Well bully for you!

Well - I'd like to say the blog has been languishing because of Easter and recommencement of term 2 with associated kids homework, but its actually a little more simple than that. My chattering Chipmunk has been part of the bullying cycle - and the emotional turmoil associated with that as a parent is well.............exhausting.

As previously hinted, I'd been saving myself for a self-rightrous tirade directed at religous education, when the Premier saw fit to remedy this immediate evil. There is much still to be said on this situation, but unfortunately, not today.

My little boy is experiencing something remarkably common at this age - little boys who know how to make friends but don't know how to keep them. Bullying is all too much like a label, and it fails to address the fact that genuine regard exists, if somewhat tempered by jealousy, competitiveness - and an "I want to be a part of this too" syndrome!

And my little boy is not entirely a saint in this exercise. He's a justice child - it's not always black and white, but he needs to see the precepts of decency and civilisation served. And as anyone with children knows, a controlled situation, as demanded by this scenario, can only happen when the child is living in a biosphere of one form (quaker society) or another (space vacuum). So the finite tension in this exercise is not so much the black and white of what's right and what's not - but rather the alluring beast better known as 'pack behaviour'.

And once again, a need to explain. We've brought up the Chattering Chipmunk to understand that when the pack turns feral, and does the wrong thing, it is important that his pack animal speak up and call it wrong. That's a lot harder than it sounds. Little boys from around 5-10 years of age run as this innocuous pack. They may have closer friends than others, but ultimately, they're in it together. There is no real pack leader at this age - but you see the jossling commence. The stronger personalities - sometimes termed charismatic - will start to exercise their influence - increasingly shape the pack to determine the followers, non-compliance, anti-pack mentality members - or personalities with their own leadership aspirations. It's too early to call it, but I suspect Chattering Chipmunk may well be in the non-compliance group. And this is no suprise, given our very strong anti-naughty-pack-mentality indoctrination. ( I'm quite happy for you to blame the NRL's appauling off-field behaviour over the last few years - it's no accident our son is on the Auskick program!)

And so, as a consequence, our son finds himself facing a type of pack behaviour that he doesn't like, is sure is wrong, and can't see anything being visibly done about it. You see at least one of his friends engages with fists, and legs - and taking the negative side of an argument when it comes up. If you think back to your own childhood, its remarkably common - the child was usually termed the "class bully" - or "most likely to succeed".

Poor Chipmunk, I hear you murmer, it's life, get used to it. But that's not strictly true - you see my child sits in the potential victim group - and will for a very long time because of the choices his parents have made. We've refused to allow Chattering Chipmunk to attend religous Ed - not because we are athiest ( which of course we are!), but because it is not provided in a balanced environment by an educator required to present no postion on the issue. We've also required Chattering Chipmunk to test the "naughty" words at home to see if they are a) naughty; and b) have an acceptable context. We've built a trust with our child where if we don't know the answer, we'll admit it, and then seek to clarify with further research. We won't let Chipmunk play with children whose parents we have yet to get to know - we won't even let Chipmunk walk next door without checking in once he's arrived. And we encourage Chipmunk to question.....everything! And that's hard, because it even drags in our authority as parents. but how can he become a truely valued member of society if he can't question our decision making, given that we so pretensiously claim that indeed, we are not omnipotent. In effect, we have chosen to accelerate our child's impact with the bully cycle early - because we wanted him to know from the outset that pack behaviour has a price - and you have to decide how much you are willing to pay to remain a member of the pack.

So when we deliberately place our child in the group of the different, we can't deny all responsibility for all that proceeds from these decisions. Like when he stands up to the "charasmatic figure" and says "that is UTTER nonsense!" or when he becomes deeply, mortally offended, because the only person observing the actual rules are him. And as his mother it is damned hard. Because I want to throttle the child that makes his life a misery. Because I want to tell him to give in to the urge when he stresses he wants to hit that child, yet continues to deny himself physical satisfaction. And I scream at myself - because our indoctrination - and lets face it - it's nothing less - places him in this situation at particular points in his life. And then you really do question if the end justifies the means.

There are many who cruise through life, unwilling to ripple the pond, to allow minor injustices to proceed either through themselves or their children - and to each of you, I envy you. But you see, that's not me. I live in fear of the what if - if I leave my child/ren unattended, someone will grab him/her/them (not so difficult to understand if you grew up in Adelaide!). If I don't teach my son that running with the pack is no excuse, will he be part of a pack rape of some young and potentially less than perceptive woman as a univerisity student, army solider or football player? If I don't teach him now to question the veracity of what is placed before him as fact, when will that time be? My biggest fear is burying my children - whether it be as a result of their own hand or someone else's is actually irrelevant.

