Not all judgement, of course, is helpful.
When someone is not looking for, doesn't want, and indeed doesn't need help, it is not particularly useful to offer a long, reasoned evaluation of their activities and ways that they can improve them.
Or a short one, really.
Likewise, even the most constructive and helpful of opinions, eagerly sought, and full of precious nuggets of delicious wisdom*, will be less than gladly received if it is offered with the sort of tactless rudeness that would make Simon Cowell** blush.
Then there are the comments that aren't even meant to be constructive.
There are people who will break into a Facebook thread, or a forum conversation, to offer what is quite simply an insult: "Anybody who does this doesn't really love their kids" is a popular one, or "People who do this are just lazy"***, occasionally the person offering this opinion is simply rather boorish, but more often than not they're actually trying to be rude.
By now everyone on the internet has probably seen that Facebook post: you know the one from the mother saying that baby boys don't deserve to have breastmilk because they're already stronger than baby girls****, and claiming that if she has a boy she'll be feeding him formula, as well as circumcising him so he can't get as much pleasure out of sex.
It got a lot of attention and, unsurprisingly, stirred up a lot of horrified responses.
Because, as it happens, that mother already has a son.
She also lives under a bridge and eats billy goats.
Because she's a troll.*****
Most of the people who offer such rude opinions are trolls too.
They sit, in cosy anonymity behind their screens and, out of boredom, or a weird sense of power, or whatever-the-heck-it-is that motivates them, they poke people on their tenderest areas to see if they can make them jump.
Which is all very unpleasant.
What makes it worse, though, is that because of idiots like this, and because parenting is already such an insanely sensitive issue, and because some of the trolls are disguised as newspapers with inexplicable American accents******, many people on the internet are now preconditioned to expect judgemental nastiness whenever anything child related is mentioned.
I was on a Facebook group the other month******* when I saw a new post from a woman complaining that there was "too much judging" on the group and asking everyone to read an enormous glurgey post about how everyone was equally lovely.
The thing is, there was nothing remotely judgemental on that group.
Occasionally there has been, in fact from time to time there are massive rows, but for the last month everything had been sweetness and light.
Somehow, however, this woman felt judged.********
Presumably she had endured enough slights, real or perceived, that almost any conversation on whatever-topic-it-was was now felt to her like a judgement on her personal choices.
What was funny though, was that in reaction to this she responded with a very judgemental post to the entire group, saying that everyone needed to read her enormous sticky sweet post, and especially the last line, which they should read twice (and which, of course just said that everybody was equally great).
And the odd thing is that I think that post may actually have offered a worse kind of judgement than the negative kind.
I tried to find it to repost here, but I couldn't*********.
Essentially, however, it compared and contrasted every facet of parenting she could come up with, though she missed slings versus buggies as well as hitting your kids versus not hitting your damn kids.
After mentioning each option she gave some inane comment about why it was a good thing, following it up with "Good for you!" or "You're a good mom".
The thing is, that most of her opinions probably did more harm than good.
She contrasted cloth nappies (ok, she said diapers) and disposable ones for example.
Why bother?
Why on Earth take the time to write a little paragraph on how cloth and disposable nappies are equally valid ways to keep your baby from dripping all over the place?
It's not exactly a subject of furious debate, at most, some people think cloth nappies take too much time or are unhygienic and some think disposables are bad for the planet, or something on those lines.
It's a subject that at most deserves a "meh", a shrug, and a new topic of conversation.
But by putting it in her Big List Of Things she somehow managed to imply that it was a topic of dissent, that people on either side of the nappy line were glaring at one another with judgemental fury.
If anyone was feeling a little uncomfortable about their choice of infant-rump-covering, they probably felt a lot worse after that.
There were others in a similar vein.
What bothered me about them was not only the weird sense that if she had to tell us all not to fight we must secretly have been hating each other all along, but also the repeated statement that "You're a good mom".
Because, seriously, how would she know?
Breastfeeding doesn't make me a good mother, you can't tell whether or not I'm a fiend in human form based on the amount of television I let my daughters watch (though they might claim otherwise).
Breastfeeding just feeds Phoebe, all you can tell from the amount of television I let my daughters watch is how much television I let them watch.
If you read this blog you know that we homeschool, you know I used a sling, that I'm vegetarian, that we make an awful lot of pie, that I think I'm funnier than I actually probably am, and that I'm terrible at updating my blog regularly.
Maybe you know a few more things, too, but in general, that's it.
You do not know whether I'm a good parent.
Because none of that information can tell you whether I'm a good parent or the maternal equivalent of Snidely Whiplash.
Generally speaking, calling someone a good parent when you don't really know whether they are one isn't going to do a lot of damage.
When it came to one of the entries in the list of Things That Can Be Done In Two Different Ways, however, things seemed a little different.
One of her "good mom"s was "The mother who fed her kids takeaway every night this week".
The thing is, that isn't ok, it certainly isn't the sort of thing that should be met with a "good for you" or a trite little remark about how it's no worse than making a home-cooked organic meal each week**********.
I've thought this over for quite some time and, honestly, the only decent response I can think of to a mother who's fed her children takeaway every night is "Is everything alright?" or maybe, "What can I do to help?"
Because the mother who feeds her kids takeaway every night has a problem.
Perhaps it's a temporary issue: maybe her kitchen has been flooded out and she can't cook, or maybe she's getting over the flu and just hasn't felt like cooking all week.
Perhaps there's no-one else in the house who could make a hot meal.
Or a cold one.
Perhaps she just couldn't get to the shops for some reason, perhaps she's too tired, or too busy, and just can't fit everything in.
Perhaps she's depressed.
Perhaps she could use a friend, to pick up the kids from school so she has time to shop, or to bring round a home-cooked meal while her life gets back under control, or to lend her some fridge-space, let her cry on their shoulder, commiserate with her woes, or tell her that, no, that doesn't sound quite normal and does she think it would help to talk to someone?
Perhaps she's fine.
But if all you say is "Good for you! You're a good mom!" then you'll never know.
So nobody will help poor Mother-on-the-theoretical-edge: her woes, if she has any, will go unnoticed and unanswered, brushed under the carpet with "You're a good mom!"
Ok, enough ranting about the presumably well-meaning woman's awful diatribe.
My point is, that if you just respond to everything with a cheerful "That's great! Everything's fine!" then real problems get ignored.
It's bad enough to tell someone they're doing everything wrong, when they just wanted to tell you how much their toddler loves Dora the Explorer, but when they're actually seeking help, or even just sympathy, to tell them that actually, they're imagining their problems, everything's fine, hurrah for them, is to completely ignore their pain and leave them feeling that, actually, no-one cares about their difficulties.
If poor takeaway-mother wasn't miserable enough before she probably is now.
I remember, some years ago when I was overweight.
I wasn't badly overweight, I was a little over the average weight for my height, but for me it was a nightmare.
I'm naturally thin, my normal healthy weight is a little under the recommended weight for my height.
But I had M.E. and couldn't exercise, could barely drag myself out of bed in the mornings and this, combined with what was, for me, a huge weight gain, made me thoroughly miserable.
What I needed was sympathy, or some useful suggestions for ways to lose weight without actually starving myself.
What I was given was reassurance that I looked fine, that my weight was perfectly normal, and various remarks about the way society judges women based on their weight.
I was told to read The Beauty Myth, and Fat Is A Feminist Issue.
But I didn't look fine, my weight wasn't normal for me, and I didn't care about society.
I cared that I didn't look like myself any more, that I didn't feel like myself, that everyone was too busy deconstructing societal norms of beauty to listen to me telling them that the only norm I cared about was my own.
So I was miserable.
And the more everyone told me that I was fine or that I looked great, the worse I felt, because what I heard was that no-one really cared.
So here's the thing: sometimes people don't want your judgement.
Then, unless it's really urgent, unless they're telling you how great it is to knock your kid out every night with a couple of shots of vodka and a chaser of cough syrup, you probably shouldn't give it.
But when they are extolling the virtues of the vodka-meltis cocktail, someone really needs to speak up.
And sometimes people do want it.
Because judgement, as I said before, doesn't mean telling people off, or running them down.
It just means a reasoned opinion.
Sometimes people need that, sometimes they want, not praise, but your real opinion, or advise, or help.
Sometimes they just need someone to hold their hand till the pain goes away.
The trick is to listen, to hear what people want, or what they need.
