Tag Archives: Parenting

Family, Hugamuga, Parenting

Ah those university days

2 Comments

I went back to my old college – St George’s – today.

Partly to beg, plead and plunder for my son who would dearly love to follow the family tradition (I think)  and go to the college himself this year as he studies his science degree at UWA, but also just to walk the halls and remember those “good old days”.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.

I’m pretty sure my dad, who also went to St George’s and indeed was Senior Student, also pops by to feel that red brick memory soak right in.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s no coincidence that the house I grew up in and the house I have now lived in for 13 years is also red brick…

Just sayin’.

“It’s hard to tell how much the student actually wants to come here… and how much of it is the parent wanting the student to live here.” says the acting warden – a charming man – when I visited today.

I’m sure, I murmur politely as my eyes tear up looking out his window to the old sub-warden’s cottage.

The cottage where I and a young Groover sat listening to our priest deliver pre-marriage lessons.

“I hate weddings”, was the line I remember best.

And.

“In-laws and children.  You need to agree on what you want to do about those and you’ll be alright.”

Well I want my children to go to residential college.  And if at UWA that means St George’s.

But does my son?
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I’m so excited for him, accepting his offer of a place today, the prospect of studying at UWA with his friends is brilliant.

In fact he has many more friends going to uni than I did back in the day, it must be like going on a giant road trip.

I confess I am jealous.

And yes, living somewhat vicariously.

Maybe that’s why I’m so keen on this idea of doing a post-grad degree in Archeaology….

So I had a tour of the college, and noted the changes.

Not sure I like the modern tables in that lovely old library but maybe I need to get over that…

I’m sure I didn’t help my son’s chances of getting in one iota.

But I hope.

I REALLY hope.

They offer him a place.

(And that’s if he wants to go.  Not that I’ll love him any less if he doesn’t. )

Update:  They did and he did!  Now ensconced at St Georges.

Dippity, Parenting, Youtube

Why I don’t have any more teacups

1 Comment

Just a video today.

This is one of my favourites from my daughter’s early days.

Here she’s about 14 months old.

A determined wee lassie.

Many people can’t watch this film without wincing.
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I’m not sure what it says about my parenting style but I can assure you that no children – or for that matter teacups – were hurt in the making of this video.

I hope you love it.

Dippity, Parenting

You may as well tell me…

2 Comments

I’ll just look it up on Google if you don’t…

Picture of Dippity with her hand under her chin looking thoughtful.

So said my daughter last night. My 12 year old.

Groover and I were talking about this low carb diet that we’re on.

Apparently one of the known side-effects is an increase in libido.

There’s even been a book written about it.

(men around the world suddenly start advocating the benefits of a low carb diet to their wives – less weight – more sex)

Anyway we’re talking obliquely about this in the way that you do around children and Dippity picks out the word “libido”.

What’s libido?

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Tell me.  I’ll just look it up if you don’t… and I don’t really want to see the pictures…

Good point.

Remember in the olden days when we as children looked up words (if we could spell them) in a dictionary.

You remember – they were big thick books with words in lists.

It’s a different world my friend.

We chose to tell her what libido meant.

And gone are the days when we could spell out words to hide the meaning from our kids.

They were good days…

Parenting, Random, Relationships

Exposed as a bad parent

11 Comments

It was a VERY close call.

Last night, I came in from bridge and immediately got ready for dinner at a friends house (a superb roast pork).  

I jumped into the shower, then realised, getting dressed, that all my clean underwear was in the family room where I’d been folding it earlier.

I was in a racy mood… had had a glass of wine after the game… and thought “bugger it!  I won’t bother putting clothes on.  I’ll just wander down the hall in the nicky noo… give Groover (watching telly) a thrill.

This is the view from my bedroom door… you can see I’m aiming for that dining table you can see at the far end.  Groover was on the sofa in the lounge.

lounge1

So I start walking along – I get to the raised part of the corridor and I’m doing the whole stripper routine… you know… post strip.

The full Leo Sayer moment.

And Groover looks up… grins… hesitates… and then says quietly “T’s here”.

lounge2

T is Hugamuga’s scaly mate from school.  14.   (Hi T)

I stop.  My face blanches.

“Is he joking?” I wonder…

I decide discretion is the better part of valour and retreat into my bedroom and put on a dressing gown.
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As I’m putting on the gown I’m thinking that Groover is winding me up and I should just go with plan A.

But with gown now covering up my bits I head down to pick up the grundies.

