Aunt Annie's Childcare

Computers- educational friend or foe?

2012-02-26T12:17:00.002+10:00

Ah, computers. Where would we be without them? How would we manage in this century, when everyone is assumed (by everyone from the banks to our employers) to have access to the internet, if we didn't have that technology at our fingertips?

Of course children must learn to use computers. They'll be crippled without that skill. Time has marched on, and you'd better keep pace or you'll be left behind.

And yet there's this groundswell of opinion, in the blogosphere and in the scientific community, against technology in the home, against technology in the classroom. What are these people on, you might wonder? Why are they dragging their feet? Technology is now a fact of life, you cry. Get with the program. Our children must be allowed to use computers as much as possible! As much as we do, in fact! Quick, hand them an iPad or an iPhone, or they'll be left behind!

But yet again, it's all about balance, folks. Sorry to repeat myself.

Computers and education can be a marriage made in heaven, as long as there's balance, and clear intent, and a guide with a very firm hand.

I'm as hooked on my laptop as the next person. I've been sucked in to everything from mindless games to turn my hyperactive brain off at the end of the day, to Facebook so I can keep in touch with my distant friends (and they're all distant- thank heavens for FB!), to relying on the technology to find everything from my shopping to my next job. I live miles from anywhere. Computers save my sanity, not to mention saving me from using countless litres of fuel driving many miles to do small but vital tasks.

Without balance, though, my relationship with my real-life human partner comes unstuck because I forget to spend time with him. My fitness goes down the toilet. My eyes start to fail. My environment becomes chaotic, because I get 'lost' in the world of the computer and forget about the real world. I start to sneeze from the dust mites, the tomatoes rot on the vine because I didn't go out to pick them, my dog looks at me sadly wanting to play.

And how are children any different? With computers, children can drill themselves in reading, spelling, maths and a multitude of other skills, and feel like they're having fun. They can research all sorts of topics without mum and dad spending thousands on a set of encyclopaedias that'll be out of date by next year. They can make music, write and publish stories, have pen friends all over the world and learn about other cultures...

...and sit on their rears till they get obese, play repetitive closed-end games till they lose any spark of creative thought they ever had, build neural connections that demand five second 'grabs' of information before moving on and so create a personal case of ADHD (yes, the research is in), get bullied by their peers even in their own bedrooms...

Balance. Computers have become like food. We can't live without them, but for many of us, they become an addiction that we have to monitor constantly.

I'm a relatively old computer addict at 55, having started my literacy journey in the first flush of the music sequencing and notion revolution when I was teaching musical composition to adolescents. It was like magic back then- it made incredible things possible, even for the least musically talented of my students. And having discovered the magic in one area, I went seeking it in others too. I got the technology bug.

But the day came when I landed the job of Head of Music in a private school which prided itself on being ahead of the technological tide. Every student in the early years had a laptop, which was expected to be used for educational purposes in every lesson (with the possible exception of sport), and the aim was to push this initiative through until every child in the school was educated in every class of the day using their computer.

Does it sound idyllic, techno buffs?

I learned a salutary lesson that year. I went in thinking that this school really had it together, was really ahead of the game. And I discovered that it was mayhem. I loathed it. I lasted a year before I threw in the job in disgust.

Why? I simply wasn't doing any teaching.

But how could this be? I was a computer addict myself! Why wasn't I banging the same drum as the senior admin people? Why couldn't I learn to work with the technology to make my teaching even more fabulous?

Here is what compulsory computer-based classroom education looks like.

The first ten minutes of the lesson are spent dealing with children who have no battery power left, because they played games in the bus all the way to school and at every break, missing the opportunity to interact with other students or (in break time) be physically active. Half of these will have left the power cord at home. The other half will all be trying to find a free socket to plug into, but there won't be enough free sockets, so then they'll either decide they have a free ride for the lesson ("I can't do anything, Miss, my battery's dead") or start fighting for access.

In the meantime, the other kids have become bored and restless. They've lost focus, and you haven't even started.

The next ten minutes of the lesson are spent trying to get everyone back on task and teaching the lesson the way you intended, during the course of which you discover that there are even more students without a computer because they're in for repairs and the backlog is killing the school technician with stress. Some kids will be without their machine for months. These children will also be stressed, feeling they're disadvantaged and falling behind- or they will have discovered the habit of laziness.

So now you have bored, unfocussed, lazy kids and stressed, anxious, tearful kids- and none of what you're doing has anything to do with what you were trying to teach.

The next ten minutes of the lesson are spent frantically trying to restructure the lesson so the kids without computers can take part too. The temptation to tell everyone to shut down and just teach the way you used to is overwhelming, but you're not allowed to do that, because then the parents who have mortgaged the house to buy laptops for all four kids at the school will be waiting outside the gate with an axe to ask you politely why they had to waste all that money if you're not even using the damn things.

At this point, your own teaching pedagogy is hopelessly compromised. You have too many demands on you to actually teach anything effectively. The thought of going outside and letting everyone run around for the rest of the lesson is inviting; at least they'd be gaining something.

The remaining half hour is spent patrolling the room, trying to teach something- anything- in between shutting down games, because even many of the kids who actually want to learn just don't have the willpower to resist. You can't actually teach from the front any more; you have to march around flicking from the lesson plan to the escape key like a drillmaster on crack. (Those who want to argue that computer games aren't addictive, please queue outside in an orderly fashion while I prepare enough nice white coats with tie-back sleeves.) Interspersed with shutting down games, you will also be coping with the hands shooting up to say "My battery just ran out and I can't find a socket / don't have my power cord" and the hands shooting up to say "Mine looks different to that" or "My screen just went black".

And then there are the children who just aren't into technology. Instead of grappling with what they're trying to learn in your class, they're also forced to grapple with operating a machine which they neither understand nor like. Your subject doesn't get a look in with these kids, because while the rest of the kids are starting the task they're still trying to find the right icon and clicking the wrong button. That's what they're meant to be doing in IT class, not in every class of the day.

And what about the teacher? There is no thread, no continuity; if you follow the thread of the lesson when someone's just lost power, you consciously decide to leave them behind flailing on the sidewalk while you march relentlessly on. Mmm, great teaching practice there.

And then the bell goes. Game over. Usher in the next lot of kids and do it all over again.

This is the problem with putting a fallible object like a computer between the teacher and the child. In the end, it's all about the machine. It's not about the subject matter, it's not about enlightenment or creativity. There's this piece of metal and plastic and circuitry that we keep banging into before we can even get started with getting kids excited about learning. The lesson is constantly skewered by technicalities.

Using computers effectively in education requires two things. First, the computers have to be working- all of them. Secondly, the students and teachers have to be able to use the computers effectively without the computers using them. And that's a skill that many children simply don't have. We're talking self-discipline, impulse control, focus. Not exactly skills that year 8 students, for example, are renowned for. In fact, I don't start to find that skill in most children till they're about 16.

I'm betting that the day will come when it's proved that computers are intrinsically addictive, because I've watched what they can do to even the most intelligent, motivated students when free access is allowed at all hours. I know uni students who've failed because of their addiction to computer games- don't you?

If your aim is to get the kids out of your hair, then sure, let them play on the computer for hours. All lesson, if you're a teacher and you're over it. (You could also give them a lot of beer. The effect would be similar.) But don't fool yourself that it's educational, regardless of the program. Don't fool yourself that it's anything but lazy parenting or lazy teaching. Sorry. Turn the damn thing off. Two hours total, on all screens, per day.

Used when appropriate, computers can facilitate education in amazing ways. But they are not a panacea, nor are they a sugar pill. In classrooms they need to be used like a potent drug, taken when required with an educator's prescription only. In my senior music composition class they were a wonder, a miracle without parallel; in all the other types of music lesson, they didn't feature at all.

Yes, every child needs to know how to use technology. That's why they brought in IT classes. But don't be fooled. A lot of the time, the computer just gets in the way.

A lot of the time, the computer just leads your child astray.

7 ways to recognise a good teacher

2012-02-24T10:48:00.000+10:00

Today both Janet Lansbury and Teacher Tom have posted about how not to teach. Well, that's the message I took away from their posts, anyway! Have a look, and see if you agree with me.

Anyway, I thought perhaps I'd take the opposite tack and tell you about some things to look for in a good teacher. You should be able to use these guidelines whether you're looking for a coach or tutor, assessing whether your child needs to move to a different class, or choosing a preschool.

Be warned: at no point will I mention test scores. The reason for this? Test scores don't measure how far a child has come from their personal starting point. A good teacher value-adds to every child's original potential, and that can't be measured in a comparative-result test.

How I wish our governments would use this list, instead of the statistical claptrap they insist on relying on. Teacher Tom will tell you what's wrong with that approach.

So here we go:

1. A good teacher sees the child at once. Look for acknowledgement of and interaction with your child as soon as the teacher meets them for the first time.

This is really important, it's my number 1, because a good teacher always looks on children as worthy of respect and is genuinely interested in meeting your child.

A good teacher introduces him/herself to the child as well as to the parent, and includes the child in any conversation. The age of that child doesn't matter! Even a baby is not an inanimate object, and so a good carer will address the baby, with respect.

2. How does the teacher speak to your child? A good teacher uses adult language when addressing a child, with word choice appropriate to the child's age, and adjusts the level of language appropriately depending on the child's response.

A good teacher never patronises or talks down to a child, and realises quickly if the child's communication skills are not age-typical (in either direction)- then compensates. Your child will understand what a good teacher is saying to them, or if they don't, the teacher will get down on their level and keep trying until they succeed.

3. How does the teacher interact with your child? A good teacher asks open-ended questions, and listens to the responses with an open mind. A good teacher invites the child to initiate conversations with him, and really listens, and responds.

If you read the Janet Lansbury post, you'll see in my comment there that my blood pressure rose considerably when I read about the teacher who told a preschooler that a disc shape was called 'round', not 'circle'. That's dreadful teaching. It's not respectful, and it's not fair. That teacher had made up her mind what the answer was, and she wasn't listening to the children any more.

(That's the sort of teacher who, in high school, marks correct alternative answers wrong in the exam, because it wasn't what she had in her head when she set the question. Maddening. Unfair. Makes the child withdraw and stop trying. And I see red!!)

Teachers like that stifle creativity as well as skewing factual learning. Run a mile from teachers like that, as Janet did.

Speaking of fair,

4. A good teacher is fair.

Remember, my definition of 'fair' isn't 'giving everyone the same thing'. My definition of 'fair' is 'giving everyone what they need'. So if there's a dispute between two children, a good teacher will recognise that both children need her loving intervention, not just the perceived 'victim'. So she won't, for example, vilify anyone in her class. Not even the 'problem' children- or what you might see as the 'problem' children.

Listen to your child's feedback, because unfair behaviour is the first thing they'll complain about; you might need to speak to the teacher about your child's needs, or you might need to explain to your child that other children have different needs which the teacher is trying to meet. (Keep an open mind till you know the facts, and remember that teachers are bound to keep information about other students confidential.)

And by the way, speaking of confidentiality and professionalism- if you complain about another child's behaviour to the teacher and she vilifies that child in any way in response, you can bet your bottom dollar that your own child's private information isn't safe with her.

5. Does your child seem interested, or bored? A good teacher uses the children's interests to motivate them and keeps the learning relevant to the child's world as far as possible.

That means he finds out what the children are interested in, and teaches around that. (Yes, even a maths teacher can do that to some extent- or at the very least explain the relevance of the material.) I'm doing it myself at the moment with a reading student; amazing how much better he performs when I give him reading material he's interested in!

You see, good teachers know their students, and I don't just mean their name. Good teachers are holistic- they see the child as more than just a receptacle for their own certain type of knowledge.

A good teacher sees children as capable; a great teacher will set the bar slightly high, then adjust downwards only if necessary- because that ensures the interest of the children. Doing stuff they can already do over and over is boring. Children are surprising creatures sometimes. We could all learn something about children's capabilities from good teachers, because good teachers will provoke you to say "I never knew he could do that!"

And good teachers love red herrings thrown in by the kids, because it helps them to know their students- and it shows them what the children might be interested in learning about.

Control-freak authoritarians are rarely good teachers.

6. Good teachers set little or no homework.

(waits for the explosion from Tiger Mum Central!!)

Good teachers don't need to set homework, because they made the information stick by teaching it engagingly in the first place. They also don't set homework because they recognise that the children who really don't get it won't be motivated to do it because it'll be all wrong, and the children who already get it and don't need more practice will probably sit down and do the homework when they'd be better off playing outside, and half the homework that's set will be done by the parents anyway.

Then the teacher will have to sit down and mark work that didn't even need to be done by kids who've already mastered the skill, instead of spending that time working out a new and creative way to help those who don't understand.

Good teachers might set the odd assignment to see if a child can utilise their learning in a different context, but a great teacher will give the children lots of time to work on that project at school- because they recognise that free social play and outdoor play are both extremely important to children's development.

(NB: Music and sporting practice are the exceptions here. Something that demands increasing muscle memory and strength does need home practice nearly every day. But please don't let that be to the exclusion of free, social and outdoor play!)

7. For good teachers, teaching is a vocation, not a job- and so good teachers aren't defensive about their practice. Because they're professionals, they'll keep up to date with current thinking because they want to, and they'll be interested in new approaches. They'll welcome your input about your child (as long as you're respectful with their time). They'll sound enthusiastic about teaching when they talk to you. They'll be masters of critical reflection, and they'll listen respectfully if you feel a need to question something or complain.

They may not agree with you. But they'll speak to you respectfully, because they're professionals and they recognise that teaching and parenting have common goals- to help your child to blossom.

Now... how am I going to get this list out there to be used by the government? :D

The importance of time out

2012-02-21T08:44:00.001+10:00

Okay, I admit it. That title is a con job. It suggests that I'm a fan of using 'time out' as a disciplinary strategy for children. I'm not- though in the interests of full disclosure I admit I used it myself 25 years or so ago, when it first became popular and I was a stressed-out working mum looking for answers.

'Time out' is what the experts used to tell us to use when kids pushed us past the point of no return, when they didn't respond to discipline, when we'd lost our rag with them, when we wanted to force them to stop and think and cool off. I suspect that those experts were subtly trying to tell us that there was an alternative to spanking.

And truly, time out is better than hitting your child. It's way, way better than losing the plot and shaking a baby. It's a million miles better than escalating physical punishment to the point where a child ends up in hospital. Or dead.

Let's not forget that.

Though perhaps we've been sending the wrong person to time out all these years. We're the adults; we have a hope of sorting out our feelings if we give ourselves a time out. A child who's sent to time out- well, they just don't have the experience yet to do that.

In the punitive days, we maybe called it the Naughty Step or the Naughty Corner; I'm not a big fan of that word 'naughty', either. It's awfully easy to label children's reactions to their inconvenient feelings as naughtiness. (Inconvenient feelings for us, that is. For the children themselves, they're probably inevitable feelings.)

That's really a power play. It's a cheap shot, getting your power kick by controlling a child with labels. If you need to feel powerful over a child, if you can't respect their humanity, you're reading the wrong blog. This blog is about respecting the children in our care.

(No, I'm not saying you have to strike the word 'naughty' from your vocabulary. Just be careful to label the behaviour, not the child, if you must use it.)

Perhaps we tried to sweeten 'time out' by labelling it the Quiet Space, or the Thinking Chair- but whatever we named that 'time out' strategy, we were making a point of letting that child know that right now, we didn't want their company. There was something wrong with them. They were Too Hard.

Time out was, essentially, the barbed wire fence at the edge of our unconditional love. Behave like that, and I put you outside the fence.

It's a bit of a dinosaur now, 'time out'. These days many of us recognise that there's something a little dodgy about isolating a child in a moment of anger (ours or theirs). These days many of us realise that it's more constructive to interact with an out-of-control child and acknowledge their emotions, if we want the solution to be more than a momentary Band-Aid. (You can read about some of my own strategies with out-of-control children here, and here. Or you can just go to my behaviour management page for all the relevant links.)

These days, I'd much rather put myself in 'time out' than a child. It's one thing to put yourself outside the barbed wire fence when your emotions are out of control; that's a considered decision by an adult, and often a wise decision. It's another thing entirely to put a child out in no-man's land with their big emotions, when they don't have the knowledge and experience to analyse what's going on. That teaches children one of two things- to stuff their big emotions away, or to lose trust in unconditional love.

I'll whack a label on my own forehead any day- angry, out of control, unacceptable, inappropriate- and go away till I've calmed down. But what can a child do with a label like that, whacked on their forehead by an adult?

They can accept it, I guess. I'm unacceptable. I'm inconvenient.

What, you expect them to distinguish between themselves, and the emotion, and the behaviour that came out of the emotion? How are they going to make those sophisticated distinctions out there on the other side of the fence all by themselves? That's what leads to the stuffing-down of feelings. And stuffed-down feelings are either going to explode one day- inconveniently, inappropriately- or they're going to make that child ill.

Or they can reject the label. You don't understand. You don't care how I feel. Instead of calming down, that child will be angrier, sadder, more frustrated. You'll see that a lot in older children, when you punish them and put them outside the barbed wire. That child will hesitate to share feelings next time. That child withdraws, ceases to trust, self-medicates.

No, I'm not a fan of time out, unless it's the adult taking the break. When we start talking about adults and time out, it does become important.

It's easy for me sitting here blogging, with my own child all grown up now and the children in my care handed back at the end of the day. It's easy for me to get a perspective on things- parenting, teaching, caregiving- to weigh and balance approaches, to analyse what might work best in a situation.

It's NOT easy for you.

You're in a whirlwind out there. You've got a million things competing for your attention, a million stresses on your shoulders. Maybe you're bearing the feelings and problems of a whole household as well as your own, and trying to keep your career or job flourishing as well. There's that mortgage hanging over your head, or the rent... How on earth do you do it? How do you stay rational?

You can't, unless you're giving yourself time out.

Yes, time out for the adults is terribly important when you lose your temper, but that's the Band-Aid solution. That's not the 'time out' I mean.

Real solutions come from calm reflection. Real solutions come from considering your problems without a two-year-old tugging your skirt and a 14-year-old walking out the door with her breasts hanging out of her halter top and a partner loading you with their work concerns while you're trying to cook dinner and then the twins start screaming over who gets first go on the PlayStation and when on earth are you going to finish that presentation for work?

Real solutions come from planned time out for adults.

Prioritise it.

And then use it wisely. Sibling rivalry will not be solved by a fourth glass of wine, or a weekend away where you don't give the kids a second thought because this is your time.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have your own down time- not at all!- but the 'time out' I'm talking about is perspective time. Time where you think about the way you can manage problems with your children, without any other pressure.

That sort of time out is important. How can you manage your priorities, so that you get some time out for reflection?

A letter to my teenage self- and a challenge

2012-02-14T21:23:00.002+10:00

There's a challenge going on in my town to write the things you wish you'd known when you were a teenager on a postcard. The postcards will go on display for young people to read.

But garrulous Aunt Annie couldn't imagine fitting all that sensitive information onto a postcard! So here's my letter-sized 'postcard' to the teenage Annie. It feels like a bit of reparenting, actually; it feels like forgiving myself for what I didn't know back then.

Why not try it yourself? The more we resolve our own issues, the more resourceful and resilient we become for our children. And who knows- when your children hit those teenage years, your letter to yourself might be a great way to bring up some tricky issues.

Note that this is a letter to myself! This isn't the way I'd talk to a teenager who wasn't me- not at all. I can be much more blunt to myself. :)

Dear Annie,

There are some things I want you to know, because I love you. I'm really sorry I wasn't around when you were growing up. Maybe one day time travel will make that possible, but for now I'll just have to give you this loving advice with the benefit of hindsight.

First of all, it's about this dieting thing. Annie, my dearest, diets don't work; diets make you crazy. Look at you. Every minute of the day, you're either thinking about what you're going to eat next or what you can't have. You need to just stop it, because you're not going to get thinner by starving yourself. It's not sustainable. Food- cooking it, making up recipes, serving it to others as well as enjoying it yourself- is going to become one of your greatest pleasures, when you get over this diet thing and just learn to make what you want and stop eating when you've had enough. But the more you diet, the harder it's going to be to find your natural body signals again.

