need it. Rape is never acceptable in however it is disguised or presented, neither is artistic licence when it has to do with young innocents.
Roman Polanski is a brilliant film director who also happens (in 1977) to have raped a 13 year old girl. I need not go much more into that as all the sordid details have been available for decades and in the news recently. Polanski was on his way to the Zurich Film Festival in 2009 to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award and was arrested. His friends and many of his colleagues were outraged. As they saw it, Polanski has been a model citizen and a productive one, since that one lapse. It seemed only reasonable to them that someone who had such an illustrious career should be excused.
It does sound reasonable put that way until you consider that the type of rape that took place was not done (inexcusable as it would have been) in the heat of the moment but was coldly calculated. Polanski gave this girl alcohol and a relaxant type of drug to make her compliant.
Polanski has charmed his colleagues and friends and even his film going audience, but the fact remains that there’s a darker side to Polanski. And that’s the one who has to pay for the crime, no matter how rehabilitated he seems or how brilliant his directing work. He doesn’t want to do it. Polanski allows his friends and colleagues and even his wife to justify him. Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski’s wife, blames his actions on the ‘crazy age of sexual permissiveness’. I would have thought that even in the ‘70’s sexual permissiveness related to two consensual adults, not between a grown up and an unwilling child.
Polanski stole a young girl’s innocence and wrecked any trust that she would have had for adults. I can’t help thinking of that as I watch my young granddaughters move slowly away from their childhood. In a handful of years we’re going to have less control over their ever expanding world. Stranger danger is easy when they are five or six, how do you go about preparing children on the threshold of puberty. When I started going out to teenage parties my mother told me not to drink anything that I hadn’t poured for myself, as my drinks might be spiked. I thought that was hilarious at the time.
Last year there was an uproar about a photographer who made a living by taking photographs of young girls in sensual poses (with the permission of the girls' parents.) The community in general thought it was despicable but his artistic friends hotly defended him.
Times change as do fads and fashions, but what sort of society is it that finds preying on young innocents acceptable?
We have a responsibility to our vulnerable children to keep them safe from predators who come in all sorts of shapes and sometimes pleasing guises. If we can't push past the seemingly plausible rhetoric and recognise these people for what they are, what hope have our children got? It’s up to us to make sure our children are left to develop at their own pace and be allowed to keep their innocence as long as they need it. Rape is never acceptable in however it is disguised or presented, neither is artistic licence when it has to do with young innocents.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Model Parents
Draft five. Expect many more. The lead in is much too long and the piece is too repetitive. I’ll be giving it a rest for a couple of days and let my subconscious work on it for a bit.
Whenever the subject of role models comes up, it has been a major irritant to me that the same people come up with the same complaints about airbrushed photos and beautiful models making it hard for young girls to aspire or live up to. I agree, unrealistic images and natural beauties make it impossible for the rest of us. We shouldn’t objectify these people we're told, I agree with that too. But I believe that neither should they have the responsibility thrust on them for how we feel about ourselves.
We chastise erring footballers for not living up to the image that young boys have of them; the same goes for swimmers, songwriters and actors. We can't even judge what we think of a song until we've seen the accompanying music clip of beautiful people prancing around singing indecipherable lyrics. Forget that most of us can’t sing or dance or prance worth a damn, we want to be just like them. And if these high profile types let us down, excepting politicians, they get a serve from the rest of us, (We know immediately what to expect from politicians so can’t be disappointed.)
The reason for my diatribe is Jennifer Hawkins. Hawkins is a lingerie model who recently posed nude for an Australian magazine, Marie Claire. The resultant furore wasn’t about the model disrobing. It had to do with the magazine’s claim that the beautiful and flawless (and un-airbrushed) Hawkins represented the rest of the less than perfect female population and was a desirable role model for young girls.
Had Marie Claire offered someone like the older and more shop worn Elle McPherson as an ideal to aspire to, the magazine might have got away with it. Elle is 46 years old and a mother of two children. Nature has been kinder to ‘The Body’ as she is known, than to the rest of us in the same situation. But the occasional picture that slips past the editor’s desk proves that life and gravity have also paid McPherson a visit. Having said that, even an un-airbrushed and tired looking McPherson is somebody we couldn’t possibly aspire to be like. How can we be? Her parents aren't ours. And let’s face it she is a stranger to us all. Where do we get off expecting her flaws to give us comfort about our own?