Listen, be thoughtful, be considerate, be kind.
Say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done.
Then move on.***********
* Mmmmmm wisdom Mcnuggets.
** Yay, pop-culture references!
That was fun, I'm going to use more!
***I've seen this applied to pretty much everything: feeding formula, breastfeeding, using a sling, using a buggy, cosleeping, not cosleeping.
Apparently all parents are unconscionably sluggish.
****Although actually it's the other way around on the whole.
***** Yes, I know it was obvious, and it sort of ruins the punchline, but I just knew that if I didn't say something then the one and only comment I'd get on this blog would be from someone asking me what the heck I was talking about.
****** Stupid "Mommy Wars".
*******Hey Facebook Breastfeeding Is Not Obscene, if you must know.
******** Given the theme of the page I would hazard a guess that she fed her baby formula and felt uncomfortable among so many breastfeeding-based posts, but I honestly couldn't say for sure.
*********I did find a much shorter, much better one, containing some identical phrases, so I suspect hers was copied from there.
That one was actually rather nice and mentioned a few moments where parents can feeling utterly at a loss and generally rubbish, before assuring them that everyone has the odd bad moment and it doesn't actually make them a bad parent.
********** No, really, that was the comparison.
Did I forget to mention that the juxtaposition gave the distinct impression that, actually, she did think there was a better and a worse choice each time but was pretending she didn't?
***********Unless they've written some awful glurge about how everyone is lovely.
Then you should totally write a long ranty blog about how dreadful they are.
Showing posts with label Warning: serious thoughts ahead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warning: serious thoughts ahead. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Monday, 9 September 2013
Bad Judgement part one
If you read any parenting forum for long enough you'll find somebody accusing someone else of judging them.
It isn't confined to fora, of course: articles on breastfeeding, private conversations, even public health campaigns, at least where children are concerned, are apparently rife with considered opinion.
Sorry, I mean with judgement.
Which is, apparently, a bad thing.
Of course the people accusing other people of judgement actually don't mean that at all: they mean that the accused is being judgemental, a rather different thing.
You don't have to do a lot to incur this opprobrious slur on your good name, indeed all it takes, sometimes, is the expressing of an opinion.
In short, if you exercise judgement you will be thought to be judgemental, and accused of judging.
It's all very confusing.
I have in the past been accused of judging an acquaintance because I* asked for advice on her behalf.
I've been accused of being judgemental and condescending because I mentioned that I did things differently to my accuser, and that her methods weren't something I'd come across before.
I've been accused of sitting there smugly judging from my lofty pinnacle of perfect parenthood** because I, oh horror, shared a link to the World Health Organisation's website.
What's funny is that each time my accuser was in fact judging me***: they looked at my words, decided: "She's judging me", and announced their verdict to the world.
Yet if I had mentioned this they would not have been at all amused.
The problem is that parenthood is fairly stressful and one is frequently uncertain that one is doing the right thing.
Once one has chosen a course it can be horribly distressing to find out, some way down the line, that it was the wrong one, or at least not the best possible choice one could have made.
Add to this all the fuss that is made in the newspapers about judgement, the Mommy Wars****, and so on, and you can see why some people might be on a hair trigger.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a parent in pre-revolutionary China.
You have a daughter, and wanting only the best for her you have, as any good parent would, crushed the bones of her growing feet and over slow, agonising, potentially fatal months, remodelled them into a more aesthetically and socially pleasing form.
Then the revolution hits.
Suddenly your daughter's feet are symbols of the corrupt imperial past.
She is unfit for work and unsuited to life in the new China.
What is more, it turns out that it was never a good idea to torture her like that.
What you believed was an act of love which, however painful it might be for both of you, would eventually ensure her happiness by enabling her to marry and live as a good wife should, was in fact just a pointless, dangerous cruelty.
Imagine how that must have felt.
That, I suspect, is not a million miles away from the way a parent must feel when they hear that, for example, leaving their child to cry to itself all night long was not, as they believed, the only way to teach their child to sleep, but a good way to encourage future insecurities, and perhaps even cause brain-damage later on.
Of course it hurts.
And of course it must feel as though the person offering their opinion, however well-meant, however gently given, is being judgemental.
Everyone wants to do the best for their children, to be told that you may have failed, or by extension that your actions may have harmed your child, is like a knife in the stomach.
Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't offer our opinions, that we shouldn't share our judgement, our reasoned decisions, with others.
Because, actually, footbinding really was a terrible idea, and there are other and better ways to teach a child to sleep, and a hundred little things which seemed the right choice last year, or last week, or the day before yesterday, will turn out on further study to have been rather less than ideal.
We should be considerate of others, of course, but we shouldn't keep silent: to do so would be to offer tacit approval, to suggest that in our judgement that not-so-safe method was just fine.
And so, because no-one said anything, nothing, not even the worst things, would change.
And that just isn't worth it.
Not in my judgement anyway.
* With permission.
** not in those exact words, though smug, perfect and a few other such words were certainly employed.
I just like the sound of pinnacle of perfect parenthood.
I like the image too: somewhere high and pointy with wisps of cloud, and me sitting cross legged, surrounded by exquisitely balanced children who I, bodhisattva-like, am bringing up, my many arms each attending to a different task.
***Not to mention being rather judgemental in the process.
****In England too, you'd think we could at least have Mummy Wars, or something.
I favour Maternal Skirmishes, myself.
It isn't confined to fora, of course: articles on breastfeeding, private conversations, even public health campaigns, at least where children are concerned, are apparently rife with considered opinion.
Sorry, I mean with judgement.
Which is, apparently, a bad thing.
Of course the people accusing other people of judgement actually don't mean that at all: they mean that the accused is being judgemental, a rather different thing.
You don't have to do a lot to incur this opprobrious slur on your good name, indeed all it takes, sometimes, is the expressing of an opinion.
In short, if you exercise judgement you will be thought to be judgemental, and accused of judging.
It's all very confusing.
I have in the past been accused of judging an acquaintance because I* asked for advice on her behalf.
I've been accused of being judgemental and condescending because I mentioned that I did things differently to my accuser, and that her methods weren't something I'd come across before.
I've been accused of sitting there smugly judging from my lofty pinnacle of perfect parenthood** because I, oh horror, shared a link to the World Health Organisation's website.
What's funny is that each time my accuser was in fact judging me***: they looked at my words, decided: "She's judging me", and announced their verdict to the world.
Yet if I had mentioned this they would not have been at all amused.
The problem is that parenthood is fairly stressful and one is frequently uncertain that one is doing the right thing.
Once one has chosen a course it can be horribly distressing to find out, some way down the line, that it was the wrong one, or at least not the best possible choice one could have made.
Add to this all the fuss that is made in the newspapers about judgement, the Mommy Wars****, and so on, and you can see why some people might be on a hair trigger.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a parent in pre-revolutionary China.
You have a daughter, and wanting only the best for her you have, as any good parent would, crushed the bones of her growing feet and over slow, agonising, potentially fatal months, remodelled them into a more aesthetically and socially pleasing form.
Then the revolution hits.
Suddenly your daughter's feet are symbols of the corrupt imperial past.
She is unfit for work and unsuited to life in the new China.
What is more, it turns out that it was never a good idea to torture her like that.
What you believed was an act of love which, however painful it might be for both of you, would eventually ensure her happiness by enabling her to marry and live as a good wife should, was in fact just a pointless, dangerous cruelty.
Imagine how that must have felt.
That, I suspect, is not a million miles away from the way a parent must feel when they hear that, for example, leaving their child to cry to itself all night long was not, as they believed, the only way to teach their child to sleep, but a good way to encourage future insecurities, and perhaps even cause brain-damage later on.
Of course it hurts.
And of course it must feel as though the person offering their opinion, however well-meant, however gently given, is being judgemental.
Everyone wants to do the best for their children, to be told that you may have failed, or by extension that your actions may have harmed your child, is like a knife in the stomach.
Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't offer our opinions, that we shouldn't share our judgement, our reasoned decisions, with others.
Because, actually, footbinding really was a terrible idea, and there are other and better ways to teach a child to sleep, and a hundred little things which seemed the right choice last year, or last week, or the day before yesterday, will turn out on further study to have been rather less than ideal.
We should be considerate of others, of course, but we shouldn't keep silent: to do so would be to offer tacit approval, to suggest that in our judgement that not-so-safe method was just fine.