You take after your Polynesian great-grandmother; you're curvy. You simply are never going to be that size 8 clotheshorse shape- or rather, the only way you'll acquire that shape is when you're unable to eat at all. Your hair will start to fall out. Your arms will look like skeleton arms. Sure, you'll fit into a bikini for once, but bald skeletons don't look good in bikinis. You'll be embarrassed when you see the photos.

And do you know what? Lots of men actually like curvy girls. Girl-shaped girls. You are girl-shaped. You will not cut the poor chaps in half with your hip bones when you make love. This is a good thing. Part of your style will be not looking the same as other people; you'll learn to dress to suit yourself. Start now.

And another thing- do you remember how much time you used to spend outside? Somehow you've got to find your love of the great outdoors again, because all this sitting around moping about your body size is robbing you of your energy and one of your greatest pleasures. Crazy, isn't it? The dieting steals the energy you need to be active, yet what you need to feel happy about your shape is the energy to move around and enjoy what your body can do.

And hey, don't wait till your late twenties to join that tap dancing class. You're going to love it. You're going to be good at it. You don't really hate exercise- you hate being told to exercise, and you hate competitive sport because you don't actually think beating people is fun. But that's okay. Dancing is exercise, and you love dancing.

But enough about your body. Bodies aren't nearly as important as you think they are, though health is. What about your mind and your heart?

I can see now that you've always let your heart rule your head. It would be better if you didn't have to hear that from your solicitor, after someone who said they loved you stole a lot of money from you and aged you five years in six months with mischievous legal action. Don't confuse passion with love. Hormones have a lot to answer for. Trust your instincts, and if your instincts say run for your life, don't worry about how it looks to other people. It's your life. It's not a dress rehearsal. Be brave.

I mean, you're your own worst enemy. I've got to say, Annie, I really love the way you give your loving support to others. You're a really generous person. But honey, there comes a point where you're letting people walk all over you, and then you disappear. It's like you fold yourself up and squeeze into a little box so you won't upset anyone. And then, where did you go? You can't even see yourself any more. A little self-preservation, Annie!

If someone really loves you, they won't ask you to squeeze into a box and disappear. They'll love you for who you are and they'll want you to shine out like the sun, not disappear into their shadow. I promise you you'll find someone who loves you like that, but you'll save yourself a lot of trouble if you can draw some lines in the sand. The sky won't fall if you insist on some room for your own personality and your own needs.

Oh, and one more thing about that- don't think you can change people. You can only change yourself. You always will have choices in your relationships, but those choices never include fixing people or changing people. If you want people to love you as you are, then you need to love them as they are too- and if you can't, make the choice to walk away.

You'll know when it's Mr Right. He'll see who you are and let you go on being who you are. He won't try to compete with you. He'll be too busy being himself and doing his own thing, and you'll love that. You won't recognise how wonderful it is to be with someone who does their own thing till you've spent some time on your own. Don't be scared of being alone. Being alone is wonderful. Being alone will give you some of the best times of your life. You don't have to have a partner hanging off your arm like a handbag to have a full life.

It's the same with your career; you let other people influence you too much. You already know what you love to do. You love music, but you love to write even more. Yet you're going to just drop the writing after school, because someone told you an arts degree wouldn't help you make money. That's a stupid reason to drop something you love so much. Stand up for yourself, Annie! Stop trying to please everyone else but yourself! Open the doors to doing what you love best.

I'm proud of you, Annie. You're not a drinker, you don't do drugs, you don't smoke. You're very strong and responsible. You deal with your problems by talking about them, or by reflecting on them. I want to warn you that some people hide their problems behind substance abuse. I want you to know that if someone says or does something awful to you while they're under the influence of alcohol, that is probably what they really think; that is probably what they're really like. Alcohol is a disinhibitor. Don't just forgive them for those things and make the excuse that they didn't know what they were saying. Take them as warnings, and act on them.

You're a good person, Annie. Take good care of yourself. Make sure you don't have so many people leaning on you that you become crushed yourself. Nurture your relationships with your girlfriends. There will be times when you need their support. Don't think you always have to be the strong one. Don't hesitate to get professional help when you're overwhelmed. It will be the best choice you ever make and it will teach you so much about yourself. Asking for help doesn't mean you're weak; it means you're human.

And the last thing I want to say to you is, don't be scared of aging. Wisdom does actually make up for starting to lose your looks. It's a wonderful feeling to have so much of your sh*t together after all this time on earth.

The frustrating part is not being able to share it with you when you need it.

Your ever loving
Annie

Sometimes I despair: changing people's minds about child care

2012-02-08T12:23:00.001+10:00

Caring for children is such an emotive subject. Every day as I read others' blog posts and websites and news articles- and yes, I do a LOT of reading every day- I see parents and educators struggling as they try to be rational and honest about a subject which is so loaded with feelings that the slightest slip of vocabulary or expression can send people into a complete flip.

There's an old wisdom that states that if you want social mayhem, just bring up sex, religion or politics. I'd like to add 'child rearing' to that. People feel so passionate about the way they've chosen to care for their children. It's almost become a sort of religion, with people from different philosophies desperately trying to convert others to their point of view. Sometimes a discussion thread turns into the verbal equivalent of a holy war. People get hurt. People get angry. Ego overpowers good sense. The 'holiness' of parenthood turns to 'holier than thou', and what started as a desire to enable valuable change gets compromised by people being downright nasty to each other.

So today I feel inspired to look at the mistakes we make when we're trying to change people's minds.

A common thread running through many heated (and often vitriolic) exchanges about child care is the belief that people will change their minds if you can prove them wrong using facts. If only that were true- if only parenthood was so rational! (If only human beings were so rational.)

This idea, that well-researched facts will sway personal beliefs, has been proved to be a furphy many times- climate change is probably the best illustration. It doesn't matter how many experts you have on your side; there will be a conspiracy theory or three, a contrary piece of research or ten, and an infinite body of personal belief based on anecdotal evidence thrown back at you.

Facts don't change minds. We're not computers. You can't input the data and expect a logical result. Human beings are more complex than that.

The reason that facts don't change minds is that most of us aren't scientists, and so we mistrust others' evidence. It's much easier to rely on what we know ourselves- the anecdotal evidence, the things that we've seen with our own eyes. If our child got sick after a vaccination, vaccination seems dangerous. If our child or husband is circumcised and seems to have no problems, we may think there's no problem with circumcision. If we were smacked but we feel like we've grown up okay, we see smacking as effective and harmless. We are so stuck in our own frames. We are so untrusting of the sometimes cold and distant evidence presented by strangers.

That's not to say that facts aren't useful- of course they are; before we go out on a limb trying to change someone's mind, we'd better be sure in our own mind that we're not just relying on anecdotes. We need to look outside our own frame and research our topic. But we can't expect the facts we discover to change anyone else's mind. Not on their own- no, no matter how shocking they are.

Does that make you feel despairing? It does me. Sometimes I despair that my wide knowledge of the human child, gained from a lifetime of study and experience, isn't easier to distribute so it might help others magically change their practice overnight. I've presented co-workers with facts about child-centred, empathetic childcare and teaching practice, encouraged them to change, and been laughed at and undermined for it. I've given honest, fact-based advice in forums, and been flamed for it. I feel your pain as you try to change the world, I really do. People sometimes just don't want to believe me. My experience isn't their experience; my frame isn't their frame.

Don't despair. I've learnt a few things along the way about better methods of changing people's minds. Bear with me.

Another method that seems to be used by some is the guilt-trip. Oh, come on- you know that doesn't work- did it ever work on you to change your beliefs, or did it just make you feel rotten or furious?

In fact, it doesn't work to such an extent that if you slip up and make someone feel bad about what they're doing, even by accident, you may well have lost them for good. Guilt creates fight-or-flight. When people feel guilty, they'll typically either find a way to support even an untenable position or they'll close down. It takes a very fine human being to look guilt in the eye straight off and say "I made a mistake, how can I fix it?" So drama is not your friend. Heightened emotions are not your friend.

And that brings me to language and expression. If you want to change people's minds, the first thing you have to do is try to stand in the other person's shoes and then think 'How does this issue look from here? How does it feel from here? What would I feel sensitive about if I were standing here?'. Once you've done that, you do have a hope in hell of choosing the right words.

Here's the crux of the matter: If you can't stand in the shoes of the person on the other side of the line, you have no hope of changing their mind. Speak to them the way you would like to be spoken to about your most deeply held personal views. This isn't about being patronising or dramatic, about humiliating others, about winning. It's about changing the world gently, one step at a time.

And this is why being a crusader for a cause doesn't work. Crusaders fill the whole frame with their own beliefs. They can't see anything outside that frame. To change people's minds, you need to make them feel that you understand their position and are prepared to work with them from where they are. You can't just whack them over the head with the facts, ridicule or patronise them if they argue and drag them over to your side. It doesn't matter how right you are. That won't work.

Telling stories is a good way to make people think about change. Share your own anecdotes, and when you listen to anecdotes from the other side of the line be very careful how you respond. You are treading on other people's personal experiences and beliefs; tiptoe.

Often we try to change too much at once. Enjoy the small wins! An over-controlling early childhood teacher, for example, who one day agrees to let the children choose what colour paints to use, equals a win for play-based learning. Let her discover the children's response for herself, and she'll be encouraged to go further. Don't nag her to let them decide what or how to paint as well, don't expect her to suddenly let go of the reins of the whole experience- it's not going to happen. One step at a time. Tell stories of what you saw during that experience instead of lecturing. Emphasise the good.

The last point I want to mention is that change is a painfully slow process. Here's the most difficult tip to embrace: stop pushing so hard, even if you feel your own position is vital and children's welfare is at stake.

I know this is counter intuitive, but if you want change to happen you do have to stop pushing and let people take themselves there at their own speed. Sometimes it takes generations. It is never as fast as we want it to be, or as fast as we think it should be. Here's an incredibly frustrating fact: you can't shock the human race into changing their ways overnight. You can't even hurry them up. People don't like being dragged along against their will. Let them walk, and feel their own way. Put your evidence out there without pressure, and work on your relationships with the people you want to change.

Remember that in the not-so-distant past, children were seen and not heard, beaten with straps, forced into child labour, sent away to wet nurses as a matter of course. Look how far we've come, and rejoice; realise that the fruits of your labours for change may not be seen for many years.

It's still worth doing, though, isn't it?

Obedience does not equal respect

2012-02-01T11:55:00.002+10:00

There's been a lot of talk about obedience lately, hasn't there?

At one end of the spectrum, we have the ratbag fringe advocating whipping your baby with whipper-snipper cord to teach him to obey you- excuse me while I throw up, and then cry bitter tears for that sad and deluded segment of the human race. (I'm betting that all the people reading this think that's totally appalling, so I won't go on and on about it, because it makes us all sick to the stomach.)

At the other end- well, I guess you could say there's me. I actually worry when children are too obedient, and I worry even more when adults expect and want children to be unquestioningly obedient.

I think a lot of people confuse 'obedience' with 'respect'. When their children don't do as they're told, the parent or carer feels hurt, insulted or not respected. And of course, there are times when we need our children to obey us immediately- when there's serious imminent danger, you need the power of "STOP"- but let's not confuse that with a child who doesn't pick up their toys, or won't practise the piano or do their homework, or still hasn't taken the garbage out, or breaks curfew. (To give "STOP" power, you need a respectful relationship with your child and you need not to overuse that word.)

So first, let's explore the difference between obedience and respect, shall we?

I'm going to start with a special needs child I used to teach, the adorable "Bodie", aged nearly 5. Bodie looked, to all accounts, like the most disobedient child on the planet- climbing the furniture, opening forbidden drawers, hitting other children and so on. Bodie had as-yet undiagnosed Aspergers with ADHD. His 'disobedience' was actually a response to inappropriate stimuli- a noisy room, too many colours and lights and toys at once, many children he didn't know, many demands with which he literally couldn't comply ("look at my eyes" was one) and some metaphorical or colloquial demands he translated literally (such as "hop up" instead of "stand up").

Now, I'm sure you understand that you can't rate that sort of disobedience as a lack of respect. In fact, it's a perfect example of one of the mistakes we make when experiencing disobedience from neurotypical children too- we haven't considered the child's frame of reference.

When we order an adolescent not to associate with another child who we consider a bad influence, for example, we aren't taking into account the very significant knock-on effects of peer group pressure and exclusion from a clique. Fear can present as disobedience, and the last thing we want is to make our child choose between fear of peer group ostracism and fear of us.

Similarly, when we order a toddler to stop playing because it's time to leave, we need to remember that this child is experiencing a hugely important time of rapid learning- and you may have just interrupted an important and fascinating process of intellectual growth that you haven't even noticed, because you're too stressed yourself. To get respect, we need to disempower the concept of obedience in our own head, and instead model respect by considering the child's frame.

Once I understood where Bodie was coming from, I was able to see his disobedience as a response not to me, but to unreasonable demands due to my lack of insight into his needs. This is always worth considering when your child isn't obeying you. Once I'd got myself inside his frame, although he couldn't always obey me, he did show me respect in his own way. From Bodie, respect looked like cuddles, and smiles, and occasional eye contact, and using my name (that was HUGE). The children's story I shared in this post is about Bodie, if you'd like to get inside his frame too. (No, it's not his real name!)

Next in my thoughts about obedience, I want to go to another special needs child- my own son, who is gifted/talented (and if you don't think that's a special need, you need to read this). My ex-partner (not his father, I might add) considered him the most disobedient child on the planet, because he almost never obeyed an instruction at once- sometimes not at all. Meanwhile I was unable to support my ex's displeasure and present a united front, because I didn't value obedience for its own sake. (Which is just one reason we're not together now- but I digress!)

What was going on in my son's head when he was given an 'order'? First of all, as a gifted person he is a deep thinker, and was from a remarkably young age. He would consider the implications of the 'order' from both practical and emotional viewpoints before acting. Was the 'order' something that would fit in with his immediate needs? Was it a good idea? Did he agree with the underlying intent? Did he respect the person giving the 'order'? Was he being manipulated?

Now, your immediate reaction to that might be 'what a thoroughly unpleasant child', to have such thoughts. Well, actually that's exactly the way I wanted him to think.

(I'm not saying it was always easy to be his mum. Sometimes the easy way is the wrong way.)

First, he was considering his own frame (was the 'order' something that would fit in with his immediate needs?), which meant that he was taking responsibility for his own welfare. He wasn't going to grow up like me, always jumping to everyone else's aid to the detriment of his own wellbeing.

I have to add that he is now the first to offer a hand when anyone genuinely needs help, so he is walking that tightrope very well these days after practising from an early age.

Secondly, he was thinking for himself and assessing the situation before acting as a knee-jerk response (was it a good idea? Did he agree with the underlying intent? Did he respect the person giving the 'order'? Was he being manipulated?). Children who think like this are never going to join cults and herd-mentality groups like Hitler Youth. They are not going to be the 4-year-old child who, when told by a 5-year-old bully to put caterpillars down a younger child's pants, meekly obeys (yes, that is an actual incident). They are not going to die because an adult in a position of power involves them in a stupid game involving eating peanut butter, and they obey despite being allergic to it (that is also an actual incident). They are probably not even going to take the car out the day after they get their license and see how fast they can make it go, because they're considering their own welfare, assessing risk to themselves and not trying to please or impress someone who's not worthy of their respect.

That's exactly how I wanted him to grow up. It's not how my ex wanted him to grow up, though; my partner was trying to boost their personal self-esteem through control. I can see now that my ex-partner's alcohol abuse and manipulative behaviour (towards me and others) made that person unworthy of my child's respect; this was the real issue in my son's continuing disobedience. My son was actually giving me a message about my partner, if I'd only been listening.

And what about the little, irritating, everyday stuff? The 'not doing the piano practice' is one that's close to my heart, because that was me.

Here's a tip for you: if your child isn't practising their instrument at all, it hasn't captured their imagination and you need to either save your money or find out which instrument does motivate them.

And if they sound like they're just messing around on their instrument, rather than practising their exam pieces, butt out and leave them alone. (That was me.) They'll end up with a relaxed hand position, a more intimate knowledge of the instrument than any teacher can ever give them, and more than likely an ability to play by ear, which is the greatest gift a musician can have (because honey, when the wind blows the page over in the middle of the performance it's not an emergency). It's just like any other form of self-directed play- it's the best way of learning. Your child knows what he needs.

ORDERING a child to practise an instrument, or a sport, or maths problems, or any other activity for that matter, is not going to make them a prodigy or a champion. (How I wish I could emblazon that on my forehead so I was a walking billboard.) That is not disobedience. The definition of insanity is keeping on doing the same thing and expecting a different result; your child is just refusing to be insane. They're not motivated to do it, so they won't do the inner learning that's needed to succeed. It'll all be on the surface. LEAVE IT.

Homework not done? Let them fail. Read all about it right here- I wrote a whole post about that issue.

And the garbage that hasn't been taken out, the failure to observe a curfew? Well, yes, that might be a respect issue. Did you involve them in the allocation of chores, or the imposition of the curfew? Did you speak politely? Did you thank them sincerely last time they contributed to the household or came in on time? Do you maintain a respectful relationship with your child at all times? If the answer to any of those is 'no', then yes, it's a respect issue. You're not respecting them as a human being with rights and needs.

You have to earn respect. It's not your right. If you can't treat your child with respect, you don't deserve their obedience.

Unquestioning obedience has long-term implications which are- in my opinion- universally negative. It wasn't what I wanted for my child. Is it what you want for yours?

POSTSCRIPT: Teacher Tom has just written an awesome post on the same subject. Here 'tis- go over and have a look! Teacher Tom on obedience

The importance of water play: get that cotton wool wet!!!

2012-01-25T14:48:00.000+10:00

It's absolutely bucketing down here. Sorry about the blurry picture- that's water on the lens. And that bit that looks like a river leading to the dam- um, that's actually the lawn. It's coming down faster than it can flow away, and has been for three days now.

Where I live, this isn't unusual- I live in a wetland area, and we get flooded in at least once a year. To survive in a place like this, you really need to understand water and have respect for its power, or you'll find yourself doing stupid and dangerous things like swimming in floodwater, or driving through floodwater, or underestimating the power of a current.

There's a bridge near my house where a young man drowned some years ago, because he had no respect for the power of water. His car was washed off the bridge during a flood because he didn't understand that the water didn't care that he wanted to get where he was going, and it would always win a directional battle against a car. That car just bobbed up like a toy boat, and over the rail it went.

I didn't think twice about that aspect of things when I moved here, because I was brought up with a healthy respect for the power of water from early childhood. I know quite a lot about water, really, and it all stems from the way I was allowed to play with it when I was a child. I love water- but I also fear it, in a very rational way.

And as I stood in the bucketing rain today with a shovel, clearing channels so the water could run away instead of being trapped where it'll kill the grass my animals need to survive, I thought about how some children won't be allowed to play with water because of parental fear, or because of lack of opportunity in an increasingly over-regulated environment. And I thought, that's worse than sad; that's actually dangerous.

I was brought up in a time when children weren't usually wrapped in cotton wool. My grandparents had a wonderful country property which included a gully with a permanent creek running through it, where my brother and cousins and I would catch yabbies (little crayfish) by tying some meat on the end of a string and ever-so-carefully pulling the string up while the unsuspecting yabby gripped the meat with his claws. The trick was to go terribly slowly till you got him to just below the surface, then lean out over the water and quickly yank him up and over onto the rocks into the bucket, before he could let go in surprise.

Many a time we had a yabby let go midway and start scurrying back to the water over the rocks; then it was a matter of grabbing him in exactly the right spot where the nippers meet the body, so he couldn't reach back over his head and pinch your hand. That was another learning experience! Talk about facing your fears- you only had a moment to decide if you were brave enough.

That's me, with my brother and my aunt holding the yabby. (By the way, we always let them go- the game was to count them, not eat them!)