If we can learn anything at all from Elle, Jennifer and others like them, it’s that they do their best with what nature gave them; they work hard to maintain their health and their figures. If they were musicians, they would be practicing several hours each day to perfect their skills. I’m sure that models or former models do no different when it comes to tuning up their bodies. They work at being the best they can be and we can learn something from that. But I don’t think on the whole that society today is interested in that; society wants a quick fix; society wants somebody else to make sure it doesn't feel bad about itself.
Mention 1940’s actress Veronica Lake to older people and they will tell you she was famous for having a wave of hair covering her left eye. Thousands of women paid to have their hair styled and dyed exactly the same way. Great for hairdressers but the followers looked ridiculous. So did Veronica, but she was beautiful and could pull it off. As the saying goes, ‘imitation is the greatest form of flattery’. That's okay, but making high profile outsiders responsible for how we feel about ourselves places a heavy burden on them.
Doesn’t the role model status belong to parents? Some of us only have to look at our parents to know that the local Orthodontist can expect a visit from us when we hit our teens. It’s in the genes, stupid. If we have a sense of humour it’s because our parents do, or their parents did; if we have a sense of self and integrity we can thank our parents for raising us to believe in ourselves and to respect others.
My parents are dark haired and of average size. Being a pragmatic kind of child, like my dad, I knew almost straight away I was never going to be tall and blonde (hair dye and high heels don't count). They wear prescription glasses; I wear prescription glasses. My dad has a facility for languages, sings well and is a great dancer; something to aspire to even if I have two left feet and only speak one language. Both have a way of telling a tale that I think I have inherited, so when I check out my ugly, aging mug, I comfort myself that even though beauty has faded, I still have the gift of words that they gave me.
My parents have always loved me unconditionally and uncritically choosing to focus on my best features rather than point out what was wrong with me. I grew up on a diet of fan magazines featuring beautiful actors. I’d look forward to getting a new one each week and ogling them and reading about their fictional lives. I enjoyed myself immensely but thanks to the way my parents raised me, I never let it diminish me, and never felt the need to compete. Great role models, my parents.
Whenever the subject of role models comes up, it has been a major irritant to me that the same people come up with the same complaints about airbrushed photos and beautiful models making it hard for young girls to aspire or live up to. I agree, unrealistic images and natural beauties make it impossible for the rest of us. We shouldn’t objectify these people we're told, I agree with that too. But I believe that neither should they have the responsibility thrust on them for how we feel about ourselves.
We chastise erring footballers for not living up to the image that young boys have of them; the same goes for swimmers, songwriters and actors. We can't even judge what we think of a song until we've seen the accompanying music clip of beautiful people prancing around singing indecipherable lyrics. Forget that most of us can’t sing or dance or prance worth a damn, we want to be just like them. And if these high profile types let us down, excepting politicians, they get a serve from the rest of us, (We know immediately what to expect from politicians so can’t be disappointed.)
The reason for my diatribe is Jennifer Hawkins. Hawkins is a lingerie model who recently posed nude for an Australian magazine, Marie Claire. The resultant furore wasn’t about the model disrobing. It had to do with the magazine’s claim that the beautiful and flawless (and un-airbrushed) Hawkins represented the rest of the less than perfect female population and was a desirable role model for young girls.
Had Marie Claire offered someone like the older and more shop worn Elle McPherson as an ideal to aspire to, the magazine might have got away with it. Elle is 46 years old and a mother of two children. Nature has been kinder to ‘The Body’ as she is known, than to the rest of us in the same situation. But the occasional picture that slips past the editor’s desk proves that life and gravity have also paid McPherson a visit. Having said that, even an un-airbrushed and tired looking McPherson is somebody we couldn’t possibly aspire to be like. How can we be? Her parents aren't ours. And let’s face it she is a stranger to us all. Where do we get off expecting her flaws to give us comfort about our own?
If we can learn anything at all from Elle, Jennifer and others like them, it’s that they do their best with what nature gave them; they work hard to maintain their health and their figures. If they were musicians, they would be practicing several hours each day to perfect their skills. I’m sure that models or former models do no different when it comes to tuning up their bodies. They work at being the best they can be and we can learn something from that. But I don’t think on the whole that society today is interested in that; society wants a quick fix; society wants somebody else to make sure it doesn't feel bad about itself.
Mention 1940’s actress Veronica Lake to older people and they will tell you she was famous for having a wave of hair covering her left eye. Thousands of women paid to have their hair styled and dyed exactly the same way. Great for hairdressers but the followers looked ridiculous. So did Veronica, but she was beautiful and could pull it off. As the saying goes, ‘imitation is the greatest form of flattery’. That's okay, but making high profile outsiders responsible for how we feel about ourselves places a heavy burden on them.