And so, because no-one said anything, nothing, not even the worst things, would change.
And that just isn't worth it.
Not in my judgement anyway.
* With permission.
** not in those exact words, though smug, perfect and a few other such words were certainly employed.
I just like the sound of pinnacle of perfect parenthood.
I like the image too: somewhere high and pointy with wisps of cloud, and me sitting cross legged, surrounded by exquisitely balanced children who I, bodhisattva-like, am bringing up, my many arms each attending to a different task.
***Not to mention being rather judgemental in the process.
****In England too, you'd think we could at least have Mummy Wars, or something.
I favour Maternal Skirmishes, myself.
Friday, 1 March 2013
Bullying.
or Why I'm Writing "Kick Me!" On Eleanor's Back
We decided to home educate for a lot of reasons, but bullying wasn't one of them.
It's true that keeping our daughters out of school may help us to avoid it to an extent, certainly severe, persistent bullying is much less likely outside of school*, however any gathering of children*** offers the potential for bullying.
So, naturally, I want to equip our children to handle bullies.
The first thing I want them to know is that The Law of the Schoolyard**** appears in no book of legislation anywhere whatsoever.
All too often children hide the fact that they're being bullied.
Sometimes, perhaps, it's because they don't think their woes will be taken seriously, but frequently it's because of some fear of being a tattle-tale, some idea that to seek help, or to be unable to deal with bullies oneself, is shameful or dishonourable.
This is of course rot: it's a parent's, or a teacher's, job to look after the children in their care, if a child can't stop the bullies bullying them, then it's down to the adults to step in.
Of course in order to step in we first need to know there's something to step into and, as we are somewhat less omniscient than our kids tend to believe, we generally need them to tell us about it.
Which is where we come up against the Law of the Schoolyard, a law enforced, and reinforced, by the very people it benefits most: the bullies.
Why don't children speak up?
Sometimes it's because they simply don't think of it*****, but often it's because they're ashamed of needing help, or afraid that they'll be laughed at, or even bullied, if they tell us.
So it's very important that we let them know that we want them to tell us, that they are supposed to tell us, that no-one will look down on them for telling us, and, perhaps most importantly of all, that telling us can't make things worse if they're already being bullied.
Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to talk about it, and to make absolutely sure that when they do tell us their problems, we listen properly and do our best to put a stop to the bullying.
Which brings me to the whole not-being-taken-seriously thing.
It's easy to tell a child to "Just ignore it", it's surprisingly hard to actually ignore a bully.
Likewise it's very easy to imagine that because something seems trivial to us, it can't be that important to anybody else.
The fact is, though, that if a child is unhappy, for whatever reason, then the adults around them need to take their unhappiness seriously.
Ok, sometimes "taking their unhappiness seriously" can mean explaining, seriously, that there really isn't a monster under the bed and that, seriously, they can't wear the pink pyjamas again because they're in the laundry basket seriously covered with something that looks like glue. Seriously.
But we manage that sort of thing with a reasonably straight face, so I think we can cope with being told that our child's life is ruined because they wore a green jumper today and Mildred Prenderghast said that green jumpers are made from bogies.
It sounds silly, but when one thinks about it for a second it's pretty hurtful: the green jumper was probably that child's own choice, maybe something they cared about, or were proud of.
Perhaps they thought they looked nice in their green jumper, only to be told that it, and therefore they, were actually a loathsome pile of snot.
People may well have laughed, it's certainly pretty unlikely that anyone stood up for them.
Silly things can hurt.
As Margaret Atwood wrote: "Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life size".
By laughing off, or telling our children to ignore, their miseries, we tell them that they don't matter to us, or, even worse in its way, that we are powerless to help them.
I'd rather do my best to help.
The second thing I want them to know, is that bullies are not as powerful, or as ubiquitous as they seem.
Bullies are, by and large, rather pathetic individuals.
They want to stand out, or to look stronger than others, or to prevent anybody from picking on them, and the easiest way they can do this is by picking on somebody else first.
Television programmes and films such as Mean Girls, rather promote the idea that bullies are powerful, popular people, well-dressed and well groomed, whose merest word can make less stylish, less socially accepted individuals shrivel on the spot.
I'm fairly sure my own school bullies had seen a few programs like this, it would certainly explain the way they walked about as though they owned the place.
In reality, though, they were just a rather small clique of particularly unpleasant, not very bright, distinctly foul-mouthed girls, who wore clothes and make-up that were far too old for them********.
Seriously, they looked like warthogs.
Sounded like them too.
But while I was aware that their apparent self-images didn't quite match the reality of their appearances, it didn't sink in somehow that while they seemed powerful and confident, that confidence and power was as imaginary as the glamour they thought they exuded.
It would have helped to know that those girls were barely scraping by at the work I found so easy, that they, in turn, had things to fear, that their confidence probably came out of their make-up bags and not, as it seemed to, out of any genuine sense of self-worth.
It would have helped me, so it's something I will take care to talk about as my daughters grow up.
Knowing that a bully is afraid won't stop them from bullying, but it can blunt the sting of their words a little.
Of course it's hard to believe that the bullies aren't all-powerful when it feels like everyone is a bully.
Which brings me to the third thing, and to why I'm (metaphorically) writing "Kick Me!" on my daughter's backs.
When you're a child, and you're being bullied, it can seem that bullies are everywhere: someone says something mean and everyone laughs, everyone is on the bullies' side, not yours.
The fact is that most of those children probably don't even know why they're laughing: they just laugh because everyone else is laughing.
Of those that do, the majority probably don't actually want to hurt anyone, or don't care either way********, they just don't want to be bullied themselves, so they join in, rather than draw the bullies attention.
Of course, while not everyone, and perhaps not anyone, really thinks your jumper looks like a pile of bogies, it can still feel like they're all on the side of the bullies.
So, the third thing: always stand up to bullies.
Yes, I know, the first thing was that it's ok to ask for help.
It is, it really, really, is.
Children should never be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help, and I absolutely want my daughters to let me know that they're being bullied.
But the first thing they should do is stand up to the bully.
Not because all bullies are cowards and the bully will magically back down in face of their defiance.
That's rather improbable, not least because bullies are, by and large, cowards, and backing down would leave them open to further defiance, or even attacks.
But it's still worth doing.
Firstly because not all bullying words are meant to be: sometimes the apparent bully will stop doing or saying hurtful things, if only someone points it out.
It can happen.
Secondly, it's important not to back down, so that the bully knows that they are not all-powerful, that they aren't as scary or as cutting as they think, and that bullying isn't actually an easy route to social success after all.
It may not look as though you have any effect at all: they may laugh all the harder at your failure to bend, but it will show on the inside, they will lose a little belief in the power of their bullying.
It feels better to stand up to them anyway.
And thirdly, it's important to stand up to bullies because you won't always be the one being bullied.
Remember what I said about it feeling like everyone is a bully?
It only takes one dissenting voice to change that.
Just one person saying that, actually, that's a really nice jumper, and it doesn't look like bogies but like new leaves, can turn the tide of opinion away from the bully.
Ok, often it won't, quite often it will be one quiet voice amidst a multitude of laughing voices.
More often than not it will be one voice surrounded by staring, silent children, who might agree, but certainly aren't going to say so.
Most of the time the bully will just repeat what was just said in a special bullying voice******** and move on to criticising the speaker but that doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because now everyone knows the bully is not the only arbiter of taste-in-jumpers.
It doesn't matter because, hey, that bully sounds like an idiot doing that stupid voice.
Most of all, it doesn't matter compared to the fact that someone now knows that all the world is not against them, and that world is bearable again because of this and you did that.
If it doesn't work, come and tell me.
I'll do my best to fix it.
I promise.
That's what I'm trying to teach Eleanor, and what I will try to teach Phoebe.
It doesn't just go for child-sized bullies either: one of my proudest (if simultaneously embarrassing) moments as a mother was of seeing another parent smacking her daughter, over some silly dispute about sweets, and Eleanor instantly leaping up and saying "That's not very nice: We don't hit!"
I don't know how much of an impression it made, but I was proud of her, all the same.
Long may it continue.
*Almost Certainly Unnecessary** Disclaimer: I might home educate but I have nothing against schools, I also understand that they are supposed to much better at dealing with bullying than they are when I was a child.
I am simply aware that large groups of children, meeting in a reasonably confined space, for most of the day, five days a week, offer much more scope for ongoing bullying than do smaller, more varied groups.