What did I learn from playing at that creek? How not to fall in, for starters. Before I got anywhere near the edges of the creek over the deep holes where the yabbies lived, I was allowed to play in the shallows and shown how to look at the surface of a rock to see if it was mossy or wet. I learned by doing- slipping in the shallow sections of the creek and falling on my backside, getting up bruised and wet, while my father or his sister, my aunt, looked on and said "I told you so". I learned to look for flat, dry, clean rocks, to look where I was going, to test a rock before I put my weight on it. When you've fallen on your tush enough times, you start to listen when your elders tell you things, because they were right before- you've proved it yourself.

And so you don't lean out too far off the rock, or you sit down on the edge, and you wear sensible shoes, and you don't go down there alone. You keep an eye out for each other.

Eventually when we were a little older, my brother and I were allowed to go to the creek unaccompanied by an adult. Neither of us could swim, but we'd learned our lessons and we were trusted to be sensible. Neither of us ever fell into a deep section of that creek. We'd learned to assess the risks and be careful, by playing freely in the company of our 'spotters'.

Today as I was digging those channels, I remembered the other thing we used to do down there- build dams in the sandy sections, and try to divert the water by digging little channels just like the ones I dug today. We were experimenting with the power of water. I can still remember how much effort it took to build a decent dam, and then how effortlessly the water would wash it away. The water was completely ruthless, and if it couldn't go straight ahead it'd go round the edges till the whole thing was eroded. It was fascinating to watch.

Same with the channels we built- unless you've tried to divert water, you'll always underestimate its strength and destructive ability. I thought of that recently when the local council spent weeks (and heaven only knows how much money) rebuilding a stretch of road that'd fallen into the river on a bend. It'd been open again for less than a week when the water had its way, and the whole new section toppled back into the river.

I'm no engineer, but I would have moved the road the first time round. If water wants to cut a corner, then there's no way of stopping it. I learned that when I was 5, through play. Why didn't the engineers know that? Didn't they play with water when they were young?

If you've never had the opportunity to play with water like that, how can you possibly appreciate that a human being versus a river in flood, or a strong current, or a rip at the beach, is a competition that's going to end in grief? If you've always had your hand held near the creek, how can you know what's safe? If you've never experimented, how can you learn?

And so if the only thing you remember about water and children is that a child can drown in less than two inches of water, you're missing something. Children need to play with water, and all the better if it's wild water like the water in my grandparents' creek; you actually can't learn very much about water in a swimming pool. They need to play with water and try (and fail) to control it, in order to learn respect for its power so they can be safe around it.

And you need to make time to take them there, and spot for them. Not hold their hand- just stay close until they've made enough little mistakes to learn for themselves that water is dangerous as well as fun. You honestly can't expect children to stay away from something that's fun, just because you tell them it's dangerous. They have to find that out the hard way. There's no easy way.

I think of the little boy swept out to sea the other day, who'd come from a country where there are no beaches. I think of adults who've met the same fate for the same reason, because they have no experience of water's power. The longer you leave it to let your children fall down, slip, get wet and dirty, maybe even find themselves with their head under the water unexpectedly, the greater the likelihood there'll be an accident you can't control later on.

Let them play with water. Be there. Their lives may depend on it.

A jug of wine and thou, in the wilderness of parenting

2012-01-20T20:58:00.000+10:00

I have to tell you a story which has absolutely nothing to do with childcare. Please, bear with me. I will wind it around to childcare eventually. (You know I always do, in the end.)

When I first came to this neighbourhood (alone) I knew NOBODY. I was invited to a few people's houses, was offered a glass of wine the moment I stepped through the door, and then looked at as though I was an alien life form with green fangs dripping slime when I politely declined.

Now, I must point out that when I was a young married woman I used to drink wine- quite a lot of wine, actually- but when I got pregnant, my body suddenly decided that wine and I were mortal enemies; if I drank a single half-glass of any white and most red wines, I would immediately discover that I'd been stabbed in the back with a red-hot poker, and would retire to the smallest room in the house to writhe in agony for half an hour or so.

It's an unpleasant sensation. I try to avoid it.

Fallback position for the hostess was always to offer me a beer, but I just don't like the taste. And out here, that's usually the end of the drinks menu. It got a bit embarrassing after a while.

Well, I got through those first few visits drinking water and making an early exit. Obviously I wasn't quite fitting in, and my inability to share a glass of wine with the women was part of the problem; they probably assumed I was a prig, or judging them for their Bacchanalian enjoyment. But I hadn't had it really brought home to me how vital alcohol can be as a form of female 'social currency' until I revisited one of the houses where I'd been looked on as somewhat difficult for refusing a wine, despite my explanation.

Rather than put the hostess back into Awkward City by refusing a drink altogether, this time I'd brought my own premix G and T (yes, that's right folks, I'm a spirits lady these days and I do enjoy a drink), and I waved it at her gaily as I arrived. She immediately looked relieved.

"Oh, you drink spirits! Thank goodness!" she bubbled. "If you didn't drink, I couldn't see how we could be friends."

I suppose I should give her points for honesty, though her reaction effectively put a line through her number in my little black book. I've experienced lesser degrees of that reaction so many times, due to my wine intolerance, that it's made me think pretty deeply about the role of drinking in our culture- particularly in Australia. It seems that many people are completely nonplussed by someone who doesn't trade in the accepted social currency of alcohol, to the point where non-drinkers make them deeply uncomfortable. We don't give our society's drinking norms a second thought, really, until someone bucks the system or falls off the edge.

So how does that aspect of our culture fit in with parenting? (There, you knew I'd get to it.)

In the interests of full disclosure, and in case you think I'm about to launch into a guilt-trip alcophobic diatribe (yes I made that word up), I'm writing this with a neat bourbon in my hand. It's generous, but it's the first and last of the night.

In the interests of full disclosure, I spent 17 years of my life co-parenting with a drunk, and I really, really regret that. I wish I could find a way to use that for good.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm currently writing a book which deals in part with the destruction that parental alcohol abuse wreaked on the childhood of one of my dearest friends.

Do you parents out there dare come on a trip with me through the stages of drinking, from relaxation to degradation?

There's a whole world of mothers out there who freely advertise that they're desperate for their glass of wine at the end of the day, and many fathers are similarly unashamedly desperate for a beer. Or whatever. Choose your poison. (Many of these people are my friends. Many of them are your friends. Check the status updates on Facebook every Friday afternoon.)

I mean, it's the path to Paradise; ask Omar Khayyam...

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

Some of them have one or two glasses, and it takes the edge off their anxiety or stress or wound-up-ness (that's not a word either but you know what I mean) without having any visible ill effects. They'll do it openly, in front of the kids, and probably quite safely. They might even be talking to their kids about alcohol already. They won't feel obliged to finish a bottle just because it's open. They use alcohol; it doesn't use them. They're unimpaired.

Some parents have more than a few glasses, and maybe they get a bit snippy or narky with their partners or their children. (A few eyebrows might get raised. Children raise their eyebrows too, though sometimes it's internal.) Maybe they get a bit impulsive on the parenting forums and blogs and Facebook, and make rather rash or intolerant comments. (I have no evidence for that, but some of the wilder comments I read do sound very like one of my exes when slightly sozzled- self-righteous and insensitive.)

Maybe it makes them somewhat less alert as parents. (I hope their baby isn't slipping out that door to the pool, where someone's left the gate ajar; there seem to be an awful lot of drownings despite the compulsory fences.) Maybe they don't get nasty, but forget they were meant to drive their kids somewhere till after the third drink in the hour, and then they think what the hell, I'm okay, it'll be alright this time, and pick up the car keys. (Is that child restraint done up?)

Some parents have many more than a few glasses. Most nights. (God help them if their child has an accident or gets sick, and they have to respond.) Over time their faces start to look flushed, their bodies start to look bloated, and they start to boast about how trashed they were last night, knowing that their friends will laugh with them. Some of them start to do inappropriate things in front of their children, like stripping off and throwing their underwear in the belief they're funny (seen it) or swearing copiously (seen it) or picking fights (seen it). (Their children will remember, even if they don't. Their ex-partners will, too.)

Some of them have so many glasses (probably nearly every night) they actually become someone else, or pass out on the floor, or throw up in front of the kids. (Seen it all.) Some of them become dictators of discipline, losing their kids' hearts for all time. (Seen it, and the after-effects.) Some of their children will adopt the modelling as normal, and become alcoholics too. Some children will go so far the other way that the rift will never mend.

Somewhere along this continuum of alcohol use, drinking ceases to be accepted, even by other drinkers, and this almost necessary social currency starts to be unacceptable, embarrassing, irresponsible, deadly serious. Nobody wants to tell a friend where that line is, because then they'd be a party-pooper- and besides, there but for the grace, etc, etc. (And who wants to try to reason with a drinker? They get defensive, they hate you for it, they tell you you're wrong, they sometimes get emotionally or physically violent. Been there, done that, waste of time.)

And so it's actually down to the drinking parent to look in the mirror, and to learn to stop at the right time, while they're unimpaired. That's not as easy as it sounds. There are few bigger taboos in many social circles than saying no to a drink, or to another drink. There are few things harder to admit than being out of control around a substance that people use all the time under your nose. Not drinking at all can make you feel like an outcast in your own society; not drinking to excess can make you feel the same way in some circles.

Harder still is the fact that when you're stressed out of your mind by parenthood, especially if you feel like you're bearing the burden alone, alcohol works. It makes you feel more relaxed. (At first.)

This is not AA. I'm not a counsellor. I'm not going to wave a magic wand if you've got a problem with alcohol, and I'm not going to lecture anyone (though I might refer you to my post on what makes a parent resilient, and suggest that you might need to deal with a few things on that list).

I just want you to think about where along that scale you want to be, and where you actually are. Because your children are watching you, dammit, and I've seen what can happen when children and alcohol misuse are in the same room, and it ain't pretty, and you don't want any part of it. If you got someone to video you, would you like what you saw? Would you like the look in your kids' eyes?

Respectful parenting. It's the key to everything you're trying to achieve as a parent- behaviour management, achievement to potential, healthy family relationships and all the rest.

That means that you need to be someone your children can respect. Your children's respect isn't your right. You have to earn it.

So if alcohol is maybe undermining that respect... maybe it's time you thought about that glass of wine, whether it's the first one or the third one or the one where you lose count. I know you're trying to be a better parent, because you're right here reading about better parenting. And that's a damn good start.

Parenting can feel like the wilderness, but maybe the jug of wine isn't actually turning it into paradise after all. Maybe, for your kids, it's in danger of turning it into hell on earth.

When your daughter thinks she's fat

2012-01-16T17:27:00.004+10:00

I'm guessing a lot of you have read this post, which has been circulating on facebook:

http://www.rachelsimmons.com/2012/01/mom-im-fat-one-mothers-inspired-response-to-her-7-year-old/

I read it too, and I've been mulling over the issue of little girls thinking they're 'fat' (!) ever since. That mum ended up dancing proudly naked in front of the mirror with her daughter (and good on her!!). But maybe that's not what's going to help everyone. (Personally, I'm just not the dancing-naked type.)

So what else can we do when our daughter gets attacked by the fat police before she's even in her teens? What do we do when a little girl in our care declares sadly "I'm fat!"?

The instinctive reaction of any parent is outrage and denial, of course. That's natural. Regardless of that little girl's actual body size, it's natural to try to protect her from body image issues at such a ridiculously young age.

Well, guess what? It might be natural to say "no you're not!". But it's not helpful.

Sorry.

This is one of those moments where, as parents, we have to sit on our 'natural' reactions. Bite that tongue. You have to. When your daughter shares such a delicate piece of her feelings, a rebuttal like that will shove those feelings right back inside her.

Don't kid yourself that "I'm fat" is a statement of fact. Every woman who's ever looked in a mirror knows that "I'm fat" is, first and foremost, a statement of feelings- feelings of insecurity, of not being good enough, of being ugly and undesirable, of not fitting in with the accepted norm. Whether it's true or not.

Now think about what happens when you share your feelings with someone close to you. I mean, how would you feel if you said to your partner "I miss my mum", and he said "No you don't!"? Would it help you? Would it make that feeling go away? Would you feel like he understood you? (Would you file for divorce?)

"No you're not" is a response that's about you, not about your daughter. Body size is such a touchy issue for women (and for some men too). No mother worth her salt wants her daughter to have to deal with what she herself has been through in front of the mirror, let alone from pre-puberty. (Especially if it's not even accurate.) Of course you want to shove that right back in the box!

It's so tempting to try to use logic next, or to reframe your daughter's statement in a more positive way.

"You're still growing."

"You have strong legs, not fat legs."

"It's natural at your age to have a bit of puppy fat."

"Girls are meant to be curvy."

Imagine your husband just replied to "I miss my mum" with "She's in Italy and you'll see her when she comes back next year." (logical.) Ouch.

Or, "You're used to having your mum here to help with the kids." (reframed.) Eek.

That's what factual, logical, reframed responses to feeling statements do- for the person who just revealed their inner truth, it feels like running into a brick wall.

It's also tempting to try to replace her statements with your own.

"I think you're just right."

"I think you're beautiful."

Hang on right there- now you're talking about you again. I know you mean well, but you just passed right over your daughter's feelings like they weren't there. She's already feeling bad, and now you're telling her she's wrong as well?

Or are you just saying, in essence, "I refuse to understand"?

I know you didn't mean to say that. I get it. You were trying to reassure her. But that won't work. It's about as useful as your partner saying, after you say "I miss my mum",

"I don't."

(ouch.)

These are all well-meaning attempts to be helpful, reassuring, positive. But there's a step missing, and that step is respecting what your daughter just told you.

When your daughter shares something that makes her feel bad, it's the feelings you need to deal with- not the facts. The moment you contradict her, you're refusing to acknowledge her feelings about this- and that's not respectful. Put yourself in her shoes- go back to that statement about missing your mother. What would you like your partner to say when you express that feeling?

"You sound sad. Would you like to tell me more about that?"

What do you think? Can we use that with a little girl who thinks she's fat? You bet we can. That's acknowledging and respecting her feelings, and inviting her to give us more information while we listen.

Here are some other things you can say that are likely to help your daughter, because they'll encourage her to tell you more.

"Do you feel like that, or did someone else tell you that?"

(don't get angry if so- that doesn't help.)

"Is there some part of your body you're worried about in particular?"

(this is not your cue to tell her which parts of your body you hate. This is about her.)

"Is there something i can do to help?"

When you've got to the root of the problem, it might be time for some positives.

"What parts of your body do you think are beautiful? Would you like me to help you find them?"

"What makes you feel good about your body?"

"Do you have an outfit that you feel really beautiful in?"

If you don't get any leads on how to help your daughter from her answers here, you might need to start suggesting and informing, but gently- not like a bull at a gate! Nobody ever changed their minds on a emotional issue through being presented with the facts. Hold that thought, please!

Here are some random, feel-good, constructive ideas to help you support a little girl who thinks she's fat.

It's really hard to feel ugly with squeaky-clean hair.

It's really hard to feel ordinary in a bubble bath.

It's really hard to feel fat when you're growing your own little vegie garden, or learning to cook.

It's really hard to feel unattractive when someone's giving you a manicure.

It's really hard to feel left out when you're dancing to pop songs with mum instead of flopped in front of the TV.

It's really hard to get too serious about body size when you're having fun and doing something you love- the more active the better.

These might just sound like distraction techniques, but I bet you already know they are actually ways to make yourself feel special, strong and capable. Help your daughter to feel special, strong and capable!

If your daughter's problem has any basis at all in reality- if she's really above her most healthy weight- there are things you can do to help. The three great causes of childhood obesity are:

1. too much screen time,

2. heavily processed and take-away food, and

3. cotton-wool parenting, ie too little strenuous activity.

I actually researched that recently, for a uni assignment. And you know, I have a sneaking suspicion that those three factors also contribute to kids feeling bad about themselves (though I haven't done the research), so maybe a little attention to these won't hurt the little girl who's overly worried without factual cause, too. These are three areas where you do have the power to make your daughter feel better about herself, by tweaking your daily routine.

Here are some more things you can do:

Stop bringing Cosmo, Cleo, New Idea (and all those other idiotic magazines featuring unnaturally skinny women) into the house. That goes for diet magazines too.

Ban "America's Top Model", 'Biggest Loser" and other TV programmes that celebrate idiotic behaviour around body size. (And anything featuring Kyle Sandilands, while we're at it.)

Stop making negative, judgmental comments about your own (and others') body size, especially in front of your daughter, and stop dieting. (You don't want your daughter to accept being bullied? Then stop bullying yourself! Beating yourself up about your appearance is modelling the behaviour you want to eliminate!)

Help your daughter with her self-confidence in other areas, especially if she is being bullied about her weight. (That's where teaching her to say assertively "I'm not fat, I'm girl-shaped"- with a smile- can start being helpful.)

Parenthood is so hard, isn't it? -especially when we have to choke down our natural responses. Just remember that fat is about feelings, not facts, and you'll be halfway there.

Aunt Annie has joined the Twitterati...

2012-01-16T08:11:00.000+10:00

Oh my goodness... My dear friend Jane (the one who designed that gorgeous new header for the blog) has dragged me kicking and screaming into the 21st century and I am now on Twitter.

Look for Aunt Annie @auntanniescc to follow me....

...and please be kind while I make lots of Twitty mistakes! :D

Oh, and I've got to give Jane a plug too. She has an absolutely beautiful web page at http://janefroshstylist.wordpress.com/
and I am still wondering how she does all this with three little kids running around! Maybe I'd better find out her secrets and share them here.

Ah well, off to try to work out how to Tweet now. See you there?

Caught in a clash of parenting philosophies? 3 steps to sanity

2012-01-09T10:13:00.000+10:00

A query by one of Janet Lansbury's readers caught my eye this morning. I quote:

'Genevieve asks: "When we are around others I find it hard to stand by and watch as well meaning and loving family members and friends treat her in a way that goes against my parenting philosophy. I am not sure how to manage these interactions or if I should I interfere at all?" '

This is such a common problem, whether it's the in-laws giving your child lollies, an acquaintance treating your child without respect or a carer 'saving' your child when you want her to discover the world and explore risk her own way. The answer's not an easy one (and certainly not one I could contain within a Facebook comment!).

Without knowing the age of the child or the type of clash of philosophies in this case, it's hard to give targeted advice, so I'll just try to provide some general hints.

1. Don't sweat the small stuff. If your child or baby is in genuine physical or emotional danger, then of course you must intervene even if it costs you a relationship- but I don't need to tell you that, because if your child REALLY is in danger you WILL act- you won't need to ask for advice. It's the grey areas that are difficult. Make sure that you're not blowing an incident up out of proportion.

Your child's teeth won't be ruined for life if Aunty Mary gives her one sugary lollipop. Try to let isolated incidents flow over you; if necessary and if your child is old enough, talk about the incident with your child later (and clean her teeth). Make 'I' statements to your child to ensure she knows how you feel about it and WHY. (And listen to her response!)

2. Don't act in the heat of the moment. If you have a repeat offender, to the point where you feel you have to say something, you don't have to say something right now while you're upset. Take a deep breath, because 'changed behaviour' and 'direct personal attacks' don't belong in the same sentence.

Write down what you want to say. Then rewrite it till it's polite. Make sure you're making 'I' statements, not 'you' statements. Try to understand and acknowledge the other person's point of view- yes, they probably mean well. 'I can see that when you give Mitzi a lollipop it's a gesture of love, and you want to make her happy.' Explain your concern. 'But I worry that sucking on sugar for hours will damage her teeth.' Make a polite request for the POSITIVE behaviour you want to see- eg 'I would really love it if you could offer Mitzi beautiful fruit instead, such as strawberries which she loves.' And close with more appreciation of the motives- 'Thank you for wanting to show your love to my daughter; I really appreciate the intent behind your gifts.'

When you've got your statement into a form where the other person is likely to hear it, instead of closing down because their good motives have been misunderstood and their behaviour criticised, that's the time to decide whether to send them the note or try to say it to their face.

