The Spirit of Christmas
Ok, so it won't save the world, but it's a start.
"You know, sweetie, you have a lot of toys," I told Edie last week, the two of us playing with blocks in her room.
"Don't call me 'sweetie'," she said. "It's patronising. And so 2006."
Actually, she didn't say that, but surely it's only a matter of time.
"Some other kids aren't so lucky," I continued. "Some kids don't have any toys at all. Let's choose some of yours to give away to them. Ok?"
"Ok," Edie said.
I had been expecting a little more resistance.
more- Posted at 10:45 AM
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The Road Ahead For Dads
When Edie was born, I suddenly felt that the world had been turned on its head. Apart from the chaos I'd anticipated (fractured sleep; toxic nappies; etc) I also suddenly found myself at the bottom of the pecking order.
Before Edie arrived, Jo and I were equals. We had our shared lives and our separate lives, but always we were on par.
But then, whooska! In the days and weeks after the birth, a new hierarchy was established. It took me a while to realise, but once I did, it was unmistakeable: Edie came first, Jo came second; I came third. Edie was the baby that needed nurturing, Jo was the primary nurturer (symbolised by the breastfeeding); I supported them both. In a household of three, I was the wooden spooner.
No big deal, ultimately, because before long the power shifted again. So much so that Jo and I have recently had to break the bad news to our three-year-old that she's no longer the boss. These days, Jo and I both work, and we both spend roughly the same amount of time each week parenting. In these ways and more, Jo and I are co-captains of the rag-tag team that is our family.
As I look around, however, I see more and more dads (and men generally) being depicted as bumbling and incompetent. If you believe these ads, billboards and music videos, a dad's place is at the bottom of the domestic pecking order, in last place.
more- Posted at 9:25 PM
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Other People's Kids
At a wedding in a winery on Saturday night, Jo and I were seated at a table with half-a-dozen close friends, all of us drinking and chatting at breakneck speed. Especially the parents among us, who don't get out to this sort of knees-up nearly as often as we used to. Even before the newlyweds did a dirty dance for their bridal waltz, it was shaping up as a great night.
Also at our table were a couple we'd never met before, a duo cradling a seven-month-old girl. By dinner time, the daughter was grizzling and unsettled, her tiredness exacerbated by all the colour and commotion. This took me back three years, to a wedding Jo and I had attended when Edie was three weeks old. As new parents, I remembered how shellshocked we'd been. These parents looked like they were coping admirably, but maybe they too were struggling like we had been.
Feeling sympathetic, I asked the mum if I could give the little one a cuddle. "Of course," she said. And sure enough, as I took the bub into my arms, she settled a little. Perhaps it was my paternal manner. Perhaps it was my calm cooing. Perhaps it was the wine on my breath.
In any case, she seemed happy enough, so I stood up and took her for a walk. And as I walked, I started wondering whether the mum or dad had any concerns. Did they worry whether I was too drunk to hold their child? Whether I was a butterfingers prone to serious mishaps? Whether I was trustworthy? They didn't know me, after all. It was only the fact that we'd all been invited to this celebration that gave us some sort of connection.
At that moment, Edie and her cousin Caitlin were over at their nanna's house. There the two toddlers were bound to be having a party of their own: watching TV, nibbling snacks, staying up late. It started me thinking about looking after other people's kids, and about how it's just not the same as looking after your own. Especially if something goes wrong.
more- Posted at 4:40 PM
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Holidays From Hell
This is a hectic time of year. As well as the inevitable crescendo of socialising, this is the time for knuckling down to all those tasks that you set yourself for 2008 but haven't quite managed to complete. Or start. With less than two months till 2009, with Christmas decorations already tut-tut-tutting from shopfronts, procrastinators such as me can find themselves stuck in a traffic jam of to-dos.