Doesn’t the role model status belong to parents? Some of us only have to look at our parents to know that the local Orthodontist can expect a visit from us when we hit our teens. It’s in the genes, stupid. If we have a sense of humour it’s because our parents do, or their parents did; if we have a sense of self and integrity we can thank our parents for raising us to believe in ourselves and to respect others.
My parents are dark haired and of average size. Being a pragmatic kind of child, like my dad, I knew almost straight away I was never going to be tall and blonde (hair dye and high heels don't count). They wear prescription glasses; I wear prescription glasses. My dad has a facility for languages, sings well and is a great dancer; something to aspire to even if I have two left feet and only speak one language. Both have a way of telling a tale that I think I have inherited, so when I check out my ugly, aging mug, I comfort myself that even though beauty has faded, I still have the gift of words that they gave me.
My parents have always loved me unconditionally and uncritically choosing to focus on my best features rather than point out what was wrong with me. I grew up on a diet of fan magazines featuring beautiful actors. I’d look forward to getting a new one each week and ogling them and reading about their fictional lives. I enjoyed myself immensely but thanks to the way my parents raised me, I never let it diminish me, and never felt the need to compete. Great role models, my parents.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Multi-tasking Mammas
My son and daughter in law recently celebrated the arrival of their first born child. Eden’s parents were rank beginners ten months ago but are catching on pretty quickly because Eden who is my third grandchild, is a happy baby, thriving on his solids and passing all his milestones, so I’m told.
I couldn't help comparing the different parenting styles of the two mums who are raising my three grandchildren. One copes with the parenting chaos by sticking strictly to routines, the other is laid back about sleep times and feeding schedules. My parenting style was a mix of both depending on the occasion and the day. I suspect that our goals are the same; we want our children to be more successful than their parents. I thought of all the mums I've known and realised that the more things change the more they stay the same. We all have a bit of the psychologist in us, a well developed bull dust detector and the skills necessary to kiss 'boo-boos' better. As that song goes, 'we are one but we are many.'
There’s Story Telling Mum (STM). She likes nothing better than to read the same story several times a day for weeks on end. She will often stop at every other word to answer multiple questions directly or indirectly relating to the story. STM rereads the favoured tale of the moment with enthusiasm, keeping to the tone and to the spirit of the story, making sure not to deviate by even one word from the original text. STM’s children have their own library cards and book bags, and although she hates dusting with a passion, she and they also make a regular pilgrimage to the local bookshop to add more dust collectors to their ever increasing stash.
When not reading tall tales and true to her brood, STM, mutates into GPM, a Game Playing Mum who drops whatever she is doing to make herself available for I Spy or Monopoly. She always knows the rules of the game, but rarely manages to win one. She has discovered that game playing promotes the sort of conversation that direct questioning never does, so that ‘I Spy a car just like Mikey’s’, reveals that Mikey had hit GPMs child over the head with his toy car. His lower lip trembles with the injustice of it all; after the ensuing tussle he had been made to sit in the time-out corner.
GPM sheds her mild mannered persona to become Fix It Mum. FIM wants to dash straight down to the school or kinder to sort things out with the teacher but is having a tussle with Adviser Mum who believes it’s important to formulate strategies for her children so that they can learn to deal with their own issues. Generally and after embarrassing her children with their peers a couple of times, it’s the latter mum who wins out.
There is a time in every mother’s life when things get a bit confused and she wears the wrong mothering hat (Monster Mum) and makes a wrong call (Raging Bull Mum). Or possibly it’s because she made them eat their greens that her children declare that they hate her and are running away from home. When this happens, it’s the job of Suitcase Packing Mamma to facilitate a smooth escape with a minimum of fuss; she helps with the packing and drives her children to see GMM (grandmother mum). SPM also makes herself available for the return trips at no extra charge.
Listener Mum takes short naps to store up the sort of energy necessary to listen and respond appropriately. At the tail end of an entertaining TV program or a vital news item she has been waiting to hear, there is bound to be the inevitable, ‘mummy, where do babies come from?’ This is where hopefully the question answerer mother takes over, tailoring the answer to suit the age.
The question answerer mum encourages questions (although she dreads the above), but finds herself struggling with the follow-ups.
‘Why does aunt Prunella have wrinkles?’
‘Because she’s old, honey.’