You have every right to do exactly this within a childcare setting, if you see a behaviour that doesn't fit with your philosophy for your child. The response, once you're out of sight, will depend on how diplomatic you've been and how well you've explained yourself. Once you kill the goodwill, you have ZERO chance of changing people's behaviour. Treat difficult relatives and friends with exactly the same diplomacy and respect!

3. Remember that children are resilient. In the big wide world that they must join some day on their own terms, they will see that different people treat them differently. Life is not consistent. All people are not the same, but we still have to deal with them. They will like the way some people treat them, and dislike the way others treat them, but the fact remains that this is something they'll have to learn to cope with.

Children whose parents break up, for example, often discover that there's a different set of rules at dad's place and mum's place. This can be the source of much grief for a parent who's spent a lot of time and thought deciding on his or her philosophy, only to see it undermined on a weekly basis.

BUT you need to understand the extent of your personal power in this. The most important thing is that YOU are consistent. You can't control other people, but you can control the way you respond to your child when they try to apply other people's rules to your own home context. If you consistently point out to a child that this is the way things happen in your house and that is the way things happen at (say) grandma's house, you're teaching them an important life lesson. Children are capable of learning and adapting to this quite early on.

Talk to your child about inconsistencies in people's way of talking to them, or what other people allow and disallow. Tell them about your and your partner's own childhoods- how people talked to you, what your parents and other people let you do or forbade. Show them that the world is full of variety. Reassure them that you truly believe that the way you're bringing them up is the best for them, but tell them that other people may see things differently; there are lots of different ways to bring up children. Ask them about their friends, what they're allowed or not allowed to do. Open discussion is the best way to help children deal with the complexities of human behaviour.

Make your own position clear. I found this statement very useful while bringing up my son in a split relationship:

"I'm your mother, and it's my job to make sure you grow up knowing how to be happy. Doing (....) probably won't make you happy when you grow up, because (...). That's why I don't want you to do that."

Dealing with clashes of philosophy can be really exhausting. Keep it in proportion, stay authentic with your child and stay respectful towards those with different views and you have a good chance of retaining both your sanity and your parenting integrity.

5 ways to keep dads engaged in parenting

2012-01-06T10:57:00.001+10:00

There's this crazy belief still doing the rounds that women can 'have it all'- the family, the job, the fabulous social life whilst still doing Nigella Lawson impressions every night in the kitchen- and this is the key to happiness.

What rubbish. Admit it, go on! We are NOT Wonderwoman! Parenting is a full-time job. A full-time job is also a full-time job. Housekeeping is a full-time job. Somewhere in there we have to sleep and have some recreation and exercise. We'd all be just fine if there were 72 hours in a day.

We need help to stay resilient for our children, we need support systems, and we probably hope or even expect that our first lifeline will come from our children's dad. But you know, we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to accepting support from our partner.

Hormones have a LOT to answer for, you know. We women can get so fired up and protective and emotional when we have a baby- that's nature's way of ensuring the survival of the human race. We can turn into tigers to protect our young. But tigerish mothers can be scary things.

If the tiger in you takes over the control of every detail of how your cub is cared for, you're likely to scare Dad right out of your picture. You've left no room for him in the picture frame. He'll probably go off and hunt for wildebeest and leave you holding the baby- literally.

Of course there are many families who have found a great balance, there are many mums who know how to accept help, and there are many dads who've made a conscious decision to take a major role in parenting. And good on them. But you know, I still hear a heck of a lot of women wishing their husbands or partners would get more involved.

Why is this? Are some men really that disengaged when it comes to their babies, or is it something we're unconsciously encouraging by our behaviour? Do some men just lack parenting confidence?

Obviously that depends on the individual. There ARE irresponsible men out there. But there are also men who have a bit of a self-esteem issue around their parenting ability, and sometimes we do accidentally make that worse.

How can we encourage men to support us and to feel confident and involved in parenting?

1. Stop sweating the small stuff!

Everything to do with the kids and the house does NOT have to be done your way. Criticising your partner when he does small things in a different way to you is completely counterproductive. It's just as counterproductive as criticising a four-year-old for cleaning his room at four-year-old level- all you'll create is bad feeling and a reluctance to co-operate next time.

Have you seen the TV show 'Outnumbered'? There's a wonderful scene where the dad is stacking the dishwasher, and as fast as he puts something in, the mum puts it somewhere else 'because it cleans better'. Apparently the producers got a huge reaction from the audience about that scene- it was just so familiar.

Well, cut it out. Just STOP IT. It's not that important. Obsessing over this sort of trivia is what pushes men away from helping with the chores. Do you really care that you're superior at getting the grunge off the plates? For heaven's sake, get a grip.

And if you really must say something, how about a polite request? My partner is truly wonderful about chores, but when he leaves the sink full of dirty water after he washes up and I find it two hours later, I have to admit it gets my goat. I'm not particularly squeamish, but putting my hand into cold or lukewarm greasy water to pull the plug- well, bleaugh. Yuk. Hate it. And then I've got to wash the ring of grease from around the sink.

So I'm trying a polite request with explanation. "Would you mind letting the water out of the sink when you finish? I've got a thing about putting my hand into that water once it gets cold, which is completely irrational, but that's the way I feel. I'd love it if you just pulled the plug as soon as you're done."

I'm getting about a 75% positive result. Try it- go on! Remember, everything you say to your partner is part of being a role model for your kids... do you really want to model 'nagging ungrateful harridan'? (No, I didn't think so.)

2. Thank him for whatever he does.

My polite request would have no hope of working if I didn't make a point of thanking him sincerely almost every time he does something helpful. In childcare, we learn to sandwich negative comments about a child in between positive ones when we need to talk to parents about an issue; you can change a person's ability to listen and respond to constructive criticism just by being positive at either end. Remember that!

When I talk about thanking him, I don't mean tossing off a cursory 'thanks' in passing, either. Make sure he hears you, and I'm not talking about levels of deafness- I'm talking about getting the message noticed. I'm talking about making sure I have his attention, looking him in the eyes, giving him a hug and saying "Thank you for sweeping the floor. I'm not good with housework, I hate it, and I really appreciate how much better the room looks now."

Oh, and did you know that housework (by the male) is the most effective form of foreplay (for the woman)? Does HE know that? Why not? Tell him, with whatever choreography appeals to you. Have a bit of fun around this, for heaven's sake. Change the playing field. Move the goalposts. If he doesn't EVER help with the housework, this is a really motivating place to start...

And please don't take the attitude that YOU don't get thanked for the housework, so why should HE? That's childish and it won't change a thing. BE the change you want to see. Remember, your children are watching. (Hopefully not while you're telling him that housework is the best form of foreplay.)

3. Find out where his head is at. Ask him about his childhood.

Often parents have trouble agreeing about issues like discipline, and that can push men away from the whole parenting paradigm. Women seem to spend a lot more time researching these sorts of things than men, and a lot more time analysing their own feelings about their childhood. Open the door for your partner to look at what worked and didn't work for him when he was a kid; he might even need to work through some issues. He might even find some enlightenment about that thing he's doing that SO doesn't work.

Here are some useful questions for a quiet moment (stop rolling your eyes- you need to MAKE time for quiet moments!):

What did your parents do when you (insert bad behaviour that your child has recently exhibited) when you were little?

How did you feel about that? Did it stop you? Did you understand why they reacted like that? What would have worked better for you?

Did you feel like your parents loved you / understood you? What made you feel like that?

What's the naughtiest thing you ever did as a kid? Why did you do it?

Did your parents give you lots of presents? Lots of time? Lots of hugs?

Try to come to a point where you understand the motivation for your partner's parenting actions and reactions when they differ from your own. Starting from a place of empathy gives you much more chance of reaching a compromise. Remember that the two most understandable responses by an adult to bad parenting practices in their own childhood are to repeat them or to overcompensate for them, and men are no exception here.

4. Let him be a male with the kids.

Your children are not going to break if he gets into a bit of horseplay with them. They're not made out of glass. Trust your kids to let him know themselves if they don't like the game. Male energy can be a wonderful thing for active, full-on children, especially when you're feeling exhausted yourself. Encourage him to get the kids out and being active.

Even though my husband and I divorced when my son was a preschooler, even though it was an acrimonious parting of the ways, I can still remember the gratitude I felt to him for still taking my son out to play soccer and cricket throughout his childhood- absolutely not my strong suit. If I hadn't had that male energy available, my son would have been considerably less fit and active. Utilise your man's differences for the good of the kids.

Male energy can be a mental challenge for the nurturing woman. The temptation to put your children in cotton wool can be huge, but resist! If there's a genuine problem, the time to talk about boundaries around boy-games is NOT in the middle of a game, unless you can see that your child is in danger of serious injury (and I mean a dislocated shoulder from being swung round by one arm, not a grazed knee from rolling down a hill) or is seriously upset and not being heard. If you get too anxious, don't look or do some deep breathing. Try to enjoy the respite without being fearful or judgmental.

If you have serious concerns about age-appropriate or dangerous behaviour (for example if your man wants to share his shoot-'em-up computer game with a 5-year-old) you need to choose your time to talk about it, make sure you have legitimate universal concerns (rather than personal experience-based anxieties), and BE CALM when you discuss it. Belittling your partner's judgment will encourage him to withdraw and disengage. If you have knowledge and resources that back up your concerns, share these with him calmly- he may simply be unaware of the problem.

If you want support, you have to be prepared to trust your man. Let go. He has a different set of qualities and experiences to offer your children.

5. Accept that your man may listen to other men's advice more than he does to yours.

Wow, was this ever a hard one for me. I spent hours over a period of many months trying to convince my extremely busy husband to devote some time to reading my son a bedtime story each night, to absolutely no avail. And I was absolutely furious when a few months later, when I'd given up, a male superior at his workplace shared with him how important it was to read to your child a bedtime story... and my husband IMMEDIATELY changed his behaviour! (Furious is probably an understatement, actually. I was livid and irrational.)

But come on, ladies, let's be fair. Are you more likely to listen to parenting advice from a woman or a man? Tell the truth. I'm not talking about professionals giving you advice- I'm talking about anecdotal advice. TELL THE TRUTH. You'd listen to a woman more, wouldn't you? You'd feel at some level that they shared your perspectives and motivations. Well, men are the same.

Now you know this, use it as you see fit, and try not to overreact when your partner does what mine did. I mean, who cares? My son started getting his bedtime story from daddy at last. I just had a bruised ego that I didn't deal with very well.

Women seek out advice from other women; similarly, men do tend to respond best to male role models. Try to help him find some, and don't chuck a fit like I did when he learns something from one. In this case the product is what matters for once, not the process!

So there are my five best tips. Do you have any secrets of your own to share that help you to keep your man feeling like he's a vital part of the parenting equation? Please share in the comments if you do!

The suitcase is too heavy: parenting your own inner child

2012-01-03T10:35:00.002+10:00

Recently I wrote a post about misplacing the 'I' in parenting. As I continue to think a little more about the difficulties of calibrating how best to put our self into our child's world- contributing, supporting and intervening only in the best possible way for our own particular child- I realise that many of us are struggling to define normality, so that we have a stable position from which to work. We struggle to even see our own frame of reference clearly, and how it compares with average (let alone 'best') practice.

This struggle to feel that what we're doing is 'okay' according to some obscure definition of 'normality' seems to be the source of much sadness and conflict in the world of parenting. I believe that this is because many of us have had really problematic issues placed into our 'normality' frame, through our own experience of being parented. This is something we do need to deal with before we can be our best self for our own children, by giving our own inner child better care than we've received to date.

And I also believe that all of us, even those who've had wonderful parenting ourselves, will benefit as parents from taking better care of our own inner child.
Maybe we were physically or sexually abused or neglected as children; if so, we probably already feel aware that our experience has been something we don't want visited on our own child, and we probably have come to realise and accept that our parents were less than perfect. But we may feel that we fall short of resources because of that hole in our own experience.

Emotional abuse, including secondary experience of physical or sexual abuse (ie if you witnessed it rather than experiencing it yourself), is less clearly defined but just as damaging to our own parenting frame. We may come only very gradually to realise that our own 'normality' in childhood was flawed, and we may have difficulty accepting that our parents' ways were sometimes misguided.

If you're here reading this, if you're trying to improve your parenting by reading about other people's 'normal' using books, magazines and the internet, you should pat yourself on the back for your self-awareness. I mean it. Give yourself some praise for your efforts- not everybody even tries to widen their view and to see where their own frame fits within the big picture.

But we are only human. We may find ourselves swinging from one end of the scale to the other, one moment falling into similar negative patterns to our parents and the next over-compensating like mad. It's hard to find the right balance. There might be a lot of questioning of ourselves. What's normal? Can I achieve it anyway? Have I been spoiled forever as a parent by my own history?

And when we start asking those sorts of questions, second-guessing ourselves and feeling hopeless, it's time to start parenting our own inner child- taking care of ourselves as lovingly as we'd want to take care of our children.

So let's have a think about what we try to give our children. Can you try to give yourself these same things? We ALL need these things, even as adults, but if we've had a damaged childhood the need is urgent.

You, the parent, need to be able to communicate your stories and needs, and to be heard.

Sometimes this is the best place to start- just talking about our childhood. Some of us will do better with some counselling from a professional counsellor, who won't tell us answers but who will certainly listen (and help our partner learn to listen, if that's a problem for us).

I absolutely recommend counselling. It saved me more than once. Seeing a counsellor is not an admission that you're nuts or not coping. It's more an admission that you're not getting what you need from the people around you, despite their best intentions; you have very specific needs- we will all have very specific and pressing needs at some stage in our lives- and sometimes it's not fair to burden our friends with heavy loads like this, when they don't have the training to remain calm and to give advice that isn't emotionally loaded. Counsellors help you to see things more clearly and to unravel the knots caused by your past experiences.

If you can't afford a counsellor right now and are struggling with untold stories of your own experience of being parented, I urge you to start with a visit to these blogs:
I'm not well-adjusted
Parent-free by choice
-so that you might feel less isolated. There are some beautiful people there who will understand.

Or you might try writing and rewriting your story- it worked for Becky from Positive Parenting!

You, the parent, need love and acceptance.

Try not to associate with people who make you feel bad about yourself. Look on them as heavy suitcases; if they're too heavy, they'll hurt you and make you incapable of carrying even light weights. PUT THE SUITCASE DOWN.

That might mean severing ties with a friend or relative, or changing jobs. You'll probably need help with that- I did.

And please, stop knocking yourself! If YOU can't love and accept yourself, how can you hear it when others give you love and acceptance? Don't say anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to your dearest friend. (I still struggle with this one. I am my own worst critic.)

You, the parent, need to be able to make mistakes without being belittled and castigated for it.

You need the emotional space to admit and fix your own little errors, without being judged. It takes two to make criticism work- one to dish it out and one to accept it. STOP accepting the judgment of people you don't respect- learn to say "That's an interesting point of view" and firmly change the subject. (This is another thing a good counsellor can help you to do. And it's another one that I struggle with personally.)

You, the parent, need time to play and to discover who you are.

Be careful not to overcompensate for bad parenting by over-parenting and losing whatever self you have left. You need support systems, so you can have time to think about your life and to develop as a person. Make time for yourself, as a priority.

I find that the times when my life has gone off track the most disastrously have been the times when I gave myself over completely to someone else's needs- be warned!

You, the parent, need enough sleep, enough healthy food to eat, enough healthy fluid to drink, enough physical activity to keep you feeling energetic.

Look after your health. Without health you have NOTHING. Too many of us don't realise that until we lose our health. Nurture yourself a little more. Change or replace one small thing at a time- one less wine at night, for example, or a walk in the garden or time reading a book instead of eating a whole block of chocolate. Give yourself permission to go to bed when you're tired- it's more important than the chores. (OH, how I struggle with this one.)

Now, this isn't another list of 'to do's to make you feel bad about yourself all over again! (Believe me, I might be dishing out the advice but I fall short on this list all the time.) But if you're starting to feel desperate and as though you're a failure, maybe you can start with one of the things on this list.

Look after yourself better, please. YOU'RE WORTH IT. And it WILL make you a better parent.

The posts I most want you to read

2011-12-31T08:50:00.000+10:00

Well, here we are at the end of 2011 and I see that the blogosphere is alive with lists of my favourite bloggers' 'most popular posts of the year'.

You'll find my most popular posts in the sidebar of my blog, so I'm not going to point you to them again. I think I'd rather point you to the ones that I feel matter the most. Sometimes I write a post that I feel is really important, that I wish to the heavens everyone would read, and it sinks without trace. Other times, of course, it gets picked up and shared and that's great- I think sometimes it's just a matter of timing and luck. Anyway, here are some of the posts that I wish you'd read if you missed them first time round.

The first one is my opening statement in this blog- my childcare philosophy. It's really important to know what someone's underlying philosophy is before you start taking their advice!

Next up is my post on talking to babies. How I wish young mothers and fathers would read this one! It's the beginning of treating your child with respect.

Another that I wish you'd read is how to say no respectfully to your child. There's an art to it, you know, and it can help you to sidestep the confrontational battle of wills that leads to adolescent dramas.

This next one actually is amongst my most popular posts, but it's important enough to be worth another outing. If every parent in the world started to defuse eating issues with their children, I swear this world would be a healthier, happier place with less obesity and fewer eating disorders.

Are you thinking of enrolling your child in some out-of-school activities? Have your children have turned you into a cab driver because they're doing so much? PLEASE read this . You don't have to be a slave, and it's not good for your children anyway.

One of the great things about writing a blog is that I can make my past mistakes work for the future good of others. So many of us have to go through the pain and drama of a family break-up; here are some posts that might help you not to make the same mistakes as me, so your children are less traumatised by a relationship bust-up:

Fighting with your ex

Modelling happiness in an unhappy relationship

How not to be a wicked stepmother

And finally, here are some posts to help keep you feeling strong.

Coping with criticism

Staying resilient as a parent

Happy New Year to you all!

Useless words to strike from your vocabulary

2011-12-28T09:50:00.000+10:00

Teacher Tom has written a great post today about a 'magic word' he's found to use with children. It made me start thinking about the other side of the coin- the words that cause nothing but trouble, the words that I'd love to strike out of every parent and carer's vocabulary.

There are certain words that promote guilt and blame without giving any positive momentum at all. These are the words that aren't helpful to anyone. If you use them yourself, you're either being mean or judgmental to someone else (consciously or subconsciously), or you're beating yourself up, or you're setting yourself up for failure. If someone else uses them at you- and I do mean AT you, because they can be like a weapon- they're not going to stir you into action, they're just going to make you feel crushed or worthless.

The first word I'd love you to wipe is 'should'. I've voted 'should' as the most useless word in the English language, along with its twin sister 'shouldn't'. Tell me, please, what exactly is the purpose of this word other than to give out a guilt trip?

I should do the housework now.

I should play with my kids more.

I shouldn't eat any more chocolate.

I shouldn't yell at my kids.

I'm not saying any of those statements are necessarily untrue. But seriously, when you say these things to yourself, do they change your behaviour? Do they make you feel more positive about making different choices? Or do they just make you feel like a failure?

'Should' is such a negative concept- it implies you've already failed, or you're about to fail. It implies that you know better, but you're going to do it anyway, so you're actually pretty worthless.

WIPE THAT WORD FROM YOUR SELF-IMAGE, NOW.

Try these statements instead.

I can see the floor needs sweeping, but right now I'm choosing to do something that make me feel good about myself; I'm important too.

I don't really feel up to playing with the kids as much as I'd like to- I wonder why that is?

Hmm, I seem to be eating when I'm not actually hungry- but I know making a big issue out of it doesn't help- what else can I choose to do instead that I LOVE, that'll make me feel like I'm treating myself, without making me also feel unhealthy later?

When I yell at the kids they don't actually listen- maybe I can find a better way to communicate with them.