So, you see, I can't just stand back - I don't think I'm a helicopter mum - simply because I don't have time to be as a working mum - and also know that my own compulsive tendencies would make it all to easy to become one. But here's the big question? Is it okay to use your child as a social experiment? And I desperately want to stress that's not what's been intended here. However, by actively choosing to make my child different - by asking him from a very early age to consider the right and wrong of every situation, I make him every so slightly diferent, but just enough that other kids notice, other parent's notice and teachers notice too. But they all notice differently - other children will say - every child is Chattering Chipmunk's friend - parent's who spend more than 1/2 an hour with Chipmunk will state what a lovely child he is, accolade, accolade, while parents whose children are part of that "charasmatic character group" will suggest that Chipmunk "is a very sensitive child" - and teachers will suggest that not only is he "a lovely child, you can have a real and very interesting conversation with him".

The morailty of this situation rests entirely with what you believe to be right and wrong - and when should you enforce those beliefs? Is it right that we choose from an early age to make him different? Arguably, he would encounter this issue as some point in his life, but is it fair that from the moment he enters school that this be the case? He's left handed, non-religious, aniphalectically allergic, thoughtful, the constant friend of the isolated child...could he sit any further on his own? And yet he's not alone. He has multiple friends, is well liked, and never stops trying. But the moments of isolation are a never-ending torture, because afterall, underneath lies the knowledge that this is how we've shaped him.

Is this a "poor me" rant? NO, absolutely not.........but that's not to say it is not without moments of "have we done the right thing". But if you compromise on the timing of teaching your child what's right, and what's wrong...........how long before you compromise on the content???? This is our (husband rather than royal "we") dilemma, and I'd be damned keen to know how others have dealt with it. I can bear pretty well anything that life throws at me - as long as it doesn't involve my children.

As every parent does, I harbour aspirations for my children. But for my son it isn't like most........I see something in him........a rare and precious gift, where, if it survives the blunt instruments of his childhood, he will be one of those truly inspirational individuals, with the power to change the world, simply because he's spent his whole life thinking about it. In a generation where there is little to celebrate, I crave this opportunity for my child to knowingly make a difference.

Would you like curry with that?

You know, I had been working myself up for the last two days to commence my next tirade, and one truly close to my own heart - religious education. ( Not to mention that my dear friend Phil would no doubt feel I have truly come of blogging age). But then, as often happens, you get an afternoon where the immediate reality grabs a hold of the mind space, and well.........there's wine, and......well who really has the energy for rage this evening!

I'm going to introduce two of the three loves of my life - I'd prefer to call them "The Burrower and "The Dobber" - but my husband continues to remind me that the statute on repressed memories isn't entirely free from contestability - and may well be exercised before we've managed to payout the mortgage.

So I'll describe them by their smiles - Dolphin Girl and Chattering Chipmunk (but feel free to apply the former titles respectively - God knows that girl can snake a finger into her nose and straight back into her mouth faster than I can yell "NO BURROWING" - and trust me, that's fast!!! )

You get days when nothing goes as planned - and then you get days where "never work with children or other animals" become the catchphrase. Like today.

I'm feeling good - I've just served an "I work and I'm a great MUM" over the net to the pasty shrews and howdy homemakers - and its time to reinforce this message. And I'm such a damn good cook, it's time to employee a senile memory and re-invite the children into the inner sanctum......and make hot cross buns.

Now you must understand - I pride myself on my cooking - and b.c. (before children) I once charmedthe pants off every surrounding village with my savoir faire. But enough - I digress.

Dolphin girl and Chattering Chipmunk were intensely excited. With two chairs pushed up against the kitchen bench, and every spice known to man laid out on the kitchen table, we'd not only progressed past the turn for turn ladling of flour, various shrivelled forms of grape, but actually turned out the dough for a first rising. And then distracted three turning four - must get into something mode - set in.

I’m washing up the mixing bowl, when Dolphin Girl lets out a blood curdling scream that sets the dogs barking, a flock of sulphur crested cockatoos squawking, and those bloody scrub turkeys out parading, with a general look of helpfulness.

I look over to the kitchen table, and there is Dolphin Girl, little hands screwed up tight in her eyes – and the jar of curry powder open with a hefty trail of orange leading up to her nostrils.