Speaking of traffic jams, this is also the time of the year that thoughts turn to holidays. (Unless you're, erm, what's the word? Oh, yes, organised. In which case you've no doubt already sorted transport, accommodation and inflatable toys.*)
Ah, holidays. A time of joy and freedom. Particularly over Christmas and the New Year, when long, languid days enable families to reconnect. During the Christmas holidays, parents can bond with kids and catch up with extended family. Everyone can rest and recuperate from the year past.
Well, sure, but holidays can also be a time of terror. The reality, with its drunken recriminations, flatulent uncles and offensive jokes, sometimes falls short of expectations. This is especially true if travel is involved.
"Hell is other people," wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, presumably while stuck in a Citroen 2CV on a stalled route nationale in the thick of a sweltering August. Nearly 100 years ago, George Bernard Shaw was even more specific: "A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell."
more- Posted at 12:39 PM
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Vitamin D for Dad
Earlier this week, I walked into the office of a woman I'd never met before and stripped down to my boxer shorts. Completely unperturbed, she reached for her magnifying glass. Considering the circumstances, I should have been more nervous.
"You're skin's very fair," she said, looking me up and down. "You need to be careful."
With her spying glass, the doc approached and examined one freckle, then another. She swept my back and arms for melanoma. She'd already examined Jo, pointing out one spot that she needed to monitor closely.
"Watch out for sudden changes," the doc said. "If a freckle or mole suddenly becomes itchy, or changes in appearance, or starts bleeding."
"Actually, I've read that Vitamin D deficiency is on the increase," I said, "because some people aren't getting enough sunlight. Have you noticed that?"
"I have, actually," said the doc. "And the latest I've read is that it's causing fertility problems in some men."
more- Posted at 3:17 PM
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Fictional Fathers
Waking, for Alex, coming out of the dream, is like fighting his way up from the depths of an ocean bed. He wrestles in terror with the bedclothes, his face is covered with sweat, his hair matted against his skin, his parents' voices are ringing in his ears, his mother's voice loud and high-pitched, the product of her training as an actress, his father's voice relentless, ironic, never rising, never losing its cool as they trade absurd insults and accusations.
That's the start of a short story called Loyalties. By Melbourne author Laurie Clancy, it's included in a new book called Families: Modern Australian Short Stories, which also includes yarns by Lily Brett, David Malouf, sometime-Herald journo James Woodford and more.
No, he remembers, his father has gone now and when he walks into his mother's bedroom in the morning beside her lies Ted, who looks like an owl without his glasses ...
At six pages, Loyalties is a lovely tale about Alex, a Melbourne boy of about 12 and his separated parents. There's his mum, a highly-strung, histrionic woman who has taken up with a bookish magistrate; and there's his dad, who's living a shambolic life just a few kilometres away.
"I'll be lucky if I don't finish last,'' Alex says at one point, and his dad probably feels the same.
more- Posted at 6:25 PM
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The Paradox of the Ideal Dad
One of the frustrations of parenthood is the whinging. Sometimes it seems incessant, all this moping, whining, groaning, griping and nagging. Will the tantrums ever stop? Honestly, I don't know how Jo and Edie put up with me.
Edie whinges too, and this is also trying. Every now and again, at age three, she seems to complain purely out of habit. If I ask her if she wants some banana, she'll add 16 syllables to the word "No", a negative which begins in her upper register and travels down through her not inconsiderable range before bottoming out with the vowel equivalent of an exclamation mark.
(Speaking of exclamation marks, what great news that the National Curriculum Board has proposed that grammar be taught in Aussie schools for the first time in 30 years. Me and Jo were stoked.)
When she complains for no reason at all, it's as if Edie is testing out her emotional range. All the while, it's also as if she's learning about her power to control and determine her life. If she wants to wear a particular dress but we say she can't because it's too cold, she'll complain. It'll take time for her to understand that she can't have her way all the time.