**Because everyone who reads this is far too sensible, of course.
***Or adults, alas.
****Well, that's what Homer Simpson calls it.
Seriously, I have nothing against school, I just prefer home ed.
*****I've encountered this myself: after an apparently happy week at her Musical Theatre Summer School, Eleanor informed me that she liked everything about it "except those girls calling me a baby".
Yes, she did tell them to stop, but they "just wouldn't".
She wasn't afraid to tell me, or her teachers, it simply didn't occur to her to do so.
Hopefully she will know better in future.
******Possibly a side-effect of the tendency for men and women as old as thirty to be cast as teenagers, so that clothes and make-up selected to glamourous on them on-screen, look simply awful on boys and girls of their supposed ages.
*******Children can be terribly self-centred.
********You know the one: it either sounds like a demented Mr Punch or like one of those Tex Avery cartoon characters that go around mumbling "Duhhh, George..." all the time, and are actually inspired by Of Mice and Men, of all things, that voice, the one that sounds like nobody real but that all bullies seem to produce when their imagined authority is threatened.
We decided to home educate for a lot of reasons, but bullying wasn't one of them.
It's true that keeping our daughters out of school may help us to avoid it to an extent, certainly severe, persistent bullying is much less likely outside of school*, however any gathering of children*** offers the potential for bullying.
So, naturally, I want to equip our children to handle bullies.
The first thing I want them to know is that The Law of the Schoolyard**** appears in no book of legislation anywhere whatsoever.
All too often children hide the fact that they're being bullied.
Sometimes, perhaps, it's because they don't think their woes will be taken seriously, but frequently it's because of some fear of being a tattle-tale, some idea that to seek help, or to be unable to deal with bullies oneself, is shameful or dishonourable.
This is of course rot: it's a parent's, or a teacher's, job to look after the children in their care, if a child can't stop the bullies bullying them, then it's down to the adults to step in.
Of course in order to step in we first need to know there's something to step into and, as we are somewhat less omniscient than our kids tend to believe, we generally need them to tell us about it.
Which is where we come up against the Law of the Schoolyard, a law enforced, and reinforced, by the very people it benefits most: the bullies.
Why don't children speak up?
Sometimes it's because they simply don't think of it*****, but often it's because they're ashamed of needing help, or afraid that they'll be laughed at, or even bullied, if they tell us.
So it's very important that we let them know that we want them to tell us, that they are supposed to tell us, that no-one will look down on them for telling us, and, perhaps most importantly of all, that telling us can't make things worse if they're already being bullied.
Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to talk about it, and to make absolutely sure that when they do tell us their problems, we listen properly and do our best to put a stop to the bullying.
Which brings me to the whole not-being-taken-seriously thing.
It's easy to tell a child to "Just ignore it", it's surprisingly hard to actually ignore a bully.
Likewise it's very easy to imagine that because something seems trivial to us, it can't be that important to anybody else.
The fact is, though, that if a child is unhappy, for whatever reason, then the adults around them need to take their unhappiness seriously.
Ok, sometimes "taking their unhappiness seriously" can mean explaining, seriously, that there really isn't a monster under the bed and that, seriously, they can't wear the pink pyjamas again because they're in the laundry basket seriously covered with something that looks like glue. Seriously.
But we manage that sort of thing with a reasonably straight face, so I think we can cope with being told that our child's life is ruined because they wore a green jumper today and Mildred Prenderghast said that green jumpers are made from bogies.
It sounds silly, but when one thinks about it for a second it's pretty hurtful: the green jumper was probably that child's own choice, maybe something they cared about, or were proud of.
Perhaps they thought they looked nice in their green jumper, only to be told that it, and therefore they, were actually a loathsome pile of snot.
People may well have laughed, it's certainly pretty unlikely that anyone stood up for them.
Silly things can hurt.
As Margaret Atwood wrote: "Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life size".
By laughing off, or telling our children to ignore, their miseries, we tell them that they don't matter to us, or, even worse in its way, that we are powerless to help them.
I'd rather do my best to help.
The second thing I want them to know, is that bullies are not as powerful, or as ubiquitous as they seem.
Bullies are, by and large, rather pathetic individuals.
They want to stand out, or to look stronger than others, or to prevent anybody from picking on them, and the easiest way they can do this is by picking on somebody else first.
Television programmes and films such as Mean Girls, rather promote the idea that bullies are powerful, popular people, well-dressed and well groomed, whose merest word can make less stylish, less socially accepted individuals shrivel on the spot.
I'm fairly sure my own school bullies had seen a few programs like this, it would certainly explain the way they walked about as though they owned the place.
In reality, though, they were just a rather small clique of particularly unpleasant, not very bright, distinctly foul-mouthed girls, who wore clothes and make-up that were far too old for them********.
Seriously, they looked like warthogs.
Sounded like them too.
But while I was aware that their apparent self-images didn't quite match the reality of their appearances, it didn't sink in somehow that while they seemed powerful and confident, that confidence and power was as imaginary as the glamour they thought they exuded.
It would have helped to know that those girls were barely scraping by at the work I found so easy, that they, in turn, had things to fear, that their confidence probably came out of their make-up bags and not, as it seemed to, out of any genuine sense of self-worth.
It would have helped me, so it's something I will take care to talk about as my daughters grow up.
Knowing that a bully is afraid won't stop them from bullying, but it can blunt the sting of their words a little.
Of course it's hard to believe that the bullies aren't all-powerful when it feels like everyone is a bully.
Which brings me to the third thing, and to why I'm (metaphorically) writing "Kick Me!" on my daughter's backs.
When you're a child, and you're being bullied, it can seem that bullies are everywhere: someone says something mean and everyone laughs, everyone is on the bullies' side, not yours.
The fact is that most of those children probably don't even know why they're laughing: they just laugh because everyone else is laughing.
Of those that do, the majority probably don't actually want to hurt anyone, or don't care either way********, they just don't want to be bullied themselves, so they join in, rather than draw the bullies attention.
Of course, while not everyone, and perhaps not anyone, really thinks your jumper looks like a pile of bogies, it can still feel like they're all on the side of the bullies.
So, the third thing: always stand up to bullies.
Yes, I know, the first thing was that it's ok to ask for help.
It is, it really, really, is.
Children should never be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help, and I absolutely want my daughters to let me know that they're being bullied.
But the first thing they should do is stand up to the bully.
Not because all bullies are cowards and the bully will magically back down in face of their defiance.
That's rather improbable, not least because bullies are, by and large, cowards, and backing down would leave them open to further defiance, or even attacks.
But it's still worth doing.
Firstly because not all bullying words are meant to be: sometimes the apparent bully will stop doing or saying hurtful things, if only someone points it out.
It can happen.
Secondly, it's important not to back down, so that the bully knows that they are not all-powerful, that they aren't as scary or as cutting as they think, and that bullying isn't actually an easy route to social success after all.
It may not look as though you have any effect at all: they may laugh all the harder at your failure to bend, but it will show on the inside, they will lose a little belief in the power of their bullying.
It feels better to stand up to them anyway.
And thirdly, it's important to stand up to bullies because you won't always be the one being bullied.
Remember what I said about it feeling like everyone is a bully?
It only takes one dissenting voice to change that.
Just one person saying that, actually, that's a really nice jumper, and it doesn't look like bogies but like new leaves, can turn the tide of opinion away from the bully.
Ok, often it won't, quite often it will be one quiet voice amidst a multitude of laughing voices.
More often than not it will be one voice surrounded by staring, silent children, who might agree, but certainly aren't going to say so.
Most of the time the bully will just repeat what was just said in a special bullying voice******** and move on to criticising the speaker but that doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because now everyone knows the bully is not the only arbiter of taste-in-jumpers.
It doesn't matter because, hey, that bully sounds like an idiot doing that stupid voice.
Most of all, it doesn't matter compared to the fact that someone now knows that all the world is not against them, and that world is bearable again because of this and you did that.
If it doesn't work, come and tell me.
I'll do my best to fix it.
I promise.
That's what I'm trying to teach Eleanor, and what I will try to teach Phoebe.
It doesn't just go for child-sized bullies either: one of my proudest (if simultaneously embarrassing) moments as a mother was of seeing another parent smacking her daughter, over some silly dispute about sweets, and Eleanor instantly leaping up and saying "That's not very nice: We don't hit!"