(Dolphin girl is a real sensate - if there's a flower with a heady perfume, she'll inhale it, petals, sepals and all. So the initial temptation of curry - and such a pretty colour - all too good to pass up!)

So I rush her down the corridor to the bathroom, and then run ahead, yelling to Chattering Chipmunk “Bring her down – I’ll get the tap running and the flannel ready.” Chattering Chipmunk naturally interprets this 'as stand in front of her and use hand signals and voice commands.' Naturally, Dolphin Girl can’t see and proceeds to bang into walls, increasing the wailing to a desperate pitch. “For God’s sake, Chattering Chipmunk, take her hand and lead her into the bathroom” - to which he responds by bringing her around the corner with awesome velocity - she smacks into the wall, rubs her nose, and manages to get some curry powder into her mouth.

So I’m frantically dousing her eyes with water, with the tap running, rinsing out the flannel inbetween washes. And Dolphin Girl is doing her bit too. Inbetween washes, Dolphin Girl is placing her balled up little curry encrusted fists back into her eyes , and screaming with all the intent of a chicken destined for the chopping block - as the water that I'm generously pouring into her eyes is the last link in a curry osmosis stream that she's continuously fuelling with her fists.

So I stand her up on the sink, scatter the bucket of bath toys into the bath, fill the bucket up with water, stick her hands under the tap – and pour the bucket over her head.

Now everyone’s happy. They’re watching a movie. Oh – and Chattering Chipmunk tells me there’s a curry stain on the bathroom floor. I tell him this is something he should share with his father.

Happy chocolate festival. By the way, the buns are fantastic.

Say you, say me?

As you will rapidly gather by my title descriptor, I'm just a little tired of defending the fact that I work and have children. And if you're not a working mum, you might not understand why this is such an issue. But you see, it starts from the day that you let the world know that you're expecting a bundle of joy. From there on in, the rest of the world will feel they've got a right to share their opinion on your performance as a mother. And no subject is too delicate. Breastfeeding, circumcision, discipline and the hoary chestnut of daycare. I personally like to break these soothsayers into three camps - the single, never had, never likely to have children (predominately women post 30, and a few bullish males around 30); the post 50, married, children raised by stay at home mum; and the current crop of stay at home mums.

I've been ambushed by various combinations of these three factions over the last seven years of child-rearing, but without a doubt, my favourite combination is the over 30 shrews with over 50 stay at home mums. And what I love about this group? They actually align to have a go at working mums! Amazingly, the fact that one camp has never worked, the other has never raised children, is no obstacle to either rating your performance (unsolicited) - and you, the only one doing both, apparently have no valid opinion at all.

And the current crop of stay-at-home mums? I know some fantastic stay at home mums, and somehow, the work/stay at home thing never comes up in our relationships- because its not a definer on who either of us are, or how we relate - we each do what we feel we need to do. Yet when I go into my son's school for a particular event, or to teach a scientific concept, I have to run the gauntlet of stay at home mum's - "what are you doing here - shouldn't you be working?" "what are you doing with the children - you don't normally come in?" And I find myself justifying why I'm there. I've turned up to talk to my son's teacher, and had the stay at home brigade walk in on our conversation and start talking over me to the teacher, as if I'm not there. And the worst part about this? I have continued to let it happen. In my professional career, I won't let anyone get away with this sort of crap, no matter how hierarchial the driver - and yet I let this band of bustling white holier than thous decide my access to the school. Its a domain thing - they sit together as a pack - and as we working mums are always running late for something, they usually manage to pick us off one by one, as though we are interlopers or tresspassers.

But no more. So be warned pack-in white, shrews and vainglorious baby boomers. The argument starts at I'm a fantastic mother - and the evidence is in my two glorious children. Good luck proving otherwise.

Maiden Voyage

Well - it begins here. As a relative newcomer to the joys of broadband, and subsequently blogging, today marks the early adolescence of my journey into bloghood. Hence there will be much fumbling, posturing - pretence that I'm more experienced than I truly am - and a few attempts to get past the kiss goodnight on someone else's blog. I'm remarkably optomistic - I've got a bagful of opinions, and I'm often part of the demographic targeted by so much of the current research - so I've got plenty to rant about. And after some mild blog trawling, I know I'm bound to encounter as many aligned opinions as against - so it's all very promising.