I've been thinking about whinging partly in response to the comments posted after last week's blog. There it was suggested that my scribblings should concentrate more on my experiences of fatherhood, instead of on my daughter, or even on general parenting issues.
That in turn started me thinking about the paradox of the ideal man. And the paradox of the ideal dad.
more- Posted at 9:24 PM
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I Am A Rock; I Am An Island
Astute readers may have noticed that there was no entry last week. My excuse is that I was blissfully far from a computer, bouncing along some highway or other in an oversized motor home, covering 2000 kilometres for a rapid-fire holiday from Sydney to Melbourne and back.
Well, I say holiday. I should say working holiday. (Particularly in light of the advice of my accountant, Don Dodge of AAA Deductions, Pty Ltd.) And, sure enough, my notebook and camera were always at hand during a sojourn that's likely to yield a whole bunch of stories for the newspaper.
And there's a lot to write about, because it was a marvellous trip for our clan of three. For a start, the rig that we took was an absolute delight. Sorry, wrong link. Try this one. It was the sort of vehicle that made me want to pull up alongside fellow campers and snarl, "That's not a motor-home."
There were countless highlights - even if emptying the waste cassette (great euphemism!) into various caravan parks' ablutions blocks (and another!) was not one. Aptly enough, one of the caravan parks in question was called Mingling Waters. They must have been expecting us.
Perhaps the biggest highlight of all was the chance for the three of us to spend so much time together. Even in the space of a week, we witnessed Edie's vocab expanding. This was most obvious when this three-year-old upstart turned to Jo one day and said, a propos nothing, "Mum, you're not a genius!"
Sure, when Edie says it, it's funny. When I say, it's into the kennel.
more- Posted at 10:35 PM
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A Foody Hiccup
Last week I interviewed a prominent Australian whom I rate as the nation's funniest bloke. No, not Eddy Groves - Shaun Micallef, the rubbery surrealist who returns to TV this week for another series of Newstopia.
Micallef told me that his approach to making comedy has changed considerably over the years. In the past, he tended to be more anarchic and rebellious. Whenever a TV station would try to rein him in and channel his humour, he'd react by becoming even more edgy and unwieldy. This happened at both the ABC, where The Micallef Program ran between 1998 and 2001, and Channel Nine, where his talk/variety show Micallef Tonight survived for 13 episodes. Lucky 13, as they say.
At SBS, however, he and the co-creators of Newstopia are given creative autonomy, and the ironic result is that he's become more responsible.
"It's like with a child," says Micallef, who himself has three kids aged six, eight and 10. "You give a child some responsibility and they'll measure up to the task put before them. But if you're constantly looking over their shoulder they won't develop that sense of responsibility. Not only that, but they will perversely go in the other direction sometimes."
Those words have been ringing in my ears all this week. Overnight, breakfast time at our house has metamorphosed from a relaxed start to the day into a taut battle of wills.
more- Posted at 7:04 PM
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The Meaning of Life?
A few nights ago I was chatting with a colleague over a schooner when he dropped a bombshell - he's two months away from becoming a dad for the third time. Like me, he's in his late thirties - and, to be honest, I'd thought he'd hung up his conception boots. Obviously not.
"Congratulations!"
"Thanks," he said, beaming.
"It's just the wildest thing, having kids. This wouldn't be true for everyone, but don't you reckon it's the most important thing you could ever do?"
"I think it's the meaning of life," he said.
more- Posted at 3:08 PM
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I No, You No, She Nos
A friend of mine is a primary school teacher. Her name is Abigail, and whenever she isn't grading my anecdotes or giving me time outs, she has fascinating stories to tell.
One concerns the occupational therapist who came to visit the school recently. This visitor said that the increasing incidence of ADHD is partly due to the way kids are brought up these days. The therapist argued that kids nowadays are missing out on a key developmental stage by not being allowed to, say, climb trees.