I don't know how much of an impression it made, but I was proud of her, all the same.
Long may it continue.
*Almost Certainly Unnecessary** Disclaimer: I might home educate but I have nothing against schools, I also understand that they are supposed to much better at dealing with bullying than they are when I was a child.
I am simply aware that large groups of children, meeting in a reasonably confined space, for most of the day, five days a week, offer much more scope for ongoing bullying than do smaller, more varied groups.
**Because everyone who reads this is far too sensible, of course.
***Or adults, alas.
****Well, that's what Homer Simpson calls it.
Seriously, I have nothing against school, I just prefer home ed.
*****I've encountered this myself: after an apparently happy week at her Musical Theatre Summer School, Eleanor informed me that she liked everything about it "except those girls calling me a baby".
Yes, she did tell them to stop, but they "just wouldn't".
She wasn't afraid to tell me, or her teachers, it simply didn't occur to her to do so.
Hopefully she will know better in future.
******Possibly a side-effect of the tendency for men and women as old as thirty to be cast as teenagers, so that clothes and make-up selected to glamourous on them on-screen, look simply awful on boys and girls of their supposed ages.
*******Children can be terribly self-centred.
********You know the one: it either sounds like a demented Mr Punch or like one of those Tex Avery cartoon characters that go around mumbling "Duhhh, George..." all the time, and are actually inspired by Of Mice and Men, of all things, that voice, the one that sounds like nobody real but that all bullies seem to produce when their imagined authority is threatened.
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
Pink* Will Eat Your Brain.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the colour pink.
As hues go, it is no more offensive than turquoise, oxblood, or chartreuse.
The politics of pink, however, are another matter.
These days if you have a young*** girl in your family, you will find that your house quickly becomes covered in pink.
This is not because the colour pink is somehow magnetically attracted to the female gender****, nor indeed are girls irresistibly drawn to the colour pink.
It is, quite simply, because just about every ruddy thing that is marketed to girls is, quite emphatically, pink.
Now I'm sure there are girls out there who really do love pink, who would love pink even if they were told that pink was really not a girls' colour, who would fight for pink even though everything marketed at girls was green*****.
However most girls don't really have the opportunity to decide whether they like pink or not: they are inundated with pink from the moment they are born.
Very quickly, they learn to associate pink with for me and, conversely not pink, that's any colour that isn't pink, or perhaps a pinkish shade of purple, with not for me.
Most early learning toys come in two versions: one in bright colours, normally all the primary colours, but occasionally blue with decoration, buttons etc in various contrasting colours, and one in pink.
The message is clear: the pink one is for girls, all the other colours are for boys.
Somehow, despite encompassing just over half of all children, "girl" is considered a special interest group: we have toys for children, and then we have toys for girls.
As girls grow older pink continues to overwhelm them, but now it also begins to direct their choices: having been trained to recognise pink as for me, girls are now directed towards certain types of toys, and away from others, by their relative pinknesses.
Baby dolls, fashion dolls, dolls houses and princess or nurturer role-play and dressing up?
Pink
Pretty craft and design packs******.
Pink.
Horse-riding, ballet dancing or ice-skating?
Pink.
Absolutely anything domestic or containing the word princess?
My gods it's pink.
Yes, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball, however the garage, fire-station, race track and outer space seem to be off limits.
Sorry about that.
Anything that isn't pink, such as construction kits, race cars, train sets, superheroes, dinosaurs, serious art supplies, spaceships, board games that aren't about fashion or dating, bats, balls, yo-yos, stunt kites, chemistry sets and magic tricks, is, somehow, not for girls.
Now of course there are girls who will fight this stereotyping, and there are certainly parents******* who will make a point of buying the non-pink items, and who will steer their offspring towards the dinosaurs, or spaceships, or maybe dinosaurs in spaceships, but the social conditioning of pink is hard to overcome.
With the knowledge that pink is for girls, and the correlating information that non-pink is not for girls, comes the understanding that to step outside of these boundaries, to choose the wrong item, is to put yourself beyond the pale: to defy the laws of the tribe is to exile yourself from the tribe.
The result is that, eventually, even if pink were entirely removed from the world of toys, girls already trained by past exposure to all that pink, would still gravitate toward the stereotypically girly toys, because those are all they expect to play with.
Likewise boys will avoid anything that falls within that girly stereotype, on the grounds that it is not for them.
As girls grow older pink becomes less predominant, not because their options are opening up -if anything they become even more constrained- but because, their training complete, they can now recognise toys and other items that are for them without the assistance of the colour pink.
So pink becomes less dominant, a fashion doll's packaging, for example, will be blue and pink or, often, a lingeriesque black and pink, instead of the solid pink of their earlier toys.
Eventually there is no need for pink at all: the girls', or rather the young women's interests having been firmly directed down the road of shoes, handbags, and hair products.
This may seem ridiculous, and it is true that few young women will end up completely conforming to stereotype, however I find it interesting that Woman's Hour , (on a programme about pink) interviewed a young woman who was colour blind.
Her interests, even her taste in clothes, were very different to those of her friends, something she attributed to the fact that she could not see the colour pink, and therefore had grown up without the dubious benefit of a signpost to tell her which route she was supposed to choose through life.********
The world of pink, and the world of non-pink are very different places.
All of which is pretty awful, all by itself
However, long before a girl has learned to like pink, before she has any say in the toys and clothes she receives, whatsoever, pink may already be making its mark upon her brain.
As I mentioned earlier, most early learning toys these days come in two versions: normal (for boys), and pink (for girls).
The boys' versions are brightly coloured, with plenty of contrast between the various shapes, buttons, numbers and so on.
The girls' versions are, by and large, pink.
This means that while a boy playing with the toy intended for him will start to develop an understanding of those shapes, numbers, and colours without really trying, a girl playing with that same toy in the "girls' " version will not.
Indeed, as the mass of pink or lilac buttons blurs together, a girl who tries to take an interest in shapes and numbers (colours being notably absent from her toy) will find it quite difficult.
The lesson to girls, right from infancy, is: maths is hard.
Deterred from an interest in basic maths by its difficulty, and by the relative ease of other, less complex, activities, girls are moved away from mathematics, science and engineering, before they even know what those words mean.
Pink will eat your brain.
Of course girls can fight against the tide of pink, they can develop their own interests, and even those who truly, naturally incline towards pink, are not condemned to a life of brainless fashion-following.
Girls who like pink are every bit as capable of becoming renowned historians, architects, or cognitive scientists, as any other girls.
Nature can defeat nurture.
The pink doesn't make it any easier though.
*Not Pink the singer, pink the colour, Pink is actually pretty cool.
Yes, I just put an asterisk into the title.
I'm not proud of this**.
**Maybe a teeny bit.
***Where young means somewhere between a foetus and old-enough-to-draw-a-pension
****Technically, only words have gender.
People have sex.
There is nothing wrong with sex.
The word gender, however, is used to denote, not merely the sex with which a person is born, but also that to which the subscribe whether it is that assigned by birth or not.
So it's a nice, egalitarian word, even if it is horribly inaccurate.
*****I'm sure of this because I know more than one boy who likes pink.
Pink is not marketed to boys.
Quite the reverse in fact.
******Often low in creativity and high in spangles and words like princess.
******* Hi there!
******** This is clearly anecdata, but I do find it rather telling.
As hues go, it is no more offensive than turquoise, oxblood, or chartreuse.
The politics of pink, however, are another matter.
These days if you have a young*** girl in your family, you will find that your house quickly becomes covered in pink.
This is not because the colour pink is somehow magnetically attracted to the female gender****, nor indeed are girls irresistibly drawn to the colour pink.
It is, quite simply, because just about every ruddy thing that is marketed to girls is, quite emphatically, pink.
Now I'm sure there are girls out there who really do love pink, who would love pink even if they were told that pink was really not a girls' colour, who would fight for pink even though everything marketed at girls was green*****.
However most girls don't really have the opportunity to decide whether they like pink or not: they are inundated with pink from the moment they are born.
Very quickly, they learn to associate pink with for me and, conversely not pink, that's any colour that isn't pink, or perhaps a pinkish shade of purple, with not for me.
Most early learning toys come in two versions: one in bright colours, normally all the primary colours, but occasionally blue with decoration, buttons etc in various contrasting colours, and one in pink.
The message is clear: the pink one is for girls, all the other colours are for boys.