When I was a young woman I was always battling my body size, and I read a book by Suzy Orbach called 'Fat is a Feminist Issue'. It was considered pretty radical back then, and it certainly changed my thinking about lots of things. It mightn't have provided the whole solution to my body size issues, but it did teach me about 'should'- about choosing which judges to listen to (or not). When you use the word 'should', you're either electing yourself judge of someone else's life or you're allowing someone else's standards to judge your own life. Neither is particularly healthy or useful.

When someone else uses the 'S' word AT you- whether it's your mother-in-law or a parent at the school gate or your doctor- they're electing themselves judge of your life, and the first thing you need to consider is how you feel about that person.

Do you respect their actions and their views? If you don't, just ignore them and move on. (My method is usually to raise one eyebrow at them and pointedly change the subject.) Listening to the opinions of people you don't respect is completely pointless- you don't actually want to BE like them.

If you do respect them, I'd suggest that you might forgive them for letting the 'S' word escape from their lips- maybe they haven't thought about it. They probably didn't mean to be insensitive. They probably do it to themselves all the time, too.

If you can change your default reaction to 'should' from guilt to forgiveness, you are on a winner.

And what about the other useless words?

The other ones that bug me are 'never' and its twin brother 'always'. They also have a negative, judgmental ring to them, don't they? And mostly, they're not even accurate. I vote 'never/always' as the most misleading twins in the English language.

I loathe the silent, judgmental subtext that comes along with 'never/always'.

I never yell at my kids (because I'm infallible and I bet you aren't, you loser).

I always breastfeed my babies (because I'm the perfect earth mama and that's why I never have any difficulties).

'Always' and 'never' have absolutely no margin for error, and because of that, they're out of touch with real life. Real life is full of errors- we know that! That's probably why you're reading a parenting blog right now- to try to avoid or fix errors!

In real life, we probably will yell at our kids now and then, because we're human and we're not doped to the eyeballs on valium (hopefully). We'll regret it, and we may need to apologize, rather than pretending that we 'never' do it.

In real life, some women simply won't be able to breastfeed all or maybe any of their children, and people who run around throwing 'always' at them are just going to cause pain. That's not helpful. Sometimes when you throw out an 'always' or a 'never', you're inflicting pain without even realising it.

In real life, 'I try not to yell at my kids' and 'I really want to breastfeed my babies'. That's how it is. 'Never' and 'always' are fantasy words, promising a future that is actually very uncertain, refusing to acknowledge that life is full of unexpected situations and contexts where we may have to adjust our boundaries. 'Never' and 'always' don't make room for new knowledge, for learning, for human frailty.

I learnt to doubt 'never' and 'always' in an academic context; when you're writing essays, it's bad form to make sweeping generalisations, and that's what 'never/always' tend to introduce. 'Never' and 'always' are mathematical, exact, precise. That makes them really useless words, in any real life context. Life is not a generalisation. Life is a moveable feast.

It's an uncertain world, a world full of difficult choices and challenges, whether we're talking about guiding our children or about navigating it ourselves. Try not to make life harder for yourself by allowing useless words to beat you over the head with judgment, guilt and failure.

Where does the 'I' go in 'parenting'? -Thoughts on 'To Train Up a Child' and other misplaced methods

2011-12-20T12:13:00.000+10:00

The more I write about young children and how best to care for them, the more I realise that the crux of the matter is not the way you deal with your child, but the way you deal with yourself. It's the 'I' in parenting that is the source of the most trouble; the way that you place yourself into your child's world is crucial to the way they will develop.

For example, there's the 'do as I say' method of parenting which expects unquestioning obedience. The worst and most heartbreaking examples of this method are the exponents of radical and abusive tomes such as 'To Train Up a Child'. At the heart of this mentality is a parent who doesn't identify their child as a human being. They place the 'I' at the top so it dominates and subdues their child.

The 'I' has made them blind to their child's humanity. They look on bringing up a child as no different to training a servile animal in a third world country; it's your possession to do with as you please, so you can beat it until you break its will and it complies with everything you say. This method gives you absolute power over a helpless creature that depends on you for food and shelter. 'To Train Up a Child' isn't about religion. It's about power and ego.

Most of us are horrified by this type of parenting, yet I see lesser degrees of the 'I' dominating parenting styles everywhere I go. Any parent who allows their own ego to rule their parenting is asking for trouble, and it doesn't have to be a case of extreme physical abuse to create problems. I see abundant examples of too much 'I' influencing parenting decisions within threads on parenting forums around the world, and sadly there's no changing the views of these parents despite their obvious momentum towards a schism with their child- the ego has taken over to the point where these people simply can't view their child through any other frame than their own dominance.

When, for example, you spank your child because you were spanked and it 'didn't do you any harm', you are letting the 'I' dominate. You dare not look outside the frame of your own experience; spanking is easy, relieves your feelings, honours your parents' parenting style and may temporarily stop your child from misbehaving (ie for as long as you're looking at them).

You won't look at the research that says that spanking actually doesn't change behaviour in the long term, and you probably won't look into your child's eyes to see the trust leaching out of them and the anger and resentment flooding in. You won't deal with the possibility that your parents' behaviour may have been flawed. These things threaten our deepest emotions and beliefs, and it's much easier not to look at them at all.

You will eventually end up posting on a thread in a parenting forum because you've escalated the physical punishment to the max yet it's still not stopping the undesirable behaviour, and now your teenager won't even talk to you. Until you deal with your misplaced 'I' and work on better ways of handling your own frustration, there won't be a solution.

The dominant 'I' can cause you to ignore your child's pleas to study art and force them to take physics, because you want them to have a career in medicine to soothe your own ego. It can cause you to harass them about their homosexuality or to refuse to accept it at all, because you feel it reflects badly on you. It can cause your child to lie to you because they can't or don't want to live up to your expectations. A dominant 'I' will usually result in a grown child who's a rebel or a doormat, and I assure you that neither of those reflect well on one's parenting.

A misplaced 'I' can also cause grief when your children become the sole focus of your world. If you leave the 'I' out of your parenting altogether and start to live for and through your children, you're lining up for multiple griefs. These parents are like tigers when you appear to question their parenting style, no matter how gently or with how much compassion for their situation, because they have nothing else but their parenting style. The rest of their personality has atrophied.

You're effectively querying these parents' entire existence if you suggest, for example, that maybe if they're expressing distress because their sex life is a non-event and their partner is on the verge of leaving, it might be time to rethink co-sleeping with their seven-year-old. The reaction will be volatile and sometimes vicious; a parent who identifies themselves completely through their parenting will not be capable of a calm, patient and polite explanation to others of why this suggestion doesn't fit with their parenting philosophy. They will not be capable of identifying the difference between a concerned, caring intervention and a full-frontal attack, because their frame is completely filled with their child and they can't see anything outside of that.

I met many of these parents while I was teaching music at a school with a highly selective, auditioned music program. Their children's musical gifts were invariably those of a rare prodigy- in the eyes of their parents, that is- and the reaction when I tried to give them some perspective was invariably of nuclear proportions, sometimes becoming physically aggressive. (Note that the children themselves were invariably trying to disappear into the ground in embarrassment.)

In a decade or so these 'I'-less parents will be filling the parenting forums with hysterical posts about their children leaving home to go to college, desperately trying to cling to their reason for living. They've completely neglected their 'I', and their children can't get away from their clutches fast enough. I've met children who've moved to the other side of the world to get away from parents who've lost their 'I', and some of them feel like even that's not far enough- they'd go to the moon if they could.

So how DO we place the 'I' correctly in parenting?

In metaphorical terms, first of all you need a long piece of elastic and a pair of scissors. Tie one end to your child, tie one end to yourself and then give your child the scissors. What you want to create is an atmosphere where your child will move away from you and spring back to your side of his own free will. He feels completely secure, but the means to separate are in his hands, not yours. The timing is up to him- he'll do it when he's ready.

Meanwhile he'll do some uncomfortable pulling while he tests how far he can go; be honest when he's hurting you, and help him find how far this elastic will stretch before it breaks. That means talking to him as a human being- one with less experience than you, one with a lot to learn, but one with much to offer you of himself if you'll sit and listen.

Your 'I' will also need a mirror, and either some good friends to talk to or a counsellor. Look at yourself, know yourself, identify where your beliefs about parenting have come from. Look at your faults honestly. Why do you do that thing that drives others mad? Why do you do that thing that drives YOU mad? How can you help your child not to fall into those traps?

For example, I identify in myself a tendency (when things annoy me) to let it go, and let it go, and let it go, and then SNAP with a reaction that's out of proportion to the irritation. This is probably based around a long-standing desire to please my wonderful mother (and so to be very agreeable and loving and not make waves) combined with a hair-trigger temper inherited from my father. It wasn't a very desirable quality in a parent, and I wish someone had pointed that out to me at the time!! I'm still fighting it as a partner. It's HARD to express my needs before it becomes a crisis. But that's the sort of thing that good parents do- they draw the line well before they lose their temper.

And what's the opposite of your irritating behaviours and habits- what lies at the other extreme? How can you help your child tread the middle ground? For example, if you were poor in childhood and had limited toys yourself, as I did, your 'I' will be screaming to give your child everything you never had. At the opposite end of that lies an indulged child who expects material possessions as her right. Finding the middle ground is going to be one of your challenges, because you'll be fighting your 'I' all the way.

Before you start working on your child's behaviour, work on your own, so you understand what's really going on here. Successful parenting is about nudging, not forcing; it's about gradually separating, not insisting on over-attaching. It's about catching yourself before you repeat your parents' mistakes. It's about examining your instincts as well as responding to them. It's about giving yourself time and space to nurture your 'I' so that you can be the best person you can be for your child.

You can still make 'I' statements- it's not a dirty word. Here are some great 'I' statements.

'I love you whatever you decide.'

'I need some time because I'm upset and I don't want to take it out on you.'

'I don't understand why you did that- can you talk to me about it?'

'I feel hurt when you do that.'

'I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, and then I'll tell you mine.'

'I feel sad today. It's not your fault.'

'I'm so happy that you helped me do that.'

'I'm sorry I hurt your feelings.'

Do you see?

Why do children lie?

2011-12-14T09:42:00.001+10:00

A few weeks ago when I was coming up to my 100th post, I asked some of my friends if there was anything in particular they'd like me to blog about to mark the occasion. In the end, of course, I blogged about something completely different, but one young mum's suggestion stuck with me. She wanted to know why her 5-year-old son had made up a story of one of her relatives physically abusing him, and presented it to her ex-partner as gospel truth.

Now, I have to say at the start that my friend KNEW this was a lie (because her child hadn't had any contact with that relative within the time frame suggested, and had had no unaccompanied contact with him at all). Let me affirm that children's accusations of abuse should be assumed to be true until proved otherwise, because children rarely lie about those things.

So- in a case like this one, where you're sure your child is lying, why does it happen?

I have my own views on this subject, but it pays to be well-informed before you go spouting your theories all over the internet. One of the great things about continuing to study at uni is that I have access to research papers and other educational articles for my study. I put the question into the uni library's search engine, and found (amongst other things) a journal article from 'New York' about Dr Nancy Darling's research paper on children's lies. It started like this:

"Kids lie early and often, for all sorts of reasons- to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. But now there's a singular theory for one way this habit develops: They are just copying their parents."
-Po. Bronson

And that, my friends, smells awfully like the truth to me.

We know already, if we've done any significant reading about parenting, that modelling is the best way to influence your children's behaviour. Well, news flash: that applies to BAD behaviour as well as GOOD behaviour. And that applies also to behaviour which falls into a grey area- things like social drinking, swearing in certain circumstances or certain company, and the white lie.

Let's get one thing clear at the start: children under about 6 years of age don't have the same understanding of fact and fiction as we do. We bring them up on fairy tales and story books, tell them they're cute (please don't!) when they believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, and then expect them to be able to discriminate between what really happened and what they wish had happened when the cricket ball went through the plate glass?

Some consistency, please! You really can't apply adult standards of truthfulness to a small child.

What do we do when we suspect our small child is telling lies due to wishful thinking?

We get down on their level, we calm our voice and body language right down, we look them in the eye with a gentle touch on their arm to show our love, and we say 'Is that really what happened, or is that just what you wished had happened?' with a smile.

If you have a strong relationship of respect with your child, that should work every time.

Of course, that won't work if you've created a culture of going off your rocker when your kid tells you something true that you didn't want to hear. If you want to hear the truth, you have to be in control of your own reactions to unpleasant truths.

It also won't work if you've created a culture of punishment rather than of understanding, discussion and personal responsibility. Children lie when they're scared of the consequences of telling the truth. If you want the truth, you need to be using natural consequences rather than random penalties for misbehaviour.

Natural consequences are things like not replacing a toy that was broken through rage or carelessness, not bringing a sweater for your child if they refused to put one on or carry one when it's cold outside and not being co-operative when your child is rude to you. They have a logic that the child can understand. Yes, children will lie if you've made them too scared of the possible punishment when they tell the truth- and the unpredictability of punishments that aren't based on natural consequence is very, very scary.

What about kids who lie to be cool, to be approved of by friends? That's a much bigger problem and it has to be dealt with by improving the trust within your relationship with that child. Again, you've got to stay calm. Make sure you're sure it's a lie- don't jump to conclusions, because if an adolescent tells you the truth and you accuse them of lying it might take years to undo the damage.

Make very calm 'I' statements, not 'you' statements, and give reasons; 'I'm finding that a bit hard to understand, because I know that...' and 'Can you tell me a bit more about that? I don't quite understand how that happened.' And maybe, eventually, 'I'm feeling worried that you're not telling me the full story. Maybe you're worried how I'll react. Is that right?'

What about that punchline from the 'New York' article, though? Are we all modelling lies? Actually yes, nearly all of us are. Most of us tell white lies every day, and some of us tell complete porkies.

"I'm sorry, officer, I didn't realise it was a 60 zone."

"I've got to get off the phone now, there's someone at the door / something burning on the stove."

"Of course your backside doesn't look big in that."

Own up if you catch yourself doing it in front of your child. They WILL tell lies at times- and so will you. Avoid modelling lying, of course- but model the correct response when you realise you've slipped up. The correct response is admit, explain, apologise. That's what you want them to do, isn't it?

Young children usually won't be able to work out the difference between kind lies and sly, deceitful lies in any consistent way. By all means talk about not saying things that hurt other people's feelings, but spend a little time thinking about how you can avoid modelling even the white lies. For example, it's not going to help your girlfriend if you tell her that, actually, that dress makes her look two sizes bigger- but if she asks you, maybe instead of choosing a white lie you can suggest that it would be very flattering to add that nice darker jacket... or that you think she looks wonderful in that other dress.

My young friend's problem, however, sounds much more like a child lying to gain some control within a very difficult situation. When children detect that they're being used as ammunition in a break-up, they learn to manipulate the situation, because that's what's being modelled to them. When children feel that they're not getting enough attention- for whatever reason- they'll find a way to get attention.

I can only imagine the ballistic reaction that an accusation of physical abuse got from this young boy's dad. It certainly would have got dad's attention- and mum's too- when maybe one or both of them were too engaged in their work, or their interpersonal squabbles, or their social life to give him plenty of time for positive parent-child interactions. It certainly would have changed the playing field around whatever was being suggested in the custody battle.

Remember, a 5-year-old would have no real concept of the extent of the damage caused by such an accusation. If it got him out of going back to mum this week, where he knew he was due, say, to visit the dentist...

...well, it worked, didn't it?

Without knowing exactly what was going on for that child at that moment, I can't say for sure why he pulled such a blindingly awful lie out of the kit bag. But I can prescribe a way to minimise future occurrences.

My prescription for this family is:

Spend more time on positive interactions between parent and child- spend some time each day just doing what he chooses with him. That counteracts the need to get attention by any means possible.

Calm down and slow down in everything you're doing together, and talk to him a lot, and honestly, about what you're doing and why. You need to build openness and dialogue.

Give him small responsibilities, starting with things he wants to do like fetching a certain number of treats from the cupboard so you can each have some, so he feels he's trusted and important.

Defuse your reactions within the custody battle- make NO instantaneous responses and have a default position of 'leave that with me and I'll get back to you' in a quiet voice. Then deal with it CALMLY when you've had time to calm down and your child is sound asleep or elsewhere. You can't control your ex, but you can model sensible behaviour yourself.

And be very, very careful of modelling hatred and saying hateful things about your ex-partner, because your child just copied what he's been hearing from someone. Again, you can't control your ex, but you can control yourself.

Read to your child. Start talking about what's real and what's just a story that someone made up. Help him distinguish between truth and not-truth.

And most of all, make sure you're not modelling lies, even polite white lies. You can't expect a 5-year-old to discriminate between a small convenient lie, or a lie that saves someone's feelings, and a major distortion of the facts. If you catch yourself telling a lie in front of your child, own up to it, explain and apologise.

We have to treat the truth with great respect ourselves, if that's what we want from our children.

Standardised tests are dodgy

2011-12-06T12:44:00.000+10:00

There's a link to this article about the idiocy of standardised testing flying around Facebook at present. And yes, I agree: standardised tests are a form of idiocy. I never met a standardised test yet that gave accurate assessments of ALL children's relative ability- yet governments want to judge both students and teachers by them, in order to make major, game-altering decisions to education? Give me a break.

I have a few little anecdotes to share on this subject... you may find them enlightening too.

Before I went into the field of Early Childhood education, I spent a few years being a jack-of-all-trades. One of my jobs was marking statewide standardised Maths and English tests. I'm not supposed to say anything much about that- you get sworn to secrecy- but I can tell you one thing that probably isn't any secret to anyone who's ever marked exams at any level: for the English tests, we got quite a lot of blank answer booklets. I used to look at them and wonder what the story was behind each one.

Later during that period of my life, I took a job as a reading coach for the government. Reading assistance was provided to those 10-year-olds who'd scored at the absolute bottom of the heap in the standardised test, and I travelled from school to school holding intensive reading assistance sessions one-to-one with children who had been designated 'substandard' by the state on the basis of that single test.

(Of course 'substandard' isn't the word they used, but that's what they meant.)

I did meet a few children who couldn't read, one of whom had a significant brain injury (don't even ask me why the state saw fit to put him through eight weeks of intensive reading assistance- that is NOT what he needed). But I also met Blake and River.

Dodgy Test Result #1

When I met 'Blake', my first impression was his absolute disdain for the whole process. He identified himself as 'too dumb to read that dumb stuff'.

I offered him the starter set of coaching material, to test his starting ability, and he barely lifted his pencil. Yep, this was definitely one of those 'blank booklet' kids! I started trying to give him some reading assistance, and he stared out the window silently, obviously bored beyond bearing and completely uncooperative.

Well, being Aunt Annie, I wasn't going to keep flogging a dead horse, so I discarded the government supplies and system with a thump (to wake him up) and started talking to the child instead.

"You're bored to death, aren't you?"

"Yup."

"Does reading bore you?"

"Yup."

"Tell me one thing that doesn't bore you. It can be anything you like."

"Bikes. V8 Supercars."

(Wow- two for the price of one.)

We talked about these for the rest of the session, or perhaps I should say HE talked AT me for the rest of the session. (On those two subjects I got nothin'.) He was quite a fluent talker and seemed to know a lot about his interests. No, not 'dumb'.

Feeling I'd seen a chink of light at the end of a tunnel full of concrete, I went home and started preparing some alternate coaching material based on the subject of 'things with loud motors and lots of speed'. (That involved a fair bit of research for me!! Thank heavens for the internet!!) I used the same teaching activities, as required by The System- just different reading material to start with.

By the end of lesson two, I had a much more engaged child and (wonder of wonders) a completed and mostly correct comprehension sheet, based on a list of motorbike ads. (Hardly blank booklet material, Blake!!)

I'd also realised that he was dyslexic, and could only read one syllable before the text started jumping around on him. When the text was interesting, he could overcome some problems through experience; 'Kaw' was enough in context for him to read 'Kawasaki', and similarly 'Suz' allowed him to guess 'Suzuki'. He did a lot of guessing when he was interested, and gave up when he wasn't.