But why is she old, mummy?’
‘We all get old, sooner or later.’
‘But why…?’
As each explanation followed by the ‘but why’ response finally defeats her, question answerer mum finds herself echoing her own mother’s ‘because I said so’. Words she promised herself faithfully (before she had children of her own) that she would never use. At around this time she gets flash-backs to her own past and can’t help but admire her own mother’s forbearance.
Interpreter Mum plays a vital role in her children’s lives. In the early years, she explains their precious utterings to the world, translating what sounds like gibberish to us into toddler gold. IM owes a great deal to the lessons she learned as Answerer Mum. When the children reach their post pubescent phase she translates with ease the language of grunts and shrugs, finding a wealth of meaning in a raised eyebrow or a snort.
‘How was school?’
‘Urgh.’
‘Any homework?’
‘Ergh.’ (fill in your own blanks here)
This is a short phase that thankfully disappears at the end of the teen years. I’ll leave it to you to discover what comes next. Suffice it to say, prepare yourself for empty nest mum / swinging door mum, casserole baking and laundry cleaning mum and finally there is the mother-in-law mum. The latter is a story meant to be experienced rather than described.
No matter what day or time of day the Rubber Pot Mum (mine) is prepared without notice to provide food for the hordes. To that end, there is a pot of soup constantly bubbling on the stove. Rubber pot mum hangs round the house waiting for the chance to host her children’s friends. She remembers their names, who is a vegetarian and who is allergic to pumpkin. Once fed, she beats a silent but hasty retreat.
Chauffeur mum delights in being on call for her children. Although the term communication is a misnomer (communication being only one way), sophisticated devices like iPhone have proved to be a blessing to her. Day or night, CM keeps her trusty phone handy and her car fuelled up and waiting in the garage. She prefers the night-time calls as insomnia tends to keep her up on date nights.
Nobody speaks about DM, Demoted Mum if they can help it, unless it's in hushed whispers. Demoted Mums dispense their old fashioned advice long after the use by date. It's a depressing but mercifully a short lived phase. It's only a matter of time before DMs re-brand and turn into born-again GMMs, Grand Mother mums. GMMs get to claim a brand new and much more receptive audience. They get to do it all over again but this time round it is with all the care and none of the responsibility. GMMs tell the stories, play the games, and answer the questions. It's true that they have to rest a lot more often between sessions, and they do sometimes envy the youth and energy of young mums, but mostly, Grandmother Mums are content to find a useful niche for themslves once more.
I couldn't help comparing the different parenting styles of the two mums who are raising my three grandchildren. One copes with the parenting chaos by sticking strictly to routines, the other is laid back about sleep times and feeding schedules. My parenting style was a mix of both depending on the occasion and the day. I suspect that our goals are the same; we want our children to be more successful than their parents. I thought of all the mums I've known and realised that the more things change the more they stay the same. We all have a bit of the psychologist in us, a well developed bull dust detector and the skills necessary to kiss 'boo-boos' better. As that song goes, 'we are one but we are many.'
There’s Story Telling Mum (STM). She likes nothing better than to read the same story several times a day for weeks on end. She will often stop at every other word to answer multiple questions directly or indirectly relating to the story. STM rereads the favoured tale of the moment with enthusiasm, keeping to the tone and to the spirit of the story, making sure not to deviate by even one word from the original text. STM’s children have their own library cards and book bags, and although she hates dusting with a passion, she and they also make a regular pilgrimage to the local bookshop to add more dust collectors to their ever increasing stash.
When not reading tall tales and true to her brood, STM, mutates into GPM, a Game Playing Mum who drops whatever she is doing to make herself available for I Spy or Monopoly. She always knows the rules of the game, but rarely manages to win one. She has discovered that game playing promotes the sort of conversation that direct questioning never does, so that ‘I Spy a car just like Mikey’s’, reveals that Mikey had hit GPMs child over the head with his toy car. His lower lip trembles with the injustice of it all; after the ensuing tussle he had been made to sit in the time-out corner.
GPM sheds her mild mannered persona to become Fix It Mum. FIM wants to dash straight down to the school or kinder to sort things out with the teacher but is having a tussle with Adviser Mum who believes it’s important to formulate strategies for her children so that they can learn to deal with their own issues. Generally and after embarrassing her children with their peers a couple of times, it’s the latter mum who wins out.
