Hooray! It's done. Hope you like it.
My husband is a primary school teacher who uses a piano accordion (a creature lives and breathes in this big grey box, can you guess what it is?) and three monkeys to capture his students’ attention. Even the rough and tumble grade six boys aren’t ashamed to stop him in the school ground and ask what Nerk, Nerkette and Cousin Nokki have been up to on the weekend, and why does Nerk have a bandaged head they want to know? (Nerk is the naughty and troublesome one and therefore everyone’s favourite.) Once he has their interest, my husband says, they are his for the rest of the year, ready to learn to listen and most importantly ready to take instruction. At the beginning of each year there’s a bit of getting to know you happening, so they’re still a bit wary and he tries to balance a friendly persona with a teacher’s authority. The monkeys have done half his job for him and by the time the children realise that they have the power to disrupt, they’re in high school.
If you are a teacher, you work in a controlled environment. If you are parent and don’t like to smack to reinforce obedience what do you do? My husband is the first to admit that having seen him at his best and worst he will never be a mystery to his children. They found his stuffed toys and exotic stories entertaining but not enough to keep them entranced longer than it took to tell the tale. He says that by the time the class gets to know him and wise up to his methods, they move on to the next grade where they have to get used to a different set of rules. At home children tend to hang around for a couple of decades till you’re forced to turf them out. By that time they know all there is to know about you and it had better be good.
There’s a short term solution, but it is only effective as long as your children are shorter and weaker than you are. If you can pick them up, tuck them under one arm and haul them off into their bedrooms for time-out you’re in charge. The moment they can reciprocate you’re in trouble because the hormones have kicked in and you haven’t built up a relationship based on mutual trust and respect.
The (open) secret to success is to use brains over brawn. My husband and I acted as a team to foil our offsprings’ attempts to play us off against each other. We agreed that no matter what the request we would not be influenced by ‘but dad (or mum) said yes’, there had to be a parental consensus. No snacks were allowed before dinner and homework came before television. Sleepovers were only for school holidays and pleas of why can’t I have an expensive electronic gizmo like my friend James, got a response of I’m not James’ mother / father.
Our children’s gripes often seemed trivial but we recognised that they were as important to them as ours were to us, so we paid them attention. Such important issues as why the older child got to stay up an extra hour before going to bed were resolved by discussion and negotiation. The older brother had more homework so an extra hour of leisure time was his privilege. The younger brother didn’t exactly like the end result, but knew that his turn would come and that he could expect the same fair outcome when he was in the right. On the other hand, being three years behind his brother in everything did have its frustrations.
Our children were not immune to loud sounds, just those that came from us. Speaking quietly forced them to stop their crash and burn games and listen. As repeating an instruction ends in a sore throat and a headache, and asking ‘how many times have I told you to put your toys away?’ only gets a shrug, we finally bought a box with a lock and put their favourite toys in it. Being deprived of their Mario Brothers hand held game for even one day seemed like forever but did wonders for their hearing and taught them about consequences. It also hardened us to pleas for mercy. We thought it was a good result all round.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep and keep your promise whether it’s in your favour to do so or not. If you take them to the dentist and say it won’t hurt, it had better not hurt. There’s something in the old saying about preferring the devil you know. In the end, being afraid of the unknown is a lot worse than knowing what to expect. If they have been absolute stinkers and you’ve previously promised to take them to the park keep your word. My children had squabbled all morning and into the afternoon. I was exhausted. I didn’t want to take them. Words of reproach and justification were trembling on my lips, but I had heard that although elephants never forget children are even better about remembering and using it against you. My sins were going to come back to bite me if I had reneged, I knew it. And they knew it.
I’d like to say that we turned out perfect children. But how can imperfect parents who are constantly learning on the job do anything but their best, then cross fingers and hope it all turns out? Even now that we are empty nesters we’re surprising ourselves about how much we still have to learn. I will admit that our boys have turned into perfectly nice adults who are good to their parents and each other. And at the risk of sounding like one of those advertisements you see in the local paper for lovelorn singles seeking each other out, my children drink in moderation, don’t smoke and they don’t go out looking for trouble. They are respectable citizens raising the next generation in the family tradition of discipline, exotic stories about naughty monkeys and mysterious creatures that live in grey boxes.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Ethical considerations
I really wanted this site to be a positive one, but I couldn't pass this awful issue by. To paraphrase Trevor Hotten, artists ‘often do things that depict the very sad part of ... society.' So do writers. I think that Hotten's submission for the Archibald Prize is a sad indictment on what society will accept these days in the name of freedom of expression.
The Archibald Prize is Australia’s most important portraiture competition. No wonder; there is fifty thousand dollars in it for the artist and the tremendous kudos of the win. The Archibald is popular with the masses because they usually know the subject so are focusing more on how they feel about him or her rather than the art.
Right now the masses aren’t too happy about one particular submission. An artist called Trevor Hotten has submitted a portrait of Dennis Ferguson, a paedophile and repeat offender who had spent 14 years in prison and Brett Collins a Coordinator for Justice Action and a spokesperson for the Prisoners Action Group.
