March 2008 - Parenting Debates

Parenting Debates

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STOLEN! Our Children's Futures

Miranda Divine Is Definitely Not

Miranda Divine Is Not

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Parenting Debates - March 2008

I SAID, Say PLEASE!

March 28th 2008 10:43

Hey, believe it or not my mug and a few thoughts on modern parenting were in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day. A delightful journo and I had a chat about whether you are hindering your child or helping them if you teach them a set of values and manners to adhere to.

Check out the article. It's called 'Nice Guys Do Win Eventually'. The photos are no longer there...but it makes for interesting reading.

What do you think?

Making your child wait their turn, insisting on please's and thank you's, cultivating a communal rather than individual sensibility in your kids - is it a good thing?

Or is it who gets to the finish line first is the real winner in life?

I've declared my colours on the issue - your turn. Tamra x

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STOLEN! Our Children's Futures

March 25th 2008 02:32

I know this will come as a shock to many of you but there’s a crazy new group out there going around robbing children of their future. Not content to allow kids to be kids, they are shoving bucket-loads of experience down children’s throats, exposing them to wildly inappropriate material, scheduling their time so that they rival adults’ busy lives; and worst of all, you probably know some of them. They may even be your friends. I call them The Future Eaters. Most call them…parents.

Yep, good old Mum and Dad. They have their kids on such an overly rich diet of grown up experience, kids are becoming stimulation-obese. Take these few examples: a recent children’s birthday party in Sydney which stretched over an entire day, featured fire-eaters, jesters, clowns, face-painters, dancers, food that could feed an outback community for a year and a cast of hundreds of invitees. Cost - $40,000. Age of children - 5 and 7. What on earth will they do next year?

Case 2: Star-chart present, parents thought a trip in a limousine to the movies for their daughter and her three friends would be great. Age of child – 5. What will she do for her high school formal? “Oh, limousines! They are so like, baby stuff!”

Case 3: Two boys, every afternoon and every morning they have something scheduled – extra maths, music, sport, chess, swimming—and to top off their busy mini-adult lives, the parents had a tutor in to teach them to ‘play’ because they didn’t know how.

Are our children living child-like lives or are they victims of their parents’ need to programme them, protect them and in the process rob them of a simpler life, with simple pleasures? How many times have you heard your friend (or yourself) say, ‘Oh God, I can’t get him off the play-station. And we just had to buy six more games ($300?) because he’s bored with all his old ones.’ It was probably purchased for his 7th birthday and the games are probably based on the military—ones you wouldn’t have dreamed of playing till your teens.

I’ve seen children of four in the cinema watching The Golden Compass (M?). I know of kids as young as five who’ve seen the Lord of The Rings trilogy. Do you remember those guys that hung out in Mordor? Do we really want them hanging out in our five year old’s psyche?

Recently we’ve been camping (I know, some of you are already screaming at the thought) and it’s revelatory as to how little your child actually needs to make them happy, inquisitive and satisfied. No screens, no non-stop entertainment, no parental programming – other than, ‘get your hand out of the fire!’.

In living through our children, and projecting our adult aspirations onto them, or buying into the media’s concept of what our child wants, aren’t we robbing our children of their ‘now’? Aren’t we stealing from their future to provide something they actually need to wait for? Otherwise there will be a generation of children who experience no anticipation. No curiosity. They will be bloated on experience with nothing to look forward to.

So try resisting the urge to buy, buy, buy, expose, expose, schedule, manage, keep them up late, and instead turn your attention to the ancient art of learning to say – No. To them and to yourself. Tamra x

PS: Feel free to suggest some cool, enjoyable and appropriate books, movies and activities for the under 10's! Always on the lookout.

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Can You Come To My Party?

March 18th 2008 11:16

To many parents, these seemingly innocuous words, directed at your young one, are some of the most feared on the planet… 'Can you come to my party?' Fine if it’s coming from a little friend with a decent enough family — a simple romp in the park, an hour’s play time — but what if it’s that snotty-nosed, little kid with the screechy mother, and it’s a five-hour pool party??!