Somehow, despite encompassing just over half of all children, "girl" is considered a special interest group: we have toys for children, and then we have toys for girls.
As girls grow older pink continues to overwhelm them, but now it also begins to direct their choices: having been trained to recognise pink as for me, girls are now directed towards certain types of toys, and away from others, by their relative pinknesses.
Baby dolls, fashion dolls, dolls houses and princess or nurturer role-play and dressing up?
Pink
Pretty craft and design packs******.
Pink.
Horse-riding, ballet dancing or ice-skating?
Pink.
Absolutely anything domestic or containing the word princess?
My gods it's pink.
Yes, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball, however the garage, fire-station, race track and outer space seem to be off limits.
Sorry about that.
Anything that isn't pink, such as construction kits, race cars, train sets, superheroes, dinosaurs, serious art supplies, spaceships, board games that aren't about fashion or dating, bats, balls, yo-yos, stunt kites, chemistry sets and magic tricks, is, somehow, not for girls.
Now of course there are girls who will fight this stereotyping, and there are certainly parents******* who will make a point of buying the non-pink items, and who will steer their offspring towards the dinosaurs, or spaceships, or maybe dinosaurs in spaceships, but the social conditioning of pink is hard to overcome.
With the knowledge that pink is for girls, and the correlating information that non-pink is not for girls, comes the understanding that to step outside of these boundaries, to choose the wrong item, is to put yourself beyond the pale: to defy the laws of the tribe is to exile yourself from the tribe.
The result is that, eventually, even if pink were entirely removed from the world of toys, girls already trained by past exposure to all that pink, would still gravitate toward the stereotypically girly toys, because those are all they expect to play with.
Likewise boys will avoid anything that falls within that girly stereotype, on the grounds that it is not for them.
As girls grow older pink becomes less predominant, not because their options are opening up -if anything they become even more constrained- but because, their training complete, they can now recognise toys and other items that are for them without the assistance of the colour pink.
So pink becomes less dominant, a fashion doll's packaging, for example, will be blue and pink or, often, a lingeriesque black and pink, instead of the solid pink of their earlier toys.
Eventually there is no need for pink at all: the girls', or rather the young women's interests having been firmly directed down the road of shoes, handbags, and hair products.
This may seem ridiculous, and it is true that few young women will end up completely conforming to stereotype, however I find it interesting that Woman's Hour , (on a programme about pink) interviewed a young woman who was colour blind.
Her interests, even her taste in clothes, were very different to those of her friends, something she attributed to the fact that she could not see the colour pink, and therefore had grown up without the dubious benefit of a signpost to tell her which route she was supposed to choose through life.********
The world of pink, and the world of non-pink are very different places.
All of which is pretty awful, all by itself
However, long before a girl has learned to like pink, before she has any say in the toys and clothes she receives, whatsoever, pink may already be making its mark upon her brain.
As I mentioned earlier, most early learning toys these days come in two versions: normal (for boys), and pink (for girls).
The boys' versions are brightly coloured, with plenty of contrast between the various shapes, buttons, numbers and so on.
The girls' versions are, by and large, pink.
This means that while a boy playing with the toy intended for him will start to develop an understanding of those shapes, numbers, and colours without really trying, a girl playing with that same toy in the "girls' " version will not.
Indeed, as the mass of pink or lilac buttons blurs together, a girl who tries to take an interest in shapes and numbers (colours being notably absent from her toy) will find it quite difficult.
The lesson to girls, right from infancy, is: maths is hard.
Deterred from an interest in basic maths by its difficulty, and by the relative ease of other, less complex, activities, girls are moved away from mathematics, science and engineering, before they even know what those words mean.
Pink will eat your brain.
Of course girls can fight against the tide of pink, they can develop their own interests, and even those who truly, naturally incline towards pink, are not condemned to a life of brainless fashion-following.
Girls who like pink are every bit as capable of becoming renowned historians, architects, or cognitive scientists, as any other girls.
Nature can defeat nurture.
The pink doesn't make it any easier though.
*Not Pink the singer, pink the colour, Pink is actually pretty cool.
Yes, I just put an asterisk into the title.
I'm not proud of this**.
**Maybe a teeny bit.
***Where young means somewhere between a foetus and old-enough-to-draw-a-pension
****Technically, only words have gender.
People have sex.
There is nothing wrong with sex.
The word gender, however, is used to denote, not merely the sex with which a person is born, but also that to which the subscribe whether it is that assigned by birth or not.
So it's a nice, egalitarian word, even if it is horribly inaccurate.
*****I'm sure of this because I know more than one boy who likes pink.
Pink is not marketed to boys.
Quite the reverse in fact.
******Often low in creativity and high in spangles and words like princess.
******* Hi there!
******** This is clearly anecdata, but I do find it rather telling.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Other People's Problems
I warn you now: this is liable to turn into a ramble.
Still with me?
More fool you.
Phoebe is becoming more and more mobile these days.
At home she trots about merrily and has to be kept away from the stairs at all costs, lest she dash up them like a mountain goat spotting a deliciously rare and endangered herb.
Out and about she's still in the sling*, but I don't think it's going to last much longer: She's tall enough to kick me in the legs when I walk, and she's taken to trying to climb out** whenever she sees anything interesting.
So slinging has become a little more awkward, which has made me somewhat nostalgic for the days of having a tiny, portable, snuggly thing that, however enormous she seemed at the time, was unlikely either to climb on top of my head or to kick me in the shins.
It has also left me oddly reminiscent.
You see, most people these days don't have to worry about these things: their kids are in prams or buggies, and in order to kick your mother in the shins from a pram, you'd need legs like one of the Harlem Globetrotters.
They don't have to worry about getting the knot in the wrong place, or catching their breastfeeding-necklace*** in the folds, and winding up with a crick in the neck either.
So when I innocently mentioned this problem at the kids' playgroup**** one day I was met with an incredulous stare and "Why don't you just use a buggy?"
This was also the question when I had trouble managing my heavy bag while holding Eleanor's hand in one of my hands, and a paper plate full of drying clay things in the other.
It's true, the journey home was somewhat awkward, but how exactly it would help to replace my comfortably slung and unburdensome baby with a pair of handles, bringing the total number of hands needed to four, I have no idea.
When I pointed this out no-one else seemed to have a very concrete idea either*****.
Everyone just assumed that my sling must be the problem.
In fact it was probably the only reason I got home with both children and the wretched plateful of abstract lumps more or less intact.
The thing that I have noticed is that whenever one makes choices that are different to those of the majority, it is automatically assumed that those choices must make things more difficult.
In fact it is usually the reverse: My sling means that I can communicate easily with Phoebe when we are out and about, yet still keep in touch with Eleanor as well, it means that I can hold Eleanor's hand and carry Phoebe while still having a hand free to manage my bagful of cloth nappies and anything my offspring see fit to present me with.
It means I can feed Phoebe wherever we are, whatever I'm doing, without having to stop what I'm doing and sit down.
When I look at a buggy, on the other hand, all I see is problems.
You can't see what's happening in a buggy, you can't talk to your baby and see them smile, you certainly can't breastfeed in one.
Wheels aren't as agile as legs: our playgroup is up a flight of stairs, which the buggies can't climb, so they have to use a ramp.
For buildings without a ramp, the buggy has to be heaved awkwardly up the steps in the poor parents arms, or else bunny-hopped up the steps more awkwardly still, jolting the child within with every step.
Buggies are bulky: at playgroup they have to be left outside lest they take up all the room, on buses there is room for only one or two, even folded they take up too much space.
I have watched, feeling ridiculously guilty, as a woman was ejected from a bus we rode on, along with her two children and their buggy, to make room for a wheelchair.
I was sitting comfortably on a seat, with Phoebe on my lap and Eleanor curled bedside me.
But imagine how someone would react if I went up to them, as they struggled to fit their buggy into a tiny space, or to heave it up the rainslicked stairs without it slipping all the way down again, and asked: "Why don't you just use a sling?"
Once they'd recovered from the mind-numbing rudeness of my question they would probably come to the conclusion that I was completely potty.
Because buggy-users don't really see these problems.
Obviously they acknowledge them, they encounter them frequently enough after all, but they don't perceive them as the ridiculous, near-insurmountable barriers to normal function that they appear to me.
Because they aren't.
They're just ordinary, day-to-day annoyances, problems that most people face, no more burdensome than a traffic jam at five in the evening, or finding that there wasn't as much milk in the fridge as you had thought.