The spirit of the competition is to submit a painting of ‘some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics.’ It may have sometimes strayed from the original intent, but this portrait is about as far away from the aim as you can get. That portrait will link the two subjects inextricably together forever. I doubt it will win, but the controversy about this year's competition will leave a bad taste in my mouth until next year.
Protecting prisoners' rights is reasonable. Somebody has to advocate for them. But it needs to be balanced out with the rights of victims and that's something I rarely hear happening. Advocating for Ferguson harms the rights of victims and their families, and makes things intolerable for those who have young children to protect. People want to feel that they have a right to be safe from harm.
Hotten defends his submission with the usual mantra of ‘artists... [having] the right to express themselves without censorship.’ Since the dawn of time that has been the mantra of every artist who offers us something unpleasant to look at or to think about. The great thing is that that sort of art isn't likely to last into the future. Artists seem to believe they are beyond the humdrum of the rest of the community and needn't bother about ethical considerations. I think it's time somebody shamed them into it.
I’ve only seen the portrait in the newspapers and it may be that it’s lost something in the translation but it seems to me both flat and lackluster; it lacks dimension. Whatever it is that Hotten means to be expressing, the painting gives no indication to me of what it can be. He’s been quoted as having said that artists ‘often do things that depict the very sad part of ... society or even what people find vile. But it's important [they] visually capture these things.’ Unless his painting has something more to say than that he has captured a likeness I don’t see the point. We’re living in a digital world, after all. On the other hand, once you’ve left a painting's presence you’re meant to be moved by more than an exact image captured on canvas. I’m yet to be convinced that I would be moved that I would be moved by it if I ever bothered to be in its presence.
The Archibald Prize is Australia’s most important portraiture competition. No wonder; there is fifty thousand dollars in it for the artist and the tremendous kudos of the win. The Archibald is popular with the masses because they usually know the subject so are focusing more on how they feel about him or her rather than the art.
Right now the masses aren’t too happy about one particular submission. An artist called Trevor Hotten has submitted a portrait of Dennis Ferguson, a paedophile and repeat offender who had spent 14 years in prison and Brett Collins a Coordinator for Justice Action and a spokesperson for the Prisoners Action Group.
The spirit of the competition is to submit a painting of ‘some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics.’ It may have sometimes strayed from the original intent, but this portrait is about as far away from the aim as you can get. That portrait will link the two subjects inextricably together forever. I doubt it will win, but the controversy about this year's competition will leave a bad taste in my mouth until next year.
Protecting prisoners' rights is reasonable. Somebody has to advocate for them. But it needs to be balanced out with the rights of victims and that's something I rarely hear happening. Advocating for Ferguson harms the rights of victims and their families, and makes things intolerable for those who have young children to protect. People want to feel that they have a right to be safe from harm.
Hotten defends his submission with the usual mantra of ‘artists... [having] the right to express themselves without censorship.’ Since the dawn of time that has been the mantra of every artist who offers us something unpleasant to look at or to think about. The great thing is that that sort of art isn't likely to last into the future. Artists seem to believe they are beyond the humdrum of the rest of the community and needn't bother about ethical considerations. I think it's time somebody shamed them into it.
I’ve only seen the portrait in the newspapers and it may be that it’s lost something in the translation but it seems to me both flat and lackluster; it lacks dimension. Whatever it is that Hotten means to be expressing, the painting gives no indication to me of what it can be. He’s been quoted as having said that artists ‘often do things that depict the very sad part of ... society or even what people find vile. But it's important [they] visually capture these things.’ Unless his painting has something more to say than that he has captured a likeness I don’t see the point. We’re living in a digital world, after all. On the other hand, once you’ve left a painting's presence you’re meant to be moved by more than an exact image captured on canvas. I’m yet to be convinced that I would be moved that I would be moved by it if I ever bothered to be in its presence.
Olá and Buon giorno to you
I've been cooking and experimenting a lot with Asian dishes in the past decade, we love that sort of food in this house. I will no doubt come back to doing that again one day but for the moment I am all cooked out and would like to try my hand at something new. I am wondering if anybody out there has a couple of traditional Portuguese and Italian dishes to share with me. (Not pizza by the way, I've made it for my granddaughters. That is, I rolled out the store bought dough and they put on the toppings. But if there's any easy non-yeast way to go about it, I wouldn't mind knowing.)
The recipes can't have exotic ingredients which I am not likley to find unless I get on a plane and visit (wish I could afford to). Something simple for a beginner, but delicious. I admit my ignorance, I know some few things about Italian food, and nothing about Portuguese food. The nearest I've come to Portuguese is Nandos but I suspect that there's a lot more to it than Peri Peri sauce, delicious though that is. One of my children is a vegetarian, so if there are such things as Italian or Portuguese vegetarian dishes I would appreciate it.
The recipes can't have exotic ingredients which I am not likley to find unless I get on a plane and visit (wish I could afford to). Something simple for a beginner, but delicious. I admit my ignorance, I know some few things about Italian food, and nothing about Portuguese food. The nearest I've come to Portuguese is Nandos but I suspect that there's a lot more to it than Peri Peri sauce, delicious though that is. One of my children is a vegetarian, so if there are such things as Italian or Portuguese vegetarian dishes I would appreciate it.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails
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.
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.
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.
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