T is in fact here.

Sitting at the computer with Hugamuga.

Oh my freaking God!!!

How bad would that have been?!

Total.  Parenting.  Fail.

Luckily his view was obscured by the printer.

lounge3

Groover admitted this morning that he was tossing up whether to tell me about Hugamuga’s friend.

I put it to you that it would have been UNFORGIVABLE if he had not.

That is the test, my friends, of a good relationship.

Would you have warned your partner?

Parenting

Growing my gorgeous girl

5 Comments

I was half-listening to the radio this afternoon while purging my filing cabinet, answering emails and dealing with spot fires – you know, the little problems that crop up that you have to deal with – and they were talking about growing gorgeous girls…

I’ll find out the name of the book and author for you but the guts of it was that because your daughter is so “relationship aware” you need to make sure she knows she is cherished.

Growing Great Girls by Ian Grant

You need to spend time listening to her talk about her day. The author even suggested making a scrapbook of her life so that when she is 14 she can sit in her room when she’s feeling unloved and have a tangible record of your love for her.

If you do all this, he says (he wrote the book with his wife), your daughter is more likely to talk to you when she has problems.

Well I don’t have a scrapbook of Dippity’s life, but I do have this blog. Does that count at all?

I asked her what she thought. Did she feel loved? (yes, but not as much as her brother – to be fair he’s just found out that he might get to go on a trip to India or Borneo with the school)

Does a blog count? “Totally! I can’t lose that.” (well… maybe you can’t but I nearly did!! And what if the power goes out.)
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The hardest thing for me at the moment is balancing being there for her and being there for work.

I thought it would get easier as she and her brother got older but I’m not finding it the case. I think tween and teenagers need you more… or more of you.

Yes, they are more independent. They can get their own breakfast, pack their own lunches (but they prefer me to make them), set the table and do a great job cleaning up afterwards. They can organise their own social life – they don’t need me to set up play dates anymore.

Emotionally though – I think as a parent you play a greater role and, as the holder of the boundaries, you are sorely tested.

As I heard one caller say today – you are not their friend, but their parent.

So Dippity and Hugamuga – know this: I love you. With all my heart and all my being.

(and no, no more computer time for you two tonight – it’s bedtime!)

Family, Parenting

Not a perfect mother

Generally I think I’m a pretty good mother. My kids are pretty polite. They have good senses of humour. They do their jobs around the house, mostly without complaint or too much nagging. They are lovely with younger kids. They know they are loved.

But held up to the light of my sister-in-law’s mothering I’m afraid my mothering looks a little slapdash to say the least. Now I will say that she is a former nanny so well qualified to be a mother… having your own kids is different though wouldn’t you say?

Last night we had her two kids, aged 4 and 2 and a half, to stay the night. Our first sleepover. The youngest, a little girl, has really come on with her language and was able to tell me she was hungry and what she was hungry for. After dinner (which she had at home) she ate two tomatoes, a yoghurt and two plums. She’s such a good eater. They both got ready for bed when asked with no fuss and brushed their teeth, asking me for help to get to the back teeth.

In the cubby house
The 2-year old cousin enters the lounge room cubby house

At about 7.30 – half an hour after their regular bed time – and while watching Cars (a surprisingly good film), they asked to go to bed. They are both dry, the little one calling out to me to take her to the loo at about 11pm.

We then ate our Thai takeaway with the big kids.

In the morning they played with our two for a while before asking me if I could help get them dressed… and therefore get out of bed. For breakfast the little one had two bowls of Just Right, a plum, a pear and about a third of a bowl of porridge. Her brother had one big bowl of porridge. I’m documenting this because I’m frankly astounded by how much she eats and the fact they do so without whinging or fussing.

Then they made a cubby before heading outside to get wet and dirty in “Mudworld”.

The boys make the dam

The boys make the dam in Mudworld

Quick quick help me fix the walls

The dam walls start to break – but the little ones just look on delightedly as Hugamuga desperately tries to shore up the walls.

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The dam finally breaks

The dam breaks – success?!

Baths and lunch – what child eats Branston Pickle sandwiches?! And then Mum came and picked them up.

Drink up!

I'm just going to take a break...

They are Stepford Children – perfectly behaved. Cute. And they eat!

So what lesson could be learned?

Maybe all new mothers should spend a year nannying before giving birth?

Hmmm how low do we want the population rate to fall?

Ahh forget it. My two are gorgeous. I love them anyway just the way they are. Anyone for porridge?