Some eight weeks later (and with a lot more knowledge about everything from Harleys to Big Trucks) I printed off the final assessment sheet on coloured paper, after some weeks of getting Blake to read through a pink plastic shot glass I'd bought at the $2 shop. He got over 80%. I passed my findings on to his regular teacher.

How DARE the state tell this child he couldn't read??! Yes, it was great that he (accidentally) got some of the help he needed due to the test- but it was iniquitous that he was placed in totally the wrong band of the statistics, giving him a label of 'dumb' which he quickly adopted as a shield.

Blake could actually read quite well once he was interested (there's a plug for interest-based curriculum!) and given appropriate aids, and with the help of the coloured background he'd even managed to read the very UNinteresting final test and answer the comprehension mostly correctly.

Blake, 1; standardised test, 0.

Dodgy Test Result #2

And then... there was River. River came complete with a sympathetic look to me from the headmistress, and a warning from his class teacher that he was in the habit of throwing chairs when he got bored or irritated.

I gave him the starter test, and he didn't write a word on it. (Yep- another blank booklet candidate.)

I got him to read the first story in the coaching book, and he read it not only fluently and expressively, but with admirable grasp of sarcasm at its babyish tone.

???

Smelling a rat, I turned the story page over and asked him the comprehension questions verbally. He snapped the (correct) answers back from memory, like I must be the biggest idiot in the world to even ask.

I cut to the chase. "River, WHY are you here? You can read brilliantly. You don't need reading help. Why the blank test paper?"

He looked me in the eye for the first time, obviously quietly relieved to be 'unlabelled' as illiterate. "Because I can't write fast enough, so why bother?"

Oh, well done, Standardised Testing. You diagnosed a child who couldn't write as a child who couldn't read.

River had had so many changes of teacher in his short school life that nobody had ever showed him how to hold the pencil correctly, or how to form letters. I watched him try to write his own name, starting with an inverted V and a circle on top for the capital R, with a hand so cramped with tension that he had to have a rest before going on.

Happy ending? Yup. Eight weeks of WRITING lessons later, he got 96% for the final reading test- and was starting to settle down to some work in class too. He never threw a chair at me, but he did call me some interesting names on the way to holding the pencil properly. (Mostly I tell you the good stuff, and leave out the pain!) I've still got the little 'sorry' gift he made and gave me the week after he'd called me a particularly obscene name; I'd called his bluff by sending him back to class- he really enjoyed our lessons, but it became an experiment in boundaries from time to time. That's what happens sometimes when a gifted kid gets overlooked for too long.

We ended up respecting each other's intellects. Yes, River was one very clever little boy who the state had labelled 'illiterate'.

River 1, standardised test 0.

There are just so many levels on which standardised tests can fall down, and that's why teachers reject them. To build a whole educational philosophy for a country on them is like building a skyscraper on sand- it might look nice and level to the untrained eye, but if you've ever worked with sand...

Excursions in Early Childhood: a reality check

2011-12-06T11:12:00.003+10:00

A few months ago, I was asked for my views on excursions in Early Childhood Education, as Rattler Magazine was preparing an article and wanted some input from practitioners about excursions and the Early Years Learning Framework (that's our new national curriculum, for my overseas readers). Here's my response.

'Engaging with the wider community' v 'what actually happens in childcare'

I think it's important that both the people who created the new curriculum (and so understand their intent intimately) and the people who write about it, but who are not daily practitioners, understand the huge gulf that exists between aspiration and reality.

At this stage, what I see is not practitioners being pushed to rethink their practice on engaging with the larger community- I don't think it even occurs to them that they should. Practitioners are mostly struggling with what the EYLF means in terms of what they need to do that's different from before, and what will affect their accreditation if they don't do it. It's very basic. It's 'how do I record something flexible? Will I fail if I do this the way I've always done it?'

The aspirational intent has not reached ground zero, except in terms of more play-based learning and fewer designed and highly structured activities, and the aspirational challenge is more about some practitioners throwing out intentional teaching and calling a lack of structure 'play-based learning'- and some refusing to change at all or keeping their heads in the sand- so there's a bit of a tug-of-war going on. That's not statistically based, but just what I see in some of the centres I visit.

Perhaps in the long term, when we are more comfortable with what the EYLF means in terms of our documentation, daily practice and pedagogy, we might come around to seeing a need for change in the negative attitude to excursions and interaction with the community, but I doubt that this will happen for the sake of fulfilling an imposed outcome. If you took an Early Childhood practitioner off the street and asked how the children should engage in civic living while in childcare, she'd probably look at you as though you had dual craniums- because in the whole scheme of daily survival, that's the least of our concerns. Many practitioners would question whether that's actually what the outcome means. It's just so far from our day-to-day world to consider the role of very young children in the wider community.

Anyway, my view is that until the issues I mention in the following writings are addressed, excursions will continue to be avoided by most centres.

Why the reluctance to take excursions? How can we encourage services to rethink this and take a step outside their own door?

You know, I was actually surprised when I read Rattler's questions by the assumption that I (a) had taken part in Early Childhood excursions and (b) supported the concept. My experience is that most centres and carers are not supportive of excursions at all. They may like the idea in an educational sense, but the reality is just too hard. I do believe that excursions are worthwhile- but believe it or not, I have never been on an excursion with an Early Childhood centre, which puts me in a good position to talk about reluctance.

The first problem, of course, is ratio. It may be easy enough in some places to get the additional adults needed to get an excursion off the ground, but in this region you can group the parents roughly into two groups- those who have to go to work because they're struggling to pay the mortgage or the rent, and those who are on welfare because they have deep-seated problems of some sort. That's an overgeneralisation, but it's pretty close to the true picture. The first group would usually be willing and competent but don't have the time, and the second group have the time but are very rarely both willing and competent.

A few centres work exclusively on family groupings instead of age groupings, so they have a ratio of one-to-four across the board; one of these is the only centre I've worked for that I remember ever taking excursions, probably largely because the staff numbers for excursion ratio were already in situ. They were also much less precious about risk there, which was a good thing in terms of willingness to leave the four walls of the centre.

It's not like you can just blithely employ extra staff to make up the numbers. Most centres struggle just to make ends meet, even with standard in-house ratios. Money is a big issue all round, especially up here. Quite a few parents default on basic daily fees- some of them up to thousands of dollars- so why would you start thinking about organising an excursion and racking up more debt? Even if you organise incursions rather than excursions, in a region which has such a mixed socio-economic demographic not all parents will be able to pay; the centre either has to exclude some children, which is iniquitous, or pay for them. Once you turn it into an excursion, with bus fares and entry fees and extra staff and defaulters, it becomes unaffordable.

So let's say I wanted to organise an inexpensive excursion- say, a walking trip to the local library to listen to their free story time. I'd still get a 'no' from most directors. I explored this issue with directors in various centres when I was completing some assignments for my childcare qualification, so I'm not talking through my hat here.

Why? Centres which are small businesses are dead scared of being sued. We live in an increasingly litigious society- up here we have the local compensation lawyers rabidly advertising their services on TV. Directors weigh up all the things that could go wrong (and possibly send the centre to the wall) long before they consider the educational benefits of venturing out of the gate. The government plays into the societal fear explosion in the childcare regulations, and I think that's part of the problem; with one hand they give us an expectation to take children into the community, which is an added risk, and with the other they restrict us on in-house risk to the point of frustration.

Look at the height limits for playground equipment. The regulations on height are boring our children to death out of fear of litigation- particularly our four and five-year-old boys, who are developing and testing their upper body strength. I've had a child go straight over the 'child-proof' gate and take his own little excursion, simply because there was nothing to challenge him in the yard. There needs to be some consistency.

So what could go wrong, even on a walking excursion? Aside from unscheduled toilet trips, tired tantrums and children who wear inappropriate clothing and footwear- the little things that discourage exhausted and underpaid carers from pressing the case for excursions- the first big thing that springs to my mind is possible behavioural mayhem due to our need to adhere to inclusion policies.

Before you jump down my throat and call me prejudiced, let me give you a very concrete example. When I was a preschool room leader I had two special needs children included in my room and was only provided with money for one extra pair of hands. That is not an unusual situation; I don't have any statistics on inclusion, but every centre I've attended has at least one child with ASD or a similar high need in their preschool room- most have more than one, and some have three- and one extra carer for five hours a day is what you get.

Both children were 5-day enrolments, with single parents who worked full-time; taking an excursion when they weren't present wasn't an option, and neither was getting the parents to accompany them. One had Oppositional Defiant Disorder and the other had suspected Asperger's Syndrome, with possible ADHD. Both had extreme melt-downs at the drop of a hat, sometimes simultaneously.

When I imagine trying to take those two children out of the confines of the centre, out of their routines and familiar environment with just a single carer for both, my blood runs cold. Children on the autism spectrum generally respond poorly to changes of routine, and their behaviour can become chaotic as a result. One child was at the pointy end of that generalisation. Children with ODD are unlikely to obey instructions at the best of times, let alone when taken out of their normal environment. The other child was at the pointy end of that one. Some children have a different set of needs which are hard enough to juggle in the classroom; carers are struggling already without increasing the degree of difficulty by taking them out of the centre.

If I left them behind, their parents could rightly accuse me of discrimination; if I took them with me, I would be risking a major incident and possibly endangering the remaining children due to the extreme level of attention needed to keep the two special needs children safe. It's a dilemma.

Add to that the idea of crossing roads with a large group of excited preschoolers, passing pubs with drunken or drug-addled patrons on the pavement (yes, in the middle of the day) and the possibility of a carer or parent helper calling in sick at the last moment, and it's no wonder that most of the centres where I've worked have had an unwritten 'no excursions' policy, whether they admit to it or not.

What can we do about it? It comes down to more government money for more carers, both to make ratio and to support special needs children one-to-one when out of the centre. There also needs to be a change in the “nanny-state”, litigious attitudes of our society to risk. I'm not holding my breath on either count.

A final factor which may not spring readily to mind is the simmering resentment about poor pay and conditions amongst carers. Why would you do more than you had to? Some of us are career educators with a passion for children's welfare and we don't mind going the extra yard despite the despicable wage rates, but sadly many support staff have little incentive to do that bit extra. They are struggling just to support their families; many carers up here are single parents themselves. They don't have extra energy to burn on organising an excursion.

It's not like you'll be able to do it in your paid time- there is never a moment to spare on the floor. You really need everyone to be on-side and enthusiastic, you need adequate preparation if you're going outside the gates, and many carers just aren't up for it. If something goes wrong, you'll be used for target practice. Why would you do it to yourself? Better pay would change that, but again, I'm not holding my breath.

What is your excursion philosophy? And what sort of excursions are useful- how can you link interests and learning, and what follow-ups can you do?

I don't think it's important for children to be 'seen' out and about. I don't think that civic involvement for the sake of how we look is an issue. In a child-centred approach, the impact on the child is what matters; it's not their job to change community attitudes. We are their advocates. That's our job.

However I do believe it's important for the children themselves to venture into the community to which they belong and feel a larger sense of identity and sense of the world. We can't assume that every child will be given opportunities to explore community resources, environments and educational experiences by their family, especially in a disadvantaged area.

Some children have a terribly limited perspective on the world due to their family's circumstances. For example, in Lismore we have children living in caravans who rarely get to go anywhere else other than to our care centres, even to play. Their parents might be agricultural workers who work long exhausting hours, even at the weekend. We have Aboriginal children living in suburbia whose main play environment is the concrete jungle of the Goonellabah skate park. I feel we have a responsibility to widen these children's horizons if we can.

Most preschool children, for example, go through a stage of being fascinated by dinosaurs. Imagine the sense of wonder if they could visit a museum where a real dinosaur skeleton was on display- the sense of scale, of the smallness of a human being compared to these giant creatures, is not something you can recreate in your classroom. Imagine the effect on a child who lived in a caravan. It puts a whole new dimension on 'big'.

Think of the follow-ups you could do on that- how big is an elephant? How big is a skyscraper? How heavy would a dinosaur have been? -not to mention the inspiration for art and craft activities. The children would be buzzing for weeks. Can you feel your own bones? What does a human skeleton look like? What else is inside our bodies that we can't see? Can we see thoughts and feelings? What else can't we see? Can we see air? How could we see air? Let's get the balloons out... such fun, such learning!

Imagine a group of children with an interest in flying and vehicles, who were taken to the airport to watch the planes land and take off. Don't assume that all kids get that chance with their families. That gives them some sense of the teamwork that's required to get a plane off the ground- the baggage handlers and refuelling trucks buzzing around, the flight attendants and counter staff handling the passengers- as well as the wonder of that huge metal thing getting up in the air and the level of noise it produces to do so. It's a sensory experience on another level from what you can do inside a centre.

And then you can come back and try to get different objects to fly- what an outlet for kids who love to throw things!- explore weight, explore creatures that can fly, recreate an airport with the block and vehicles, make paper planes, cross-reference to superheroes... it's so stimulating to curiosity to see real events, real people and machines in action.

Or imagine a group of Aboriginal children walking their country with an elder, looking at their plants that could be eaten or used for medicine, seeing their totems in real life, and feeling their ownership as they shared the experience with the other children. That would be a 'belonging' experience to die for. These children may not know that they have an interest in that experience before they do it, but it's in their interests to stimulate that cultural connection. It would be a brilliant start to NAIDOC week, which in too many centres is a tokenistic celebration involving a lot of red, black and yellow paint and little real understanding.

I don't mean that as a judgment on ECTs and carers, who are doing their best with limited time and resources; tokenism is just a function of our own ignorance about a very complex culture. Excursions like that also educate the teachers and touch their hearts. Emotional involvement is a vital factor in our motivation to teach Indigenous culture authentically. We don't like being told what to do. We're like kids in that way- we need to feel it, see it with our own eyes.

And then the follow-up will just come, because the educators are engaged. What other plants can we eat? How hard would it be to live in the bush? Why is water important? Let's leave a grape in the sun and see what happens when the water goes out of it. Let's soak a sultana in water and see what happens to it. Let's turn the taps off in the bathroom when we've finished washing, because water is important.

This is what excursions should be about- enhancing the children's experiences and interests, fostering their 'belonging, being and becoming' and leading them to become a functional rather than dysfunctional part of the wider world, but also stimulating the teachers and giving them a fresh approach and enthusiasm for their programming. And I don't use the word 'dysfunctional' in a racist way; a non-Indigenous child who thinks it's okay to waste water in a country that's largely desert and heating up more every day is, in my view, dysfunctional.

From another perspective, we also need to consider the physical environment provided by our childcare centre when we think about taking children outside the gate. Sometimes it's enough just to provide variety.

For example, children who have a wonderfully natural care centre and home environment might be hugely stimulated by a visit to town. More common, though, are play yards which have few or no natural materials present (I have seen enough Astroturf soft fall to last a lifetime, and given my choice I would tear up every last metre of it and plant GRASS). This fake play environment is not ideal for any child, but for Indigenous children whose connection to the natural world is central to their very being, it's outrageous. One of the things I love about two of the centres where I've worked is the presence of real grass to roll on and real trees to climb.

If I had my way, every child would be taken to the park to run on grass and climb trees, and that would be an excursion worth having. How can we teach respect for the natural world in an unnatural environment? How can we encourage the development of an understanding of risk if the children are never allowed to take physical risks? Yes, a child might break their arm. Children do that sometimes. It's part of the learning experience.

How can we teach the power and danger of running water if we haven't played Pooh sticks off a bridge? How can we teach road safety if we're never able to practise on a road? Excursions don't have to be large scale, expensive and complex. They can be two teachers walking a small group to the park to run around, kick a ball without fear of it going over the fence, watch the world go by, practise crossing the road safely. It can be a trip to the art gallery to look at the huge paintings, to see which ones they like, to compare Indigenous art with the other paintings and then go back home and experiment with techniques. These are the things I want to do with the children- things that are intimately related to their welfare, their interests and their understanding of their world.

Reflection after the trip is also so valuable as a learning experience. Did anything go wrong? How did you feel? How could we fix it next time? What do you want to know next? What was the best part? Were there any surprises? You can maintain excitement and a disposition to learn if you ask the right questions.

How do excursions help socialise children and provide authentic learning experiences?

In one centre I came across a four-year-old boy who refused to believe that girls could drive tractors. He was adamant, even when I showed him a photo of myself doing just that!

How I would have loved to take that child to a farm where he could see for himself that I- or any other woman- could get in, start it and away we go. In the same way, some children still believe (for example) that only boys can be doctors and only girls can be nurses, and I'd love to be able to take them into an environment where they could see both sexes doing jobs outside outdated gender traditions. Walking down the street in a small group we could see men doing hair and women directing traffic around roadworks, men arranging flowers and women driving utes and trucks.

Talking at children, no matter how skilful or well-intentioned you might be, doesn't undo these preconceptions, especially if they start from what is seen or said in the home environment. And there are very few storybooks out there to address bias in an accessible, engaging way for this age group- sadly, what's available is generally a little self-consciously politically correct and precious. We have diversity dolls, but I find I often need to point out the sexes of these to the children as they simply don't focus on that- it doesn't touch their perceptions. The children need concrete experiences which just aren't available within the walls of a centre. They need to see it in real life with their own eyes.

Taking children into an environment where they feel an expertise or ownership which is not shared by their peers is also socially empowering. How I would have loved to take one little boy's class to a dairy farm! At care, he constantly role-played feeding the cows, starting the tractor, opening gates and so on, which was what he did each weekend with his grandfather. He became frustrated that his peers didn't understand what he was doing, and repeatedly turned to me for a playmate.

Quite apart from the biological and environmental revelation for the rest of the class that milk came from cows rather than a supermarket, and that cows had to be fed on grass and then milked- quite apart from the excitement of seeing the farm machinery and animals that many of the children played with every day, 'to scale' and working and mooing in real life- such an excursion would have given that little boy the opportunity to flourish in his 'being', to teach his peers, and then to interact socially more successfully.

And what follow-ups that would give you! Imagine the role-plays that could ensue from an experience like that- and it would be the beginning of real environmental understanding. If you want milk, you have to have grassy paddocks and cows. You can't turn the whole world into a skate park or an internet server, or you'll have no milk. Simple, but a totally new concept to many mini-'iKids'.

The experience of moving around as a group in a new environment is socially empowering too. Unless the group co-operates, the experience will fail. Our preparation for the 'big day' gives opportunities for critical thinking and protective education- what if someone isn't listening and is left behind? What do you do if you're lost? What if you don't know where the toilet is and you need to go? How will we cross the road so nobody gets run over? This is all theoretical social skill, and is either not absorbed or easily forgotten until the experience becomes a real-life one with genuine risks.

Planning tips

I might not have been involved in an EC excursion, but I've been on countless excursions during my career. Planning an excursion is a major task and a huge responsibility with any age group. Make sure you've double-checked the latest regulations before you start.

You have to write absolutely everything down and have an organisational run sheet, with all the jobs spread over the calendar in a way that will mean everything happens in time. Parents are notoriously bad at getting permission slips back, for example, so you have to do that very early and then chase people.

Organising an excursion alone is a bad idea, though there does need to be a head honcho. For example, at least two people should carry out independent risk assessments and then compare notes, because it's a bit like proof-reading- you don't always 'see' everything that could be a problem. There's a huge amount of research involved before you start, from organising transport with appropriate child restraints to lining up the extra adults you need for supervision (it's brilliant if you can get a parent who's a doctor, nurse or paramedic- it takes a lot of anxiety away from the task). Spread the load! And communication with your team is vital- don't assume that something's been done. Someone has to be responsible for confirming tasks are completed and ticking everything off the master list.

Some parents will be anxious, and the only cure for that is information. A small map of where you're going, clearly stated departure and return times, a little blurb about what will happen while you're out, a concise list of what to bring (and what NOT to bring), reassurance that you've thought of medical contingencies, a contact number for the group's mobile phone in case the parent has an emergency- these things will reassure parents that the excursion is a safe experience. Make sure the parents are clearing their information pockets and getting this information. Some parents are always in a hurry, and then they get shirty because 'nobody told me'.