There is a time in every mother’s life when things get a bit confused and she wears the wrong mothering hat (Monster Mum) and makes a wrong call (Raging Bull Mum). Or possibly it’s because she made them eat their greens that her children declare that they hate her and are running away from home. When this happens, it’s the job of Suitcase Packing Mamma to facilitate a smooth escape with a minimum of fuss; she helps with the packing and drives her children to see GMM (grandmother mum). SPM also makes herself available for the return trips at no extra charge.
Listener Mum takes short naps to store up the sort of energy necessary to listen and respond appropriately. At the tail end of an entertaining TV program or a vital news item she has been waiting to hear, there is bound to be the inevitable, ‘mummy, where do babies come from?’ This is where hopefully the question answerer mother takes over, tailoring the answer to suit the age.
The question answerer mum encourages questions (although she dreads the above), but finds herself struggling with the follow-ups.
‘Why does aunt Prunella have wrinkles?’
‘Because she’s old, honey.’
But why is she old, mummy?’
‘We all get old, sooner or later.’
‘But why…?’
As each explanation followed by the ‘but why’ response finally defeats her, question answerer mum finds herself echoing her own mother’s ‘because I said so’. Words she promised herself faithfully (before she had children of her own) that she would never use. At around this time she gets flash-backs to her own past and can’t help but admire her own mother’s forbearance.
Interpreter Mum plays a vital role in her children’s lives. In the early years, she explains their precious utterings to the world, translating what sounds like gibberish to us into toddler gold. IM owes a great deal to the lessons she learned as Answerer Mum. When the children reach their post pubescent phase she translates with ease the language of grunts and shrugs, finding a wealth of meaning in a raised eyebrow or a snort.
‘How was school?’
‘Urgh.’
‘Any homework?’
‘Ergh.’ (fill in your own blanks here)
This is a short phase that thankfully disappears at the end of the teen years. I’ll leave it to you to discover what comes next. Suffice it to say, prepare yourself for empty nest mum / swinging door mum, casserole baking and laundry cleaning mum and finally there is the mother-in-law mum. The latter is a story meant to be experienced rather than described.
No matter what day or time of day the Rubber Pot Mum (mine) is prepared without notice to provide food for the hordes. To that end, there is a pot of soup constantly bubbling on the stove. Rubber pot mum hangs round the house waiting for the chance to host her children’s friends. She remembers their names, who is a vegetarian and who is allergic to pumpkin. Once fed, she beats a silent but hasty retreat.
Chauffeur mum delights in being on call for her children. Although the term communication is a misnomer (communication being only one way), sophisticated devices like iPhone have proved to be a blessing to her. Day or night, CM keeps her trusty phone handy and her car fuelled up and waiting in the garage. She prefers the night-time calls as insomnia tends to keep her up on date nights.
Nobody speaks about DM, Demoted Mum if they can help it, unless it's in hushed whispers. Demoted Mums dispense their old fashioned advice long after the use by date. It's a depressing but mercifully a short lived phase. It's only a matter of time before DMs re-brand and turn into born-again GMMs, Grand Mother mums. GMMs get to claim a brand new and much more receptive audience. They get to do it all over again but this time round it is with all the care and none of the responsibility. GMMs tell the stories, play the games, and answer the questions. It's true that they have to rest a lot more often between sessions, and they do sometimes envy the youth and energy of young mums, but mostly, Grandmother Mums are content to find a useful niche for themslves once more.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Can you learn how to write?
Can you learn how to write? Lots of people have made a mint writing books saying that you can. I’ve read some of them myself and found them interesting and informative. I also learned a lot from a writing course I took a few years ago. When I came back to study as an adult I thought I would come out of it with a qualification to do the thing I had studied for: writing. It's not that I had aimed for it; but I was looking for something constructive to do now that my children were old enough to raise themselves. I'd read the syllabus and found it interesting and thought what the heck! I'll enjoy myself studying something interesting and be a writer into the bargain.
I was really impressed that most of my classmates had brought a manuscript along with them to the course. I felt right out of it. All I had with me was a notebook, a pen and a yearning to have a novel of my own. I did churn out several chapters when studying Novel Writing, but they weren't worthy of being recycled into door stops let alone being published. By the end of the first year I learned that I was never going to be a novel writer.
I don’t know how many of my friends published after they left, but I did learn that it wasn’t so easy even if you had something worthwhile to offer. Most publishers don’t take unsolicited manuscripts. Offerings go to what is called in the industry a ‘slush pile’. If you ever hear back from the publishers it’s months later, after you’ve inquired a couple of times (not too often to bug them) and usually it’s a standard form letter to tell you they don’t want it. If you’re thinking you might want to spread your wings and send your manuscript to a few publishers at a time – don’t. Publishers don’t like it.