As a result, she said, their motor skills suffer, their brains don't develop normally, and ailments such as ADHD can result. Simply, she was saying that problems arise when parents don't let their kids take physical risks as they grow up. It's a tangible downside of cotton wool parenting.
I was even more intrigued by another story about learning to say no. And this particular lesson is directed not so much at children, but at parents.
more- Posted at 2:15 PM
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Bully Boys and Dino-Girls
Dropping off Edie at child care yesterday morning, I started talking to her new teacher about this and that. (New teacher? Sigh. I really hope the staff's game of musical chairs stops soon.) Without warning, Edie launched into her impression of a T-Rex, roaring loudly, baring her teeth and showing her "claws".
Her teacher looked surprised.
"Edie came home one day and told us that Samuel* pushed her," I explained. "This is what we taught her to do if it happens again. We told her to tell him to stop, and we told her she should also pretend to be big and scary, like a dinosaur. We thought that was better than telling her to push back."
The teacher nodded. I wasn't sure if she thought me quick-witted or brain-damaged.
"Which one is Samuel, by the way?" I asked.
"The one in the red jacket," she said, pointing.
Ah yes. The one sneering as he dropped a handful of sand onto a little girl's head.
Even among kids aged two and three, bullying isn't pretty. And as a parent, it's tough to know how best to react.
more- Posted at 1:46 PM
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Is Child Care Out Of Control?
Joshua Gans, an academic and author quoted in last week's entry, has three kids. Now aged nine, seven and four, all three have passed through the same child care centre at the University of Melbourne, where Gans is a professor of management. "Child one started at three months," he says. "Child two started at six weeks - pressures of work forced that. And child three started at six months."
Which means Gans has plenty of experience with child care. As a dad and an economist, he's more qualified than most to comment on the effect of the Rudd government's recent amendments to the child care benefit and rebate.
"We currently have a mess," Gans says. "I'm a PhD in economics and when the first child care rebate came out a few years ago I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It was quite a nightmare ... Now that money will be paid directly to the child care provider. The bad side to this is that the child care provider realises this and charges higher fees. If child care centres charge more, the government doesn't care."
So much about the child care industry is messy, unwieldy and unfair, including the ridiculously complicated system of government assistance. That's something I've only just discovered, partly because we've recently enrolled Edie in a centre close to home, but also because I've been working on a big story for the newspaper's Money section that aims to explain the finer details of the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Tax Rebate. That story is published today.
Complicated? I had no idea.
more- Posted at 3:04 PM
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Literary Eggcellence
Parenthood is, above all, a lesson in irony. Consider the fact that it takes sex to make a baby, but that a baby is, in some cases, a perfect libido-suppressant. Or consider the phrase, "sleeping like a baby", which must have been devised by a stand-up comedian whose wit had turned sour amid the ongoing effects of sleep deprivation.
And consider the pursuit of reading. But what does irony have to do with the literary pursuits of mums and dads? Simply the fact that, even as parents are eagerly teaching kids their ABC's, the oldies are left with next to no time to read the books they themselves love.
Jo and I love books. And so does Edie. Our usual night-time routine is well-established: Edie has dinner, has a bath and then skips to the kitchen and prepares for her parents a couple of dry martinis. Next we all recline on the big bed with a well-thumbed copy of Mr Good, Little Miss Scary, Where The Wild Things Are, Yertle the Turtle or Where Is The Green Sheep?
As she approaches her third birthday, Edie can recognise a handful of letters, including "J", "S", "W", "M" and, of course, "E". And she's started occasionally retiring to her room by herself, sometimes to "read" one of the volumes from her shelves. Often she tackles stories from back to front, but why not? It worked for Christopher Nolan and Guy Pearce.
Recently I was sent a bunch of books and stickers and bits and bobs that aim to help kids with their literacy. It's aimed at kids aged four and up. At the risk of scuppering my family's reputation for underachievement, I couldn't resist trying it out on the guinea pig.
more- Posted at 3:20 PM
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