You also have to carefully consider the context. For example, if it's a walking excursion, I'd be making sure I caught up with every single parent face to face in the week before the excursion and stressed the importance of their child wearing appropriate footwear- it's not something you can fix easily at the last minute. You can take extra raincoats and jackets, but shoes? And don't forget to charge that mobile!

'Tis the season to be... a little more thoughtful about Christmas

2011-12-01T14:25:00.000+10:00

Last month my blog feed was full of posts about Thanksgiving, which is one American festival I wholeheartedly applaud (and wish we had here in Australia). We spend far too little time being grateful for what we have in our highly privileged countries, and far too much time whinging about what else we wish we had. The World Vision ad telling about a small girl who has to walk alone for 8 hours a day to get water for her family, each time risking death at the hands of wild animals and rape at the hands of unscrupulous passers-by, says everything we need to know. (Yes, World Vision put in a water supply for her community, but that's just one community of many.)

This week, of course, my feed is flooded with posts about Christmas, and I feel like hiding under a rock.

Ah, Christmas. It starts out purporting to be a season of fun, generosity and celebration, and so often ends up as a nightmare of alcohol-fuelled family feuding over lunch, while tearful, overstimulated kids beg for just one more present or whine about what they didn't get.

This is followed by mind-numbing parental panic when the credit card bill arrives.

'Tis the season of greed and excess. 'Tis the season to join the red and green dots the same way we've always done it, and then repent at leisure- the way we always do it.

Is Christmas good for our kids? Have you ever asked yourself that? Is how YOU do Christmas good for your kids?

I rethought Christmas a long time ago, because I had to. I could no longer afford Christmas. I couldn't afford to buy everyone in my circle something they actually wanted or needed, and as a committed greenie I refused point-blank to buy them some cheap and worthless piece of junk as a token gesture. We need LESS stuff, not more. We don't need to fill our already overcrowded shelves with things we don't want or need, and we certainly don't need to add to landfill.

You're wondering how my son coped with that, aren't you? And my answer is, remarkably well. Because I'd always been very honest with him, it was easy to be authentic and share the fact that I couldn't afford the extravagance any more. I barely had the money to buy what we needed, let alone stretching it to what he wanted.

Yes, sure, he was disappointed at first; even grumpy. But when he got over that, he was concerned for me- a little worried that I was worried about money. He was a highly empathetic little fellow, and I swear that came about because I nearly always let him know what I was feeling when I was sad or angry about something. Being authentic with your child is such a good idea, and it bears fruit when things get tough.

It also helped that I'd never done the whole Santa-down-the-chimney thing with him, because I saw it as a commercial honeytrap. The legend of St Nicholas has been warped out of all proportion by retailers; good grief, Santa even dresses like a bottle of Coke. He sits there in every large shopping mall, encouraging the desire for STUFF in small children. Santa is here, so we can ask for the moon. Oh look! There's the moon, right over there in front of K Mart! What a coincidence!

It's a way of increasing the pressure on parents to BUY. You can't seriously think they pay good money for a Santa actor, a photographer and all those decorations out of festive cheer... can you? It's a choreographed method of removing more money from parents' wallets. I hate being pushed around emotionally.

Even when my son was small and the presents flowed, he knew they never came from Santa, though sometimes I'd write 'from Santa' on the wrapping as a sort of in-joke. It's what my parents had always done with me; I wasn't brought up as a believer, either. In fact, my son was gobsmacked to realise that some children actually thought Santa was real.

"Why do some parents lie to their kids about Santa?" he asked me, when he was about 5 or 6. And then thanked me for not lying to him.

I couldn't answer his question about why. I don't get it either. I'm not into telling kids that Santa, the Easter Bunny, fairies, unicorns or any other fictional creatures are real, because I don't think it's respectful to deceive them. That, to me, is taking advantage of their innocence so you can look down on them and go 'Oh, aren't they cute!'.

Either that, or it's letting our own sentimentality getting the better of us. It's fine if you want to go all gooey about Christmas, but are you actually considering how your insistence that a fairy tale is true might affect your children? How do you think they feel later on, when they realise they were duped by you?

I think it's a breach of trust. Small things like that matter to children. Small things need to be thought about, not just done because that's the way it was done to you, and that's the way other people do it.

(By the way, that doesn't mean I think you should squash them or scorn them when they decide that something magical is real to them. Let them believe what they want to- they'll work it out for themselves when they're ready. Be interested and non-committal. Ask questions instead of making statements. Draw parallels with the stories you read to them.)

There's plenty of opportunity for children to find a certain sort of magic in the natural world, and in books, and in the stretches of their own wonderful and unspoiled minds, without us putting fanciful ideas into their heads as 'truth'. By all means, kids should know about Santa as a feature of our culture, but to present him as real because you know they're young enough to be fooled is- well, it's patronising.

When I started working in Early Childhood education as a casual, I was thrown back into the whole lunacy of Christmas with a bang. I was amazed at the way greed was tacitly encouraged. At circle time, each child would be asked what they wanted for Christmas- so that even children who hadn't considered that question were pushed into a statement of self-interest. The Santa fallacy was perpetuated 100%. Children were given toy catalogues so they could cut out the gifts they wanted, then paste them on a page (a whole page!) to make a Christmas wish list. And it was as though the whole centre had become a factory dedicated to the propagation of red and green crafts; I don't think I saw paint or craft supplies of another colour for three weeks.

Christmas frenzy. I hated it. The sense of false entitlement to stuff was nurtured; the reality of a world where some of our families faced Christmas with a sense of dread due to their family circumstances was ignored. Nobody sang Christmas carols, and nobody talked about, say, why our Christmas tree had a star on top, because of the fear that this would be culturally offensive to non-Christians (and you can read my views on that here- no, I am not particularly religious, but fair go, in historical terms this is our white man's culture!). Removing the 'reason for the season' gave the whole month a lack of balance- and a lack of balance isn't good for children. I won't be doing Christmas like that ever again. Not in my room, thank you.

And my house keeps its balance at Christmas now, and has done since I stopped being relatively wealthy. When the coffers ran dry, the season of greed became just a bit of a family reunion for us. The food's good, because in my house the food is always good; it's one of my priorities. But the giving of pointless crap and excessive numbers of expensive gifts stopped. I've even stopped inviting anyone I really don't like to my house out of duty, because life is too short to burden yourself with drunken Aunt Mary and her nastiness; Aunt Mary needs to get a grip.

And guess what? The sky hasn't fallen, Henny Penny. It's all good.

It makes for some interesting social moments, though. Every time I go to the supermarket in December, the checkout chick asks me if I'm 'organised for Christmas'- no doubt the rote enquiry as ordered by management, so I'll remember something else I can buy from Woolies before I go. I tell them I don't do Christmas, just to see the look on their faces. It's usually somewhere between naked envy and the look you'd give someone who'd just turned into a little green alien before your eyes. They just assume that everyone will be as wrapped up in the madness as they are.

No, this Christmas at my house will involve my direct family- or those who can get here without breaking the bank- maybe a close friend or two, no gifts, good food, and gratitude for and enjoyment of where I live. And when I'm next running a daycare room at Christmas time, they're going to have honesty and balance- not a red-and-green greedfest. Oh, I won't be disillusioning any children whose parents want them to believe in the man in the big red Coke bottle- um, I mean 'suit'. But I won't be feeding that idea, either.

So, are you wrapped up in madness for Christmas? Has the greed and need factor been revved up in your kids, or are you being realistic? Are you lining up for a financial crisis in February? Will your home be full of people you can't stand, who'll model the finer points of having a drunken slanging match in front of your children?

I hope not.

But if so- is it time for a re-think?

Only children rock, part 2: bringing up baby (singular)

2011-11-27T23:29:00.001+10:00

Alright then- you've decided, or nature has decided for you, that this baby is IT. You'd like a manual for the singleton model, please!

I'm assuming you've already read the previous post, where I reassured you that you are NOT the Wicked Witch of the West for having just one child, and that your child is not doomed to be a bratty, insular, self-centred, dependent lap-dog. Yes? Good. Now let's talk about some sensible, reflective parenting of the only child.

The first thing we have to knock on the head is that only children are somehow different to bring up from other children. They're not. Children are children, and most have similar needs. At the same time, every child is unique- the 'only' one you have of that particular model. Good parenting is a matter of knowing your child and getting the balance right, no matter how many children you have.

But you may have to do a little tweaking from time to time, in the absence of siblings. Siblings can certainly provide a bit of a reality check for each other, as the screams and wails issuing from the parent-of-two's playroom will attest. Let's look at some specific aspects of 'only child' parenting balance.

My baby, my life!- the dangers of overindulgence

If you're silly enough to treat any child as though he's the centre of the universe and make your entire life revolve around him, instead of gradually helping him (and allowing him) to become independent, you're cruisin' for a bruisin'.

People will tell you that this only happens to only children, because they don't have any competition. Rubbish. It happens to a LOT of eldest children, and then there's hell to pay when Number 2 comes along. (See 'sibling rivalry'.) It can also happen to 'favourite' children or precociously talented children. Be very, very afraid. This is not the way to create a happy human being.

You may well fall madly in love with your new baby, but that's not an excuse to indulge yourself in indulging her, to the detriment of both the baby and your own life. It's not an excuse for you to live your life through your child. Remind yourself he's not a possession. Remind yourself she's a small person who needs to live an independent life one day.

Remind yourself that your job is not to play with, entertain, buy stuff for and wait upon this child 24 hours a day, because that's how people breed children who can't entertain themselves, have a dysfunctional sense of entitlement and think that 'mum' is a synonym for 'servant'. In my very first post of this blog I talked about parenting as a process of letting go. You'd better believe it.

Your job is not just to love and care for him, but to build realistic expectations. One day your baby will be a teenager. Will you still be giving him everything he wants and jumping to attention every time he squeaks? Will you still prioritise her above everything that matters in your own life? (If you do, I promise she'll hate you for it.) When were you thinking of starting the transition to reality?

Obviously, you attend lovingly and patiently to all your tiny baby's genuine needs and give lots of cuddles and honest, kind communication. The trick is to gradually let her take the wheel as she gets older and take back the important parts of your own life, so that when it's time for your baby to leave home we have a tableau of happy adults excited about the future- not a terrified, unprepared, 25-year-old child and a pair of weeping, empty-nester parents. If you're having trouble getting the balance right when your baby is young- and yes, you DO need to think about this when your baby is quite young- Janet Lansbury's site is a mine of kind, non-judgmental information.

My one and only- the pitfalls of overprotection

Fear of abduction, death or injury must not be allowed to cripple your one-and-only's emotional growth. If you went through hell to get that only child, or if you're a particularly fearful person, you might need to do a bit of emotional work on yourself before you can let your child take the minor, healthy risks they need for normal development. Do it. Hot-housing your child is bad for them, and for you. That child needs to get out into the world and learn to cope without you.

Finding the line between acceptable and unacceptable risk can be hard for parents who only have one child and are terrified of losing him. But if you protect any child from the realities of other people's quirks, differences and unpleasant behaviour- if you don't let her learn how to cope with other members of the human race, warts and all, from an early age- she's in for an unpleasant shock when she eventually has to assimilate without mum or dad at her side.

Children with siblings have to learn to deal with other kids at home every day (and their parents have to learn when to to butt out and let them sort it). Children without siblings might need you to create opportunities for them to learn this, if your lifestyle doesn't lend itself naturally to this sort of interaction.

There's a good chance that an only child will end up preferring the company of adults, because that's what he's used to. Once that's set in stone, it can become difficult for some children to integrate with peers once school starts (and it may be twice as hard if they're gifted as well; I refer you to the cautionary tale of 'only child, gifted child' Gavin, which you'll find towards the end of my post about gifted children.) I wasn't an only child, but my brother was significantly older than me, and I still remember how awful it felt to be tossed into a sea of other children when I was used to adult company, civil behaviour and peace and quiet.

Want to avoid this for your child? Then that means- shock, horror- that you need to expose this delicate, precious little orchid flower of yours to Other People's Children sooner rather than later.

That might mean playgroup and daycare. It might mean playing with their cousins and going to little athletics. It could mean early music classes and plenty of time at the playground (without you being a helicopter parent). The idea is to let your child work out how to deal with other people from outside their family, and they can't do that if you're constantly hovering and 'saving them'.

The interactions don't have to be with children of exactly the same age. Be guided by your own child's personality- as with every other aspect of parenting, you are the authority on your child and you are the best one to judge exactly what social activities will work for your child. In my son's case, it often meant coming with me to choir rehearsals after school and interacting with a group of 15- to 18-year-old girls (who were not backward in coming forward when he did something outrageous). Like Gavin, he was a gifted child and preferred the company of older people. I found that play dates with his peers were pretty useless, as he'd either be totally bored by their conversation or run rings around them instead of learning to co-operate and negotiate. (Or both. Oh, the joys of parenting the gifted child... sigh.)

To this day he thanks me for exposing him to so many girls so young. He swears it gave him an unfair advantage in the dating stakes later on.

NB: Note that working with choirs was a very important part of my life, and there was no way I was giving that up- my preschooler son just had to learn to fit in, and he did so with alacrity. Let that be a lesson to you! Spend some time maintaining your own interests! Maybe you too can work out a way to combine resuming your life interests with allowing your child to socialise. Both are terribly important if you want to end up with that tableau of happy adults at parting time.

You're special- hello, so is everyone else

If you fail to nurture respect for other people's point of view in your child, then yes, you'll bring up a self-centred prat. (Some parents manage to bring up whole families of self-centred prats, so don't you dare think that only children own the copyright on that one.)

And so, in the absence of siblings who will soon teach a child that everyone has a unique perspective (and last one with hands washed gets last pick of the cupcakes), you may have to make more of an effort to treat your only child in a slightly more pragmatic way and let him learn about reality. It's not called the human 'race' for nothing.

It's pretty natural to try to boost your child's ego and make her feel special, but you can't be hokey about it. (Kids pick 'hokey' very young.) You have to try to be realistic about where your child stands in relation to the world. By all means show interest in what he does, but don't give fake or excessive praise (this is a child, not a performing seal) and don't pretend he's infallible or The Best (what is that, anyway? The Best like Picasso, or The Best like Renoir?), even if he's precociously talented at something.

Try to be calm, try to be authentic, and be careful what you label as 'cute' or 'awesome'. (Let me rephrase that: be careful with labels, full stop.) If you over-react to every little thing your child achieves, you're hard-wiring your child's brain to believe that the aim of life is to please YOU. It's not. The first aim of life is to explore our own abilities and find and use our unique gifts, not to join the circus as a baby monkey and do handstands night after night till we die so people will throw peanuts.

Yes, you can be positive and interested without declaring that everything your baby produces is WONDERFUL. (Even she knows that not everything she produces is wonderful- most of the time she's far more interested in the process of doing something than in the product that you hang on your fridge, anyway.) And you can, and must, create an atmosphere where he realises that there are other people in the world, and things are not always going to go his way, and that's not the end of the world.

So, for example, it's important that you don't spare your child the disappointment of losing when you play games. Again, you have to find a balance between the 'killer' parent, who plays to win regardless of the company, and the 'pushover' parent who constantly loses on purpose.

I remember learning how to play the card game "500" by having my father play my hand with me, until I had a decent grasp of the strategies. That was brilliant. I got the sense of being part of a team, I tasted a fair share of winning and losing- and then when I went solo, when I did win I knew I'd deserved it. That's what we're aiming for here- a realistic balance.

You know, I've hardly said a thing here that only relates to the only child. I'll say it again: every child is unique, but most of them have similar basic needs. Having one child means we might occasionally have to consider stepping in and replacing what siblings might contribute, but having more than one child means we have to consider dealing with a host of other difficult issues, like 'where did I put my life?' and 'how can I explain to Johnny that it's not okay to flush his sister's iPod down the toilet?'

For some of us, an only child is a choice; for others, it's imposed upon us against our will. But honestly, it doesn't have to be an issue. If you have a pennyworth of common sense and enough interest in good parenting to keep you reading and learning about children, you and your singleton will be absolutely fine- and if anyone tells you otherwise, send them to me!!

Only children rock, part 1: the myths

2011-11-26T14:51:00.001+10:00

Being the parent of an only child can be fraught with awkward, spiky social situations. Believe me, I know- my son is an only child. I sometimes find it hard to believe that having just one child can cause so much judgment and controversy.

The parenting forums always have at least one thread, or sometimes a whole group of threads, devoted to the only child. Do you have an only child by choice or circumstance? Are you an only child yourself? Did you wish for a sibling? Are you happy? Would you choose to have an only child yourself? What are the disadvantages? What are the advantages? What do you do when someone asks you when you're having another child?

And yes, there are plenty of people ready to jump down your throat if you've decided to have just one child. Really, it mystifies me why other parents are so quick to attack the parent/s of the singleton- but I've seen it many times over. My theory is that these people are so desperate for affirmation of their own choices that they strike out at anyone who chooses differently. (Read, insecure.)

Certain myths are thrown at us with monotonous regularity. She'll be spoilt. He'll be lonely. She'll never learn to share. He'll miss out on having an extended family group when he grows up. She'll have to take sole responsibility for caring for her parents in their old age. He'll be too dependent on and attached to mum. Believe me, I've heard them all, and for each myth there's a balancing one which suggests that all these problems are magically solved by having another baby.

Reality check: a baby doesn't solve any problem, ever, for anyone, regardless of where that baby comes in the sibling line-up. Having a baby is a gamble. You have no idea who you're going to get, how he or she will fit in with the family you've already got, and what challenges beyond the average that particular baby will bring.

Don't believe me? Read this. Amy was desperate for a child when she and her husband adopted Kylie.

So while I delight in babies and love looking after them, just as Amy delights in and adores Kylie despite her challenges, in reality I think that any baby is far more likely to cause a problem than to solve one. A second child is not a magic wand warding off the evils of selfishness, isolation and dependence; reflective, well-informed parenting practice is the way to achieve that. And I believe that NO child should be conceived JUST to avoid having an only child, or to fit in with society's knee-jerk expectations; every child's conception should be planned and considered equally carefully. (Don't even start me on parents who have baby after baby of the same sex because they're 'trying for' the opposite sex. Poor children.)

If you read my post about the myth of the happy family, you'll understand that I take off the rose-tinted glasses when I view the relationships within a family unit. Just because two babies are born to the same parents, there's no guarantee they'll love or even like one another. They don't necessarily even share a majority of genetic material- it's the luck of the draw- so to assume that siblings will automatically develop a close bond just because they're siblings is optimistic at best, and plain old self-delusion at worst.

There's considerably more likelihood that a first child will feel usurped and threatened by later children, especially if he or she has previously experienced an over-attentive parenting style or if the subsequent babies are challenging and need a lot of attention. The term 'sibling rivalry' doesn't need to be explained to anyone, does it? It's common.

And because it's common, most of us have some experience of the strains felt between siblings. I'm fortunate to get along perfectly well with my brother- but I spent part of my life in a relationship with a middle child, who had teamed up with the first child to bully their younger sister mercilessly in childhood and was still laughing about it years later. I didn't find it funny, and it didn't reassure me about the value of having siblings at all.

Nor did I find my relationship with a highly competitive eldest child amusing or reassuring, given that he regularly started roaring rows with his younger brothers over family lunches. Give me my current peaceful relationship with an only child any day; he seems to have a lot more respect for other human beings' feelings.

Yet despite us knowing, really, that a larger family doesn't guarantee a happy family, our culture seems to demand that we aspire to at least two children. If we decline, we are regarded with a certain suspicion and questioned relentlessly. And so I present my evidence for the defence.

I am glad these days that I had an only child. And honestly, he hasn't turned out too bad (she said with a proud grin, trying not to brag).

Was he spoilt? Possibly, at first, but that was hard to avoid given that he was the first grandchild on both sides of the family (and I knew a lot less about sensible parenting than I know now). When my financial circumstances changed and I had to start saying no, he got unspoilt very quickly.

Was he lonely? Never- in fact he developed a wonderful ability to entertain himself, as well as attracting a wide circle of friends when he finally found some like-minded peers; he's now a leader within his chosen social/recreational activity. (Did he ever complain of being bored? Of course. Doesn't every child?)