When a thing seems normal and natural the problems associated with that thing seem normal too
To me it is normal to throw nappies into the washing machine when enough have been used, it seems normal, too, to let a baby use a potty as soon as they are able.
To someone who uses disposables that daily wash may seem a terrible lot of work, the trouble of helping a baby onto a potty ridiculous, just as the cost and trouble of buying packet after packet of nappies, of disposing of them all, and of continuing this for what my filtered vision views as an interminable period, seems a ludicrous amount of trouble to me.
To me breastfeeding my child****** is normal, natural and obvious, but to someone who bottle-fed their child not by necessity, or even by choice, but from the plain assumption that that is how babies are fed, the very idea must seem as alien and improbable as making up formula feeds does to me.
Many of our decisions are not truly decisions, they are the results of cultural conditioning so subtle that we don't even know it's happening.
We see, and learn by seeing, we hear, and learn by hearing.
We learn and we do, and so teach in our turns.
We create our memes, our norms, we shape the world around us.
We live in miniature tribes, in nations not shown upon the map, what the people of our culture do, we do too.
When a foreigner crosses our borders, with strange exotic traditions and peculiar practises, we stop and stare.
I'm not too worried when people blink at the visitor from Hippybeatnikland, with her silly customs and her funny ideas.
I don't want to convert people, I mean, obviously I believe my way is right or I wouldn't do it, but I don't really care if they aren't naturalised Hippybeatniks themselves*******.
But whether I want to or not, every time I do something differently, every time somebody sees me do something differently, I change their perception of the world.
I shape the world as well, and the more I am seen to wear my sling with a smile, to feed my child with happy confidence, to do whatever else I do that makes people do that weird double-take when they talk to me, I remind them that there are other ideas out there.
So I don't really mind if they stare.
Besides, I can't wait to find out what problems I'm having when they hear we home educate.
*Not all the time, I mean not in the car, and not at playgroup and things like that, just on the way.
You know what I mean, why am I trying to explain this?
Sorry, I said it would be rambley didn't I?
**More pour-herself-out-backwards-and-land-on-her-head really, which isn't the best idea.
***Breastfeeding-necklace: a cunning device designed to stop the baby from pulling your hair by giving them something else to pull.
Apparently this "something else" is, in fact, my nipple.
Who knew?
****Also known as Lowestcommondenominatorland: parents here embody the antithesis of every parenting ideal I hold dear, except the one about loving your children.
*****Except to say that the paper plate could go "in the tray underneath".
I didn't know that buggys had trays underneath, the foldey buggy thing that came with our car seat doesn't seem, on inspection, to have one anyway.
Even assuming this innovation however, that would still leave me needing three hands to manage everyone safely, which is still sufficient hands to have me shipped off to the post-apocalyptic badlands.
******Probably the most emotive parenting choice there is, I don't want to go into too much detail here as plenty of people (like, say, my friend Nicky) already do a better job of discussing it so...um...oh look: a penguin with a hat!
*runs*
*******Disclaimer: actually I care quite a lot about some of it.
Sometimes I even say something.
Still with me?
More fool you.
Phoebe is becoming more and more mobile these days.
At home she trots about merrily and has to be kept away from the stairs at all costs, lest she dash up them like a mountain goat spotting a deliciously rare and endangered herb.
Out and about she's still in the sling*, but I don't think it's going to last much longer: She's tall enough to kick me in the legs when I walk, and she's taken to trying to climb out** whenever she sees anything interesting.
So slinging has become a little more awkward, which has made me somewhat nostalgic for the days of having a tiny, portable, snuggly thing that, however enormous she seemed at the time, was unlikely either to climb on top of my head or to kick me in the shins.
It has also left me oddly reminiscent.
You see, most people these days don't have to worry about these things: their kids are in prams or buggies, and in order to kick your mother in the shins from a pram, you'd need legs like one of the Harlem Globetrotters.
They don't have to worry about getting the knot in the wrong place, or catching their breastfeeding-necklace*** in the folds, and winding up with a crick in the neck either.
So when I innocently mentioned this problem at the kids' playgroup**** one day I was met with an incredulous stare and "Why don't you just use a buggy?"
This was also the question when I had trouble managing my heavy bag while holding Eleanor's hand in one of my hands, and a paper plate full of drying clay things in the other.
It's true, the journey home was somewhat awkward, but how exactly it would help to replace my comfortably slung and unburdensome baby with a pair of handles, bringing the total number of hands needed to four, I have no idea.
When I pointed this out no-one else seemed to have a very concrete idea either*****.
Everyone just assumed that my sling must be the problem.
In fact it was probably the only reason I got home with both children and the wretched plateful of abstract lumps more or less intact.
The thing that I have noticed is that whenever one makes choices that are different to those of the majority, it is automatically assumed that those choices must make things more difficult.
In fact it is usually the reverse: My sling means that I can communicate easily with Phoebe when we are out and about, yet still keep in touch with Eleanor as well, it means that I can hold Eleanor's hand and carry Phoebe while still having a hand free to manage my bagful of cloth nappies and anything my offspring see fit to present me with.
It means I can feed Phoebe wherever we are, whatever I'm doing, without having to stop what I'm doing and sit down.
When I look at a buggy, on the other hand, all I see is problems.
You can't see what's happening in a buggy, you can't talk to your baby and see them smile, you certainly can't breastfeed in one.
Wheels aren't as agile as legs: our playgroup is up a flight of stairs, which the buggies can't climb, so they have to use a ramp.
For buildings without a ramp, the buggy has to be heaved awkwardly up the steps in the poor parents arms, or else bunny-hopped up the steps more awkwardly still, jolting the child within with every step.
Buggies are bulky: at playgroup they have to be left outside lest they take up all the room, on buses there is room for only one or two, even folded they take up too much space.
I have watched, feeling ridiculously guilty, as a woman was ejected from a bus we rode on, along with her two children and their buggy, to make room for a wheelchair.
I was sitting comfortably on a seat, with Phoebe on my lap and Eleanor curled bedside me.
But imagine how someone would react if I went up to them, as they struggled to fit their buggy into a tiny space, or to heave it up the rainslicked stairs without it slipping all the way down again, and asked: "Why don't you just use a sling?"
Once they'd recovered from the mind-numbing rudeness of my question they would probably come to the conclusion that I was completely potty.
Because buggy-users don't really see these problems.
Obviously they acknowledge them, they encounter them frequently enough after all, but they don't perceive them as the ridiculous, near-insurmountable barriers to normal function that they appear to me.
Because they aren't.
They're just ordinary, day-to-day annoyances, problems that most people face, no more burdensome than a traffic jam at five in the evening, or finding that there wasn't as much milk in the fridge as you had thought.
When a thing seems normal and natural the problems associated with that thing seem normal too
To me it is normal to throw nappies into the washing machine when enough have been used, it seems normal, too, to let a baby use a potty as soon as they are able.
To someone who uses disposables that daily wash may seem a terrible lot of work, the trouble of helping a baby onto a potty ridiculous, just as the cost and trouble of buying packet after packet of nappies, of disposing of them all, and of continuing this for what my filtered vision views as an interminable period, seems a ludicrous amount of trouble to me.
To me breastfeeding my child****** is normal, natural and obvious, but to someone who bottle-fed their child not by necessity, or even by choice, but from the plain assumption that that is how babies are fed, the very idea must seem as alien and improbable as making up formula feeds does to me.
Many of our decisions are not truly decisions, they are the results of cultural conditioning so subtle that we don't even know it's happening.
We see, and learn by seeing, we hear, and learn by hearing.
We learn and we do, and so teach in our turns.
We create our memes, our norms, we shape the world around us.
We live in miniature tribes, in nations not shown upon the map, what the people of our culture do, we do too.
When a foreigner crosses our borders, with strange exotic traditions and peculiar practises, we stop and stare.
I'm not too worried when people blink at the visitor from Hippybeatnikland, with her silly customs and her funny ideas.
I don't want to convert people, I mean, obviously I believe my way is right or I wouldn't do it, but I don't really care if they aren't naturalised Hippybeatniks themselves*******.
But whether I want to or not, every time I do something differently, every time somebody sees me do something differently, I change their perception of the world.
I shape the world as well, and the more I am seen to wear my sling with a smile, to feed my child with happy confidence, to do whatever else I do that makes people do that weird double-take when they talk to me, I remind them that there are other ideas out there.