No? Just me again.

Dippity, Parenting, School, Youtube

Are laptops for school children a good idea?

Homework

I’m sitting here with my daughter’s school laptop in bed (feeling crapola with a cold) as I write this so I’m aware that I’m being a bit hypocritical…

Here’s the thing. My daughter has gone to a new school this year. A school that insists that every child should use a laptop from Grade 5. Their argument is that we live in an age where computers and digital devices are a part of our lives and that we should make use of every tool we can to educate our children. And yes, I get that.

But since we’ve had this third computer in the house we barely see our 11 year old. It’s Youtube 24/7 – or until Groover goes mental because we’ve been shaped again. She doesn’t seem to read books anymore – it’s chapter after chapter of fan fiction.

We insist that she uses the computer in public and we’ve learned that you take the laptop away from her at bedtime – what I’m not seeing is a whole lot of homework done on the computer and given that, I wonder why the school doesn’t store the wretched things in the classroom. Do they really need to take them home?

The only good thing is that at least she’s not fighting with my son now over the second computer.

So here I am enjoying her MacBook interface on our wireless system (which doesn’t seem to work for my work laptop) and whinging.

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And part of it is my old fashioned sense of media. I want my child to enjoy books as books! Not fan fiction. Although, having said that if she was writing her own stories… well now, that would be different. And maybe endless reading of it will lead to writing her own…

In the meantime my darling Dipp has earned a merit award at school. So maybe the laptop isn’t the monster I make it out to be.

Oh, you ask, why do I have precious time on the new toy? Ah, she’s out on her brother’s bike getting some fresh air.

I asked her first!

Some parenting tips please! How do you manage computer time in your home?

Creative Commons License photo credit: Apollo-Jack

Parenting

And I thought I was evil

So you know how I was waffling yesterday about Easter Egg hunts and whether creating one for the kids would allow me time for a brief nanna nap. Well I went back up to the house (from the internet cafe where I’m writing this as we speak) and had a chat with the other mother…

The evil one

She agreed that it was worth a try. We banished the kids to the bedroom and told them they had to stay there while we went for a walk and hid the eggs. It was midday and quite warm outside. Hot even, in full sun. The bush is very dry at the moment too and prickly.

Well we got about 20 metres from the house and my friend says to me:

“Hey, what if we don’t hide the eggs?”

“You mean… pretend to hide them, get the kids to go look for them and then just hide them somewhere in the house?!”

“Well,” she says, “We’d be doing them a favour. The eggs are going to melt in this heat…”

So that’s what we did. Walked around the 5 acre block shouting out things like… “Over here – here’s a good hiding place!”
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Ten minutes later we came back to the house and sent the kids off with this clue:

“Up hill and down dale,
In Paradise the kids wail,
Where are our eggs!
Our mean mums!
Til back at home,
They sit with full tums.”

They were also told that the eggs were at the four corners of the property.

We got half an hour.

Family, Parenting

The lesson of Fred

Given today is Father’s Day, I thought I’d share with you a parenting tip from my dad.

It’s called “The Lesson of Fred”.

When your teenager, young adult begins to date, you may find an endless procession of boyfriends coming through your door. These boyfriends mean a lot to your young one and calling them the wrong name can result in abject mortification, especially if the young man is in the room.

(this happened to a colleague of mine recently)
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To avoid such fo-pahs and to save brain space needed to remember all these names, just do what my dad did. Call them all “Fred”, and only learn their names once they have made a real commitment to your child… like buying a house together or getting engaged. It’s simple and it works…

“So how’s Fred?”, you ask your daughter. “Is Fred coming to pick you up?” “Tell Fred you have to be home by 11 o’clock!” “Does Fred want to stay for dinner?”

It also encourages a certain level of respect, of distance. IMHO (now that I have a daughter), there is nothing wrong with a little bit of intimidation, and oh, how special they feel when you finally address them by name.

Dippity, Hugamuga, Parenting

Bad Mother again

So like the girls and I were talking like and they reckon their mums are too over-protective yeah like…but they think like you’re too under-protective and like yeah…

So says my girl and maybe I am too under-protective. I’ve been out so much lately I’ve barely seen them and working later in the afternoon because I stay home to get them to school. I am a bad mother I guess. But my girl knows how much she is loved and I do my best. I just wish it could be more.

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Meantime numberoneson has just returned from his first social at high school. A river cruise. He seemed to enjoy it more than he was expecting to. So that’s good, isn’t it?