So who am I, beyond the pretentious efforts on the profile. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to show my spots. A private hell for me is dealing with engineers. Now don't get me wrong, individually I like them, but just like bible thumpers, meeting a group will automaticaly start my teeth grinding. Its my problem, I know. I'm a scientist - therefore, I'm principally an observer. I might postulate a few theories, test the existing theories, and occassionally manipulate observations and record test results, but observation is key to my findings. If I go sailing at the beach, I'm enjoying the whole picture - wave theory, carbon cycle, Einstein's theory of Relativity, Darwinian survival of the fittest- and I'm especially enjoying that I get it - that I'm living and seeing the practical application of hundreds of years of classic scientific thought.

But an engineer will sit on the sand find the nearest animal, take it apart, examine the pieces, and with an "I thought so" push it back into a squiggy semblance of togetherness and move on, looking for the next deconstricution - or worse bring another engineer over to look at their handywork. You see, the differences are subtle, but they're there! Scientist work to understand the world and how it works or impacts on man - engineers enable man to impact on the world.

So as you can imagine, when I got out of bed two weeks ago, to take seven engineers on a site visit, I intrinsically knew that it was not likely to be one of my finest days. Hence when two engineers arrived at my house, ready for transporting, rather than let them in, I closed up the house and joined them outside the fence, apologising along the way - "sorry, I would have let you in, but by the time you got past the three dogs, you would have had to dodge the vacuum cleaner and we would be out again."
"What's the vacuum cleaner doing?"
"Its a robotic........vacuum cleaner" My heart sank. There was only one place that this could go. "Yes, its a robotic vacuum cleaner." Now what you need to understand at this point, is that this statement, to an engineer, is like declaring to a Christian that you've just discovered the original blueprint for Adam and Eve, complete with handwritten amendments - and they've never heard before that any existed.

Thankfully we were in the car before the dissection began. "How does it clean, why does it stop at stairs, how does it remember where its been, what sort of memory does it have, what type of technology is it running on, what technology was used in the space program"........you get the idea. After 20 minutes of chauffering these two in the car, I was knackered, and we still had eight hours to go. And it just got better. We picked up one more, and suddenly I have three men (two approaching 70) in the car. What a treat! No subject was sacrosanct, and as a thirty something mother with two children, I pretty much represented the antithesis of everything these men believe in. So inbetween the backseat driving, child rearing advice, tax minimisation, superannuation and rehashing of university days, make no mistake, I was a little worn from the trip, and for the first time in a long time, distinctly aware of a generation gap.

Well we got there. And I spent the next four hours apologising to the site operator for the nosy and imperinent questions. It was like disturbing an ant's nest - engineers spilling out all over the site, getting into every nook and cranny, relevant or otherwise. And advice! My word, you'd think the site operators were novices! Our two youngest engineers had the misfortune of being trained on site - by all engineers present. I've seen less display when two peacocks meet up for a show and tell on feathers.

So by the time I got home, ditched my travelling companions and settled down for a cup of tea, I was rather pleased to see two of my dogs playing tug of war with a piece of rubber, especially as they're more often blewing with one another. It wasn't until five minutes later, that I went racing out the front door...........and found they'd progressed from tug of war to "making a wish" with a scrub turkey.

And here I should explain. If you live in Queensland, on the eastern coast, you'll be familiar with the rather industrious black turkey with a red wobble, known as the scrub turkey. These birds are notorious for ruining gardens by building mounded nests the size of small mountains on whatever site they deem fit. While the bane of many a gardener, these birds are protected and therefore often unwillingly endured. For myself, we have six scrub turkeys in our yard - and despite that we live on acreage, find these birds in the bloody front yard, usually scratching on the roof from around 4-9pm every evening. And to date, other than a mutual game of chase, the dogs have ignored the scrub turkeys. Suficient to say, the abuse hurled at these birds, since they moved from the back into the front yard, has been loud, often - and frequently makes reference to terms like 'baste' and 'barbecue'.

So as I inspected this scrub turkey, one of the young ones, you'll no doubt find it amusing that I became quite distressed. I rang the vet - and although I didn't think the bird would last long, was determined to take it to the vet. As I maintained with my husband later, I wasn't about to reward our mongruels for their efforts.

I remained somewhat distressed over this development for days. I refused to speak to the offending dogs, and dreaded walking through the gate in the evening for fear of finding another bird. And the scrub turkeys disappeared.

Well, a few days later they came back - and the dogs returned to ignoring them. And this was pretty much the status quo. Until Sunday, when I caught the filfthy bloody ringleader trying his luck with one of my chickens. I'm outraged - sullying the modesty of one of my layers!

..............so naturally, I'm thinking about asking one of my engineering "mates" to help me design a trap to get rid of the bloody mongruels!