So I don't really mind if they stare.
Besides, I can't wait to find out what problems I'm having when they hear we home educate.
*Not all the time, I mean not in the car, and not at playgroup and things like that, just on the way.
You know what I mean, why am I trying to explain this?
Sorry, I said it would be rambley didn't I?
**More pour-herself-out-backwards-and-land-on-her-head really, which isn't the best idea.
***Breastfeeding-necklace: a cunning device designed to stop the baby from pulling your hair by giving them something else to pull.
Apparently this "something else" is, in fact, my nipple.
Who knew?
****Also known as Lowestcommondenominatorland: parents here embody the antithesis of every parenting ideal I hold dear, except the one about loving your children.
*****Except to say that the paper plate could go "in the tray underneath".
I didn't know that buggys had trays underneath, the foldey buggy thing that came with our car seat doesn't seem, on inspection, to have one anyway.
Even assuming this innovation however, that would still leave me needing three hands to manage everyone safely, which is still sufficient hands to have me shipped off to the post-apocalyptic badlands.
******Probably the most emotive parenting choice there is, I don't want to go into too much detail here as plenty of people (like, say, my friend Nicky) already do a better job of discussing it so...um...oh look: a penguin with a hat!
*runs*
*******Disclaimer: actually I care quite a lot about some of it.
Sometimes I even say something.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
L.A la la
Halloween has just passed and it strikes me as a good time to talk about one of the Home Educator's greatest fears: the Local Authority.
The fact is that the Local Authority doesn't actually have any authority over home educators: we aren't required to see them, we don't have to submit our work for their consideration, we needn't, in fact, have anything to do with them at all.
Similarly, the L.A isn't required to do anything either, unless they have reason to believe that a home educated child is not, in fact, receiving an education.
So why worry?
The problem is that not all L.As are aware of this.
If you read the Home Education section on a few L.A websites you'll find that while some go to the trouble of mentioning that all their services are entirely voluntary, others will state that they "require" Home Educating parents to inform them of their intentions, submit an outline of their plan for education, meet with their representative every few months, or follow other, entirely imaginary, requirements.
One L.A even states that its purpose is "To get home-schooled children back to school", which is hardly encouraging to the home educating parent.
Some L.A representatives take things even further.
There have been cases* of L.A representatives demanding private interviews with children, threatening to call social services unless a deregistered*** child was returned to school, actually calling social services with fabricated complaints****, and repeatedly turning up on the doorstep uninvited and unannounced, demanding a meeting.
So it's hardly surprising that when home educators talk about the L.A everyone gets a little nervous.
Part of the problem is the Badman Review.
Badman made a lot of recommendations about home education: he wanted us to be required to register our plans, to submit to regular interviews, to allow our children to be interviewed in private, and quite a few other things as well*****.
In fact none of these recommendations were followed, the review found they were unnecessary, and that should have been the end of that.
Unfortunately many L.As took these recommendations to heart, and although none of them were eventually passed into law, they tend to act as though they were.
Add to this the fact that while one representative may be perfectly reasonable another one may not and you can see why things can get a little scary.
Some home educators avoid the matter by simply not telling the L.A that they are home educating.
Others jump through all their hoops out of fear of threatened reprisals.
Others send terse letters informing their L.A that they will be home educating, they know the law, and they want nothing more to do with them thank you very much.
In each case, sometimes all is well, sometimes problems arise, it all depends you see.
In the case of deregistered children things are even harder as parents cannot avoid telling the L.A and, in addition, have to deal with their child's erstwhile school which, again, may be perfectly reasonable or may take things very badly indeed.
Since we don't have to deregister our daughters from anywhere, and aren't required to tell anyone that we are home educating, it may seem strange that we intend to inform our L.A.
The thing is: we don't want to hide away.
We aren't ashamed to be home educating, we think it's the best plan for our children, we don't want home education to be a secret, furtive thing.
And then, the more people who do keep quiet, the less people are seen to home educate, the more it will seem like a strange, freakish thing, the choice of hippies and religious fundamentalists, not something that normal people do.
Yes this is still us I'm talking about.
So, hippy or not, we will stand up and be counted.
We will write a nice, polite letter.
We will allow an occasional visit.
When they come we will give them tea and perhaps even a biscuit.
If our representative is too pushy we will be diplomatic, we will, in as friendly a way as is possible, let them know that we understand what is and is not required, we will not allow things to become heated.
We will still give them the biscuit.
Hopefully all will go well
*I'm not going to go into detail here, these are things I've heard from the often quite scared people in question, they're personal stories and even if I had permission to share them I wouldn't really like the idea.**
** Yes, I know my footnotes are usually funnier than that.
Sorry.
*** Deregistered: officially removed from the school system, it sounds impressive but you just have to write a letter.
**** Fortunately the social workers in question soon saw that there wasn't a problem but it was a terrifying time for the parents and children, and it wasted the social workers' time.
*****Sound familiar?
The fact is that the Local Authority doesn't actually have any authority over home educators: we aren't required to see them, we don't have to submit our work for their consideration, we needn't, in fact, have anything to do with them at all.
Similarly, the L.A isn't required to do anything either, unless they have reason to believe that a home educated child is not, in fact, receiving an education.
So why worry?
The problem is that not all L.As are aware of this.
If you read the Home Education section on a few L.A websites you'll find that while some go to the trouble of mentioning that all their services are entirely voluntary, others will state that they "require" Home Educating parents to inform them of their intentions, submit an outline of their plan for education, meet with their representative every few months, or follow other, entirely imaginary, requirements.
One L.A even states that its purpose is "To get home-schooled children back to school", which is hardly encouraging to the home educating parent.
Some L.A representatives take things even further.
There have been cases* of L.A representatives demanding private interviews with children, threatening to call social services unless a deregistered*** child was returned to school, actually calling social services with fabricated complaints****, and repeatedly turning up on the doorstep uninvited and unannounced, demanding a meeting.
So it's hardly surprising that when home educators talk about the L.A everyone gets a little nervous.
Part of the problem is the Badman Review.
Badman made a lot of recommendations about home education: he wanted us to be required to register our plans, to submit to regular interviews, to allow our children to be interviewed in private, and quite a few other things as well*****.
In fact none of these recommendations were followed, the review found they were unnecessary, and that should have been the end of that.
Unfortunately many L.As took these recommendations to heart, and although none of them were eventually passed into law, they tend to act as though they were.
Add to this the fact that while one representative may be perfectly reasonable another one may not and you can see why things can get a little scary.
Some home educators avoid the matter by simply not telling the L.A that they are home educating.
Others jump through all their hoops out of fear of threatened reprisals.
Others send terse letters informing their L.A that they will be home educating, they know the law, and they want nothing more to do with them thank you very much.
In each case, sometimes all is well, sometimes problems arise, it all depends you see.
In the case of deregistered children things are even harder as parents cannot avoid telling the L.A and, in addition, have to deal with their child's erstwhile school which, again, may be perfectly reasonable or may take things very badly indeed.
Since we don't have to deregister our daughters from anywhere, and aren't required to tell anyone that we are home educating, it may seem strange that we intend to inform our L.A.
The thing is: we don't want to hide away.
We aren't ashamed to be home educating, we think it's the best plan for our children, we don't want home education to be a secret, furtive thing.
And then, the more people who do keep quiet, the less people are seen to home educate, the more it will seem like a strange, freakish thing, the choice of hippies and religious fundamentalists, not something that normal people do.
Yes this is still us I'm talking about.
So, hippy or not, we will stand up and be counted.
We will write a nice, polite letter.
We will allow an occasional visit.
When they come we will give them tea and perhaps even a biscuit.
If our representative is too pushy we will be diplomatic, we will, in as friendly a way as is possible, let them know that we understand what is and is not required, we will not allow things to become heated.
We will still give them the biscuit.
Hopefully all will go well
*I'm not going to go into detail here, these are things I've heard from the often quite scared people in question, they're personal stories and even if I had permission to share them I wouldn't really like the idea.**
** Yes, I know my footnotes are usually funnier than that.
Sorry.
*** Deregistered: officially removed from the school system, it sounds impressive but you just have to write a letter.
**** Fortunately the social workers in question soon saw that there wasn't a problem but it was a terrifying time for the parents and children, and it wasted the social workers' time.
*****Sound familiar?
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