The need to control your children’s peer group is a very strong urge. It lays dormant like an appendix, waiting until your sweet young thing comes out of class one day holding hands with ‘that kid’. That kid is grubby, swears, has nine brothers and sisters, an invisible parent or two, has something pierced, eats junk food and is always scratching, ie: the Armageddon of all things you’re trying to eradicate from your child’s environment. Then it’s only a matter of seconds before the peer-group-controller part of your brain kicks in.

Like an automaton, you’ll instantly find yourself saying, 'Oh, how lovely, you've made a new friend. What a pity we have to go (insert here: shopping/to the doctor’s/ballet/football/the opera) this afternoon. Maybe you can have a play another day.'

And you think you’ve nipped it in the bud. You think that deft little bit of brainwork has subtly imparted a no-go-zone mentality to your child. But then comes the dreaded invite. In the school bag, opened with inordinate glee, only equal in its zeal to your level of horrification —'Look Mum! An invite to Sassy-Jean's birthday and it’s a solarium party! Cool!!'

How does one deal with this? How can you maintain the line against the onslaught of inappropriate friends?

'But Mum, everyone in my class is going!'
'We’re not doing anything that day!'
'I can get a new swimsuit!'
'I’ll wear heaps of sunscreen!'
'His mum will be there looking after us!' (Oh God.)

They’ll have a good response for every barrier you erect. And you know inside that you shouldn’t be so judgemental. Sure the kid screams, 'What the F$#king h&*ll?!' across the playground and s/he’s only six but the family might be very nice…? At the same time your peer-group-controller is pumping out alert-style hormones saying - it’s a slippery slope to the gangs roaming shopping centres with tatts and piercings and terrible grades in high school.

So what should you do? Can you ever really control your kids’ peer group?

I once went to a four-year-old’s party with my daughter. I’d met the family a few times and I knew I wasn’t going to be dropping her off. Hot backyard in the burbs, no shade, no hats, no sunscreen, bouncy castle that actually accentuated the heat and sunburn, lollies and coke as far as the eye could see, and a lamb on the spit for the grown-ups. Hell.

So I decided at that point, it was unnecessary for my children and I to attend every invitation sent to them. Just like in the grown-up world. (In fact if your child is under six, you can pretty much get away with murder as they’re not too savvy with the old calendar) You can politely decline, creating an alternative activity to avert social embarrassment.

But no, I don’t think you can ever entirely exert your own will over your kids. They have the right to choose who they want to play with, to dance with, to be with. But if you’re doing your job right: instilling in them the family values relevant to you and your family, then most likely they will find a good level. A reasonable mix of diverse kids and friends. After all, they’re experimenting with what’s important to them.

It’s a delicate balancing act at the best of times. You don’t want your kids to be snooty, rude, judgemental; you want them to be polite, appropriate, non-judgemental. But you also don’t want them drinking bourbon and cokes at 7.

So, remind, discuss, nudge, bunt, but don’t push, force, corral. The more you push them, the further away your children might go. Tamra x

"The right to bear arms is only slightly less ludicrous than the right to arm bears."
Chris Addison

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Miranda Divine Is Definitely Not

March 7th 2008 10:29

Ahh, my favourite, family-friendly commentator, Ms Miranda Not-So-Divine, has been at it again. Not content at pillorying the tired mothers of tantrum-ing children, (and championing the smack), she's now hittin' out at the mothers of twins. Gotta love that girl's grrr. Not.

So, have you read it, did you see it, have you heard about it? I don't want to repeat anything you've already consumed and gagged on, but I am in fact referring to her piece on the terrible, societal problem that is…twin strollers. Gee they can be pesky, can't they? I mean, can't those mothers just carry their two one-year-olds around? And their nappy bags. And their handbags. What's wrong with them? Sherpas carry a lot of stuff, and they don’t seem to complain. Well, not that we can understand anyway

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Demanding Mothers

March 3rd 2008 00:36

Jeez Lousie! Those mothers, ey? Not only do they want equal work for equal pay but now they also want good quality child-care, satisfying work befitting a qualified, experienced professional who now adds multi-skilling to their portfolio, and they want to get to pick up the kids from school and, get this, they want it all at the same time! Ha! Oh yeah...I'm one of them.

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