Did he learn to share? He's generous to a fault, and has been since childhood.

Did he miss out on the extended family? No, he has great relationships with his cousins and makes far more effort to stay in touch with the extended family than I do!

Will he be burdened by caring for me in my decrepit old age? Absolutely not- I would never blight his life against his will. I'll take my chances in a nursing home if I have to. (How dare people do that to their children?! It must always be a choice, not a demand.)

Is he too dependent on me? Roars of laughter at that one. He's incredibly independent. I have absolutely no illusions that I have undue influence on his choices!

So no, I don't see that my academically high-flying, socially fluid, free-thinking, generous, self-sufficient child suffered by being a singleton- not at all. To this day he says he liked being an only child.

More telling than his words, I think, is that he's chosen to marry another only child. Within his wife's character he finds a complementary independence and resourcefulness.

Only children rock. Don't let anyone tell you any different.

Read Part 2 here!

Sexualising our children isn't funny

2011-11-22T15:52:00.000+10:00

Recently on Facebook, someone from the US posted an outraged reaction to a children's clothing store that was selling g-strings and crotchless undies in children's sizes. Today in Australia, we have K Mart pulling a range of children's undies with sexualised messages ("Call me!" "I love rich boys!") off their shelves, after similar outrage from responsible parents.

WHAT are people THINKING when they design and make this garbage and then try to sell it to children?

The US incident was rationalised (if, indeed, you CAN rationalise something that tacky and poorly judged) as an attempt by pedophiles to infiltrate the children's clothing market- something of an extreme view without evidence. I thought that was drawing a little bit of a long bow.

I think it's bigger, more worrying and less overtly criminal than that. I think that this is a creeping malaise that's got under our radar, through

(1) our failure to deal with our own personal insecurity, and

(2) our acceptance of other people's 'expert' bad decisions about what's appropriate for children.

Let me explain that.

First, to insecurity. There's that desperate desire to pass off our own children's inappropriate behaviour as 'cute' or 'funny'. That's all about fear of judgment, I think; if our child says or does something sexually dodgy in public, some of us are very keen to let it slide under the radar with a positive label. It's much less embarrassing for us that way. And we don't want to seem like a party pooper if someone laughs; it's really hard to take a moral stand in a social setting.

It's even harder when one of our relatives or friends is egging the child on to copy their own bad behaviour. (Is this sounding familiar to anyone?) We are caught, then, between confronting our relative or friend- which might risk the relationship and invite sustained conflict- and laughing it off.

Laughter is a lot easier.

Take Dylan, for example. Dylan's dad had been brought up in a setting where verbal abuse and harassment of women was normal behaviour; he regularly had violent rows with Dylan's mother, often culminating in fisticuffs. Dylan's dad thought it was okay to walk along the street asking random female strangers to 'show us your tits', and when Dylan started to copy him he roared laughing and pointed out other women to ask.

Naturally, Dylan (aged 4) eventually started to ask female peers at preschool to 'show us your tits', expecting laughter and positive attention as a response.

Yes, that's appalling parenting; I don't need to spell that one out for you. But what was Dylan's mum doing while this was going on?

She was stoking up her belief that her life, complete with constant abuse, was okay. The idea of challenging her violent partner would have been terrifying. Her personal insecurity- that this was the life and the atmosphere that she deserved- was impacting terribly on her child, but she was literally on a hiding to nothing if she confronted her partner about it. Leave? With two kids under 5? Much too hard.

It's so important that we work on ourselves as well as working on our children. So many of our children's problems can be traced back to our own problems that we've been avoiding confronting.

I'm no exception! I am not blaming or preaching! I learnt this fact through sending my child to a counsellor when I was concerned about his bolshie attitude, when he was around age 8. What a wonderful woman; she had one session with him, then called us in and pointed out that in 90% of cases, including this one, the child didn't have a problem- the adults did, and we'd do better to book ourselves in.

Ouch. And how true her words proved; what a can of worms that opened!

So if you find yourself laughing and brushing it off when your child is behaving in an age-inappropriate or abusive way, maybe it would be wise to ask yourself why you're explaining away and protecting that inappropriate behaviour. What's going on for you?

Another type of insecurity makes us buy inappropriately sexual clothes for a child. Just because they're on the shelves, just because they're like what some singer wore in a video clip, just because your child's peers are supposedly wearing the same things, doesn't mean you have to cave in.

But if you don't cave in, then you have to confront the fact that you are the child's parent, not the child's friend, and be prepared to take some flack. You may have to reassess what music clips, TV shows or cartoons you let your child see at home, which might mean a battle with an older sibling. These are significant challenges.

It's a lot easier to just say yes, and let your child pretend that they're older than their actual emotional age. This isn't about chronological age. It's about what feelings they understand, and what unwelcome behaviours of other people they can manage effectively.

Then there's bad decisions of others, who we may regard as experts, on what's age-appropriate. I can think of no better example than dance class.

Maybe I'm just a musty old dinosaur, but hello, I don't think it's appropriate for babies and pre-teens to be thrusting their pelvis and chest at the audience, peeping seductively from behind their hair, dancing to clearly sexually-oriented songs, wearing hardly anything on their tiny pre-pubescent bodies as they do the above and slathering their faces in heavy, sexually charged make-up.

HOW is that presentation and body movement appropriate for a 5-year-old? An 8-year-old? A 10-year-old?

And yes, I've heard dance teachers exhorting pre-teens to 'look sexy'. They don't even know what sexy is, but they're being told it's desirable to look like that. What the??

Sure, the dance teacher will tell you it's essential technique to learn to isolate the pelvis and rib cage. You'll regard her as the expert and cave in. Some singing and drama teachers are just as bad; I still haven't recovered from seeing a 12-year-old get up on stage and sing 'Hanky Panky, Do You Want to Spank Me?', not to mention 'Big Spender' issuing from the tender lips of a 13-year-old. What the?? But would you challenge a trained singing teacher's choice of song for your child? That takes guts, and a preparedness to be derided for your trouble.

Sorry, but I think it's time for stage mums to grow a backbone about this. Get a grip. Get a perspective. It is NOT okay to sexualise your daughter just to win prizes and 'get ahead'.

(Please don't start me on beauty pageants.)

Some parents are clearly living through their children when they allow this sort of thing. Maybe they've forgotten the context of that age group; these children don't have relationship experience, and I'm sure even the most pushy stage mum doesn't actually WANT a pre-teen to have relationship experience- yet they let them be taught to dance and sing about relationships- often barely-concealed sexual relationships. (Do you want to spank me? Pardon?)

Think about it. Are you really surprised that someone thought it was okay to make trashy underwear for children? (Okay, I take the point about the crotchless undies, but some leotards are just a g-string with a top attached, and they wear them with flesh-coloured tights- what is THAT about for a 6-year-old, please?)

Sexualising our children isn't about some pervert slipping something inappropriate into the racks at a chain store. It's about our whole society and what we allow to be done to and by our children. It's about where we all draw the line, and how strong we're prepared to be, and how ready we are to be called a prude for letting a child be a child.

How old is your child, emotionally? Think about it.

'Happy Families' is a card game

2011-11-17T16:56:00.000+10:00

We have been brainwashed.

Did it start with TV shows like The Brady Bunch? Or did that sort of show just perpetuate the myth that families are, naturally, a haven of universal and reciprocal affection?

Maybe there really are families that work like that somewhere on this earth, where Mum and Dad are founts of love and tolerance and understanding, where all the children adore and support each other, where every problem is eased along by mutual concern for others' happiness within the home circle.

I'm scratching my head to think if I know any REAL families like that- but no, I don't. And so my logical brain says, if that type of family is the norm, and if I've worked with families all my life, then why am I struggling to remember an example?

No, folks, I don't believe in that particular fairy tale. Last time I looked, The Brady Bunch was fiction (and a noxiously cloying variety thereof) and Happy Families was a card game (one that often led to massive rows around the family table about whether Johnny had lied about the presence or absence in his hand of Master Pinch the Pickpocket's Progeny... or something like that).

Please let me know if everyone in your family loves each other unconditionally and has no skeletonic resentment whatsoever hiding in the cupboard under the stairs. Put your hand on your heart and tell me that Christmas will be a wonderful reunion, without a single squabble or insensitive behaviour. I will need at least 500 families like that to give me even a 50-50 'perfect to imperfect' ratio.

Yes, I can think of families who constantly work at their relationships and appear to do a damn good job of ironing out tensions, but there's always a flaw compared to the 'perfection' template. There's an anorexic, or a dominating personality, or an unwanted pregnancy, or a child not achieving to potential, or a drunk, or a wife who's actually in love with someone else, or two members who can't bear to be in the same room, or a neurotic... go on, analyse some families you know.

Start with your own family and move on to your best friend's, because I can think of several families who appear to their mere acquaintances to be living the dream- but who are, underneath the patina of respectability, living the nightmare (at worst), or the undesirable compromise (at best).

So if the Perfect Happy Family is not the norm but the noteworthy exception, why are so many people- particularly women- beating themselves up over failed attempts to make their own family conform to a template that is essentially a fantasy?

I started musing about this question after I read a question on The Twin Coach's site from a slightly flummoxed mother, who was asking for advice on how to get her daughter to give her younger siblings some signs of familial affection such as the loving goodnight kiss. Miss 5, far from conforming to the 'perfect family' template, was grouchily refusing to do any such thing, and mum was starting to worry that the little siblings might feel unloved.

Poor mum. Children are so bad at conforming to our pre-ordained images of family. They will insist on surprising us with behaviours we never imagined would come from the fruit of our loins, and on having their own strong and contrary feelings about things.

We bore them, yes, we brought them into this world, but we don't own them- and we don't own or control their feelings, either. They belong, from the start, to themselves. And we have to learn to live with that, and do our bit to negotiate peace when the different selves in our family declare war on each other in action or word.

That bewildered mum's question took me right back to when an 11-year-old boy I know, who I'll call 'Jamie', was presented with a little stepbrother by his dad and dad's new wife- let's call her 'Ruby'. Poor Ruby had that fantasy template firmly embedded in her heart. I won't say 'in her mind', because she was a very smart lady- a VERY smart lady- who would have been able to see her folly if it had ever occurred to her to analyse her expectations using the scientific method she learned at university.

That's the problem with being brainwashed. It doesn't occur to you to apply logic and contrary evidence. The Happy Family has been presented to us as our cultural norm, and if our family doesn't conform, then that makes US a failure.

Poppycock it does.

But back to Ruby and Jamie. Ruby had her heart set on a Brady dynamic, while Jamie- who, as an adored only child for 11 years, probably had certain expectations of remaining so- was beset by a severe bout of rebellious rage. Nobody had asked HIM if he wanted a sibling. If they had, he would have said NO. He didn't even LIKE little kids, let alone LOVE this 24/7 package of screaming, pooping, demanding, incomprehensible, attention-seeking NUISANCE.

Simply speaking, he refused to play ball- or perhaps I should say 'cards'. It might have been a game of Happy Families until the new baby turned up, but he was damned if he was going to pretend to be happy now. And no, he would NOT kiss that baby goodnight, or smile for family photos with it.

At this point, Ruby made a fatal error- one which I would plead with that other mum not to make. She pushed the point. She ordered Jamie to be nice. She tried to insist that Jamie show affection to the baby and conform to the Happy Family Paradigm.

Somewhere deep down, she must have seen Jamie's failure to love the baby on command as a personal affront to her values; when Jamie continued to refuse to play her game, she effectively declared war. Jamie's failure to love the baby was presented as his failing of personality and upbringing. Blame was attributed freely. Punishments were meted out.

At no stage was Jamie given the space or approval to feel what he was, without doubt, feeling very strongly indeed. Jamie wasn't acting out towards the baby. He wasn't hitting it, or hurting it; he was just refusing to pretend he liked it. His whole world had shifted on its axis, and instead of being helped to find a comfortable place in that world by his adult guide, he was judged and condemned.

The result was inevitable; Jamie dug his heels in too, the whole situation escalated to the point where the parents were having constant arguments about it, and the marriage disintegrated.

Scorecard: Jamie, 10; single ex-stepmum (by now with two young children), minus 100.

What should Ruby have done?

The first thing she needed to do was to let go of her childhood dream of the perfect family, because it's a myth. She needed to play the hand she was dealt, not the hand she wished she had, and recognise that she and Jamie had a different set of emotions around that baby. She needed to stop pretending that having a new baby was a positive experience for everyone in her family. What we want so desperately for ourselves may have a very different impact on those around us, as every career woman knows.

The second thing she needed to do was to let Jamie be himself, because none of us is very good at being someone we're not- and children are no exception. Jamie needed to feel safe to express what he was really feeling about that baby- his fears, his resentment, his discomfort with the changes in his life, his anger that nobody had thought to prepare him for the possibility of a sibling before it was a fait accompli- and his hurt that, now that the baby was here, nobody considered his feelings to be valid or important.

Perhaps Jamie even needed to be praised for NOT acting out directly at the baby. Some children who are racked by the emotions of sibling rivalry do actually hurt their brother or sister. Jamie had restrained himself admirably, given that his feelings were so strong. Eleven years is a long time to be the star of the show, and there are plenty of stars who've behaved worse than Jamie when an up-and-coming actor stole their limelight.

With the retrospectoscope- a powerful and (for the holder) totally useless instrument- it's also easy to see that perhaps it would have been wise to give Jamie a little less of the limelight in the first place. If we totally indulge our first child and spend every waking minute at his side, spend every cent in our purse giving him everything he wants and let him dominate our life decisions, we're setting ourselves up for a fall.

That's pretty much what happened to Jamie- the only child, the only grandchild on both sides, the apple of everyone's eye. A little restraint might have given Jamie a more realistic view of the world. If you give a child everything and then have another baby, it doesn't take a degree in maths for that child to work out that half is less than one. Half the time, half the attention, half the disposable income, and that's if the parents are falling over themselves to be equitable (which new babies rarely allow).

You reap what you sow. Sow a little time for your second child when you have the first.

And so to that mother whose daughter won't kiss the babies goodnight, I'd say don't push it. Let your daughter have her feelings, because her feelings are real. Find a way to let her express those feelings- make it safe for her to speak about how she feels, or act out how she feels using dolls or teddies or puppets.

Accept her reluctance to pretend; your daughter is being emotionally honest. Isn't that what you want her to be? Of course you do! You just don't want her to feel like that.

But that is out of your control. She is herself. She has her own feelings. All you can do is to try to be aware, and not increase her feelings of resentment towards her siblings. She's not beating them up; good on her for that. So chill. Spend time with her, do the special things you used to do with her before the other babies arrived, make sure she feels your love.

When she grows up, you won't want her to feel she has to kiss people she doesn't want to kiss. Nor will you want your younger children to accept forced kisses. Start now. Give a consistent message. This isn't a tableau for the camera- this is real life, and fake kisses are worthless to all parties.

Will stepping back work? I think so. It will give this little girl space to work through those feelings, instead of acting them out or suppressing them. That can only be good. It will make her feel that mum now sees her as she really is, and accepts her, bad feelings and all.

I feel a great compassion for that little girl, struggling with those big feelings. To that mum, I say that I wouldn't be worried about whether the younger siblings are feeling loved- I would be worried about whether the 5-year-old is feeling loved. This is what needs to change, not the tableau at bedtime.

There's a happy ending to Jamie's story, which might help and reassure that little girl's mum.

Once Jamie had the space to be himself, with his own real feelings, he stopped digging the hole of resentment deeper. As his little brother started to grow up and smile and say real words and show Jamie that he thought he was awesome, as only little brothers can, Jamie decided that he loved him after all. They have a great relationship these days, full of genuine affection.

Accepting your children's feelings about their siblings is the first step in changing their rivalry. Until you accept where they're at, you're the enemy in this highly emotive war.

Step over the battle line. Look at your family from your child's perspective. What do you see?

Channeling my inner toddler: the concept of 'play as work'

2011-11-15T16:01:00.001+10:00

It's really, REALLY hot in summer where I live. Fortunately I have a magnificent dam, complete with wharf, specifically for swimming- much less work than a swimming pool! The only drawback is that the edges can be a bit muddy, and sometimes when I climb out I end up looking like I'm wearing Ugh boots made out of mud.

So the other day I grabbed a long rope from my partner's old sailing kit, tied it to a tree on one side, swam across with it and tied it to the other side, so I'd have something stable to use to haul myself out without sinking. My beloved didn't even ask me what I was doing; it's taken him a while, but he's now worked out that when I get That Look in my eye, I'm channeling my inner toddler and it's NOT a good idea to interrupt or offer to help. I Can Do It. Don't Bother Me. (Sound familiar, toddler parents?)

When I finished, I not only had a great way of getting out of the water without the mudpack pedicure- I also had a new toy. I had an underwater tightrope.

And so since then, I've been playing with my new toy. First I used it as a lane marker so I could swim laps, but that was a bit boring. So next I decided to use it to develop my arm strength, by seeing how fast I could pull myself across the dam using only my arms. That was kind of cool.

But once I started to see it as an underwater tightrope, things got REALLY interesting. The rope sags in the middle, you see, what with the weight of the rope and the weight of the water it sucks up. That's science. (I only really noticed that because I was in Toddler Mode. You should try it sometime; you see the world differently, with lots of interesting details you'd otherwise overlook, when you have a Personal Project based on an Interest.)

So I thought I'd try walking the tightrope across to the other side of the dam.

Now, THAT was FUN. But it was also amazingly enlightening.

I couldn't actually see the rope, because the dam is a typical, Aussie, murky mud-brown dam. I had to guess where the rope was, and feel with my feet, and simultaneously keep my balance with my arms. And the rope moves; it's quite bouncy, so you can't go at it too fast. I fell off quite a few times, despite my best arm-flailing efforts.

And suddenly I found myself thinking, this is what it was like learning to walk.

It really helped me with the concept of 'play as work'. To anyone on the edges, it looked like I was just horsing around on a hot day, but I'd actually got a bee in my bonnet about getting to the other end without falling and I was teaching myself the 'rules' of staying on that rope, involving posture, balance, control, foot position and speed.

We adults don't play enough, you know. We don't set ourselves enough recreational challenges, just to see if we CAN. If we played more, and mucked around at the edges of our ability more, we wouldn't have so much trouble understanding that children's play is their form of work, and that we shouldn't interfere when they're apparently 'just playing'- but in fact, busy working something out. And we shouldn't rescue them when they're taking a risk by learning a new physical skill.

I Can Do It. Don't Bother Me.

Are you a golfer, maybe? Trying to improve your swing? Think of that feeling. Don't Bother Me. I'm Working. That's what your child is feeling when they play, and you may not understand exactly what they're teaching themselves- but believe me, they WILL be teaching themselves something. Think before you interrupt. Let them finish what they're doing. Think of the feeling when your phone rings mid-swing. DON'T BOTHER ME! I'M PLAYING!!

All the time I was in the dam, my dog was trying to interrupt me. He was channeling his inner toddler, too. (I've decided that, for him, the age after toddlerhood will be senility- but I digress.) When he realised I was not going to find a stick for him and throw it in the dam for him to fetch, because I Was Busy, he decided to get one for himself. (Toddlers do that.)

I could hardly blame him for coming back with a stick the size of the Sydney Harbour Bridge; it was a branch, actually. Now, there was another example of 'play as work'. I watched him wrestle that 'stick' from the fence near the bush, all the way around the dam till he got it to the end of the rope, where he knew I'd get out. He spiked himself on it a few times along the way, yelping loudly enough to make my partner come and ask what was wrong.

But he's a dog, not a child; nobody interrupted his game. When he finally got that branch where he wanted it, the look of achievement on his face gave me the giggles, even though I just about broke an ankle trying to get around the damn thing when I pulled myself out of the dam.

And the realisation that it'd taken him exactly two swims to figure out exactly where I'd set foot on land reminded me that toddler he may be, but stupid he ain't.

And that, my friends, is also a lesson for all of us.