If you want to be off the slush pile and have your manuscript seriously considered (although not necessarily accepted) you need an agent. But their books are often full and most won’t take you anyhow unless you’ve published.
And even if you get your manuscript accepted, the advance isn’t much to speak of and given our small population in Australia, neither will the royalties be, but you need to pay back for the advance before the royalties are yours.
A blockbuster is what you need. Most of our top notch writers like Bryce Courteney or Colleen McCulloch, have the market sewn up, and the rest of us get what’s left over. They began with blockbusters and have kept the momentum going ever since. But even you could luck it like lucky Nicholas Evans did. He was a first time author who wrote the Horse Whisperer. It sold 15 million copies worldwide, and to quote the Amazon blurb: ‘the film option was snapped up by aging heartthrob Robert Redford for 3 million smackers.’ His ‘How To’ book if he wrote one would be worth reading, but in the end it’s how he did it, not how we would go about doing it.
Once I’d accepted that novel writing wasn’t for me, I settled down and enjoyed my course. There was a journalism type subject, short story, novel writing, writing for radio to name just a few. And each subject linked into the other. Even if you’re writing an article, you need to know how to grab a reader’s interest. When you write fiction, you still need to keep to the integrity of background information. There’s nothing more annoying than to have the historical context: dress, attitudes of the time and even the style of dialogue, wrong.
You can learn to write and taking a writing course will enhance what skills you already have, but I’m not sure that you can learn to be a writer in the same way you can take a course and come out a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. Unsurprisingly not everyone has a novel in them. But people who are attracted to writing courses generally discover what skills they do have and their niche, whether it’s in advertising, or article writing or even setting up blogs of their own. Whether or not you become a 'real writer', I don’t think anything you learn is ever wasted.
I was really impressed that most of my classmates had brought a manuscript along with them to the course. I felt right out of it. All I had with me was a notebook, a pen and a yearning to have a novel of my own. I did churn out several chapters when studying Novel Writing, but they weren't worthy of being recycled into door stops let alone being published. By the end of the first year I learned that I was never going to be a novel writer.
I don’t know how many of my friends published after they left, but I did learn that it wasn’t so easy even if you had something worthwhile to offer. Most publishers don’t take unsolicited manuscripts. Offerings go to what is called in the industry a ‘slush pile’. If you ever hear back from the publishers it’s months later, after you’ve inquired a couple of times (not too often to bug them) and usually it’s a standard form letter to tell you they don’t want it. If you’re thinking you might want to spread your wings and send your manuscript to a few publishers at a time – don’t. Publishers don’t like it.
If you want to be off the slush pile and have your manuscript seriously considered (although not necessarily accepted) you need an agent. But their books are often full and most won’t take you anyhow unless you’ve published.
And even if you get your manuscript accepted, the advance isn’t much to speak of and given our small population in Australia, neither will the royalties be, but you need to pay back for the advance before the royalties are yours.
A blockbuster is what you need. Most of our top notch writers like Bryce Courteney or Colleen McCulloch, have the market sewn up, and the rest of us get what’s left over. They began with blockbusters and have kept the momentum going ever since. But even you could luck it like lucky Nicholas Evans did. He was a first time author who wrote the Horse Whisperer. It sold 15 million copies worldwide, and to quote the Amazon blurb: ‘the film option was snapped up by aging heartthrob Robert Redford for 3 million smackers.’ His ‘How To’ book if he wrote one would be worth reading, but in the end it’s how he did it, not how we would go about doing it.
Once I’d accepted that novel writing wasn’t for me, I settled down and enjoyed my course. There was a journalism type subject, short story, novel writing, writing for radio to name just a few. And each subject linked into the other. Even if you’re writing an article, you need to know how to grab a reader’s interest. When you write fiction, you still need to keep to the integrity of background information. There’s nothing more annoying than to have the historical context: dress, attitudes of the time and even the style of dialogue, wrong.
You can learn to write and taking a writing course will enhance what skills you already have, but I’m not sure that you can learn to be a writer in the same way you can take a course and come out a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. Unsurprisingly not everyone has a novel in them. But people who are attracted to writing courses generally discover what skills they do have and their niche, whether it’s in advertising, or article writing or even setting up blogs of their own. Whether or not you become a 'real writer', I don’t think anything you learn is ever wasted.
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