The Root Canal Fairy

I am breaking my hiatus from blogging to talk about something deeply intimate and a bit yucky!  I recently had a tooth pulled out and aside from the incredible pain and discomfort (I spent so much time wandering around moaning and complaining that my sainted husband started automatically saying "I know. I'm sorry" every time I went to speak!)  there was something phenomenally discomforting about having a piece of myself removed.

I know we all recall the halcyon days when we wiggled and wiggled a tooth in anticipation of tooth fairy booty, but those roots were ready to let go.  I just wasn't!  It was a perspective of, "I've grown it, I'm keeping it" which actually surprised me.  It might be my own history of things I've missed- I've never had a wisdom tooth taken out, my appendix or my tonsils.  If I had I wonder if I would have missed them too?  It made me wonder, do people mourn the loss of their bits or is it just part of being alive in this medically advanced age?  Did you grieve for your tonsils or ask to see them?

Maybe the kids have got the right idea.  Maybe I just need a tooth fairy-like ritual to farewell my troublesome tooth.  Right, that settles it, I'm going to organise a bon voyage root canal party... or at least an afternoon tea.  Soft, mushy canapés and porridge petit fours anyone?

Parenting Failure?

I've been thinking about this blog and the idea has dawned on me that its biggest flaw is the facade it paints: the perfect foster-mummy coming up with advice and solutions which I beatifically impart to my friends and family. Sigh.

Of course we all know it is not like that at all, and I do try to discuss the more complicated aspects of parenting.  However sometimes it just feels like failure.  Like falling.  Like losing, and more importantly like we are impersonators of parents.  Fake parents.  This last concept gets unconsciously reinforced by the general populace: where are their real parents? what are their real parents doing?  It's difficult because it feels damn real, being a foster parent or parent or otherwise.

So, failure.  By this I mean, we have these kids and we can see them for all their beauty and potential and yet they spend all their time sabotaging this: eating food off the ground, spitting on strangers, kicking at their classmates' faces for laughing at them, lying to us, refusing to brush their teeth until their breath is fetid and smells like rotting meat... The list goes on.  I suppose in a way many things on the list are just 'normal' parenting, and many are unique to the fostering situation.  Failing to prevent disaster is a difficult topic to approach and discuss with friends.  Most are sympathetic.  Some have some ideas or strategies to try.  People sometimes discuss it like a bad business venture- like something that was always risky and likely to go wrong.  They point out how late we got the older children, how broken and distressed they already were.  Scientifically speaking, or mathematically speaking the odds were good that one or two of them would be angry, deceitful, broken little people I suppose.

None of these points capture the despairing, hope-crushing feeling in my chest.  They are not just attempts, practices at something.  They really are these incredible, potential-filled human beings.  So I have to ask, is that just part and parcel to being a parent?  Watching your children make these dreadful mistakes and just holding your breath, hoping and praying that they will learn from them?  Because if it is, sometimes it hurts a lot.

But, while I have been writing this a little three year old has poked his head around the corner and asked if I was sad.  He offered to make it better, gave me a hug and then said, "are you better?" And I guess I am.  Maybe the trick to being a parent is about being really goddamn persistent.  So I am using this healing hug to give me the superpower bravery to get up and keep trying.

Homemade Holiday Programme

My kids have historically been waaaaaay more excited about going to OOSH (Out of School Hour) care than they are about being at our house.  Now, I know that to a certain point this is natural.  There are social possibilities available at OOSH that are simply not available at most homes.  As for activities, we have a pretty recreational yard: pool, swing set, trampoline, sandpit, sports equipment... we are reasonably set up for the kids to enjoy, but they seem to relish doing these same activities more when they are at someone else's place.

Science Experiment Day

These holidays just gone, our kids were exhausted and so were we.  Five kids starting a new school or preschool and myself at a new school too!  It was all a bit much for us so we decided to rest, which means we gave up any plans to go somewhere for our holidays in order to stay at home instead.  "Ho hum" said our kids.  That was when I got the idea:  I decided to put together an itinerary like they give the kids at OOSH.

Cubby House Sleepover


It worked!  Not only did it energise, excite and empower the kids about their holidays it actually forced Brook and I to do at least one cool, recreational thing with the kids every day.  It also forced me into my 'teacher-brain' to think of all the amazingly fun-filled ideas I know for children to do.  Things I don't normally consider doing at home.

Wind in the Willows at Botanic Gardens

One of the school holiday favourites was taking the kids' bikes to the park for a barbecue, which we really should do more often.  Another favourite was Science Experiment Day, where I trotted out all my tried and true hands-on science discoveries for them.  It was surprisingly satisfying sharing them with my children!

Make your own pizza day

Science Experiment Day

"An amazing holiday" said Melissa "Mum had a million things planned for us, one for every single day!"  "Cool holiday because we did awesome things and like, science experiments were awesome." added Summer. 


I think they really liked the amount of information and input into the schedule they had.  They seemed to find it reassuring to know that we had big plans for them every day.  It meant that even if we were all laying around the house reading right NOW, there was still a workshop at the Library for them to attend later in the day or a cake to bake.  And what about us?  I think we liked it because it forced us to get out of the house, and to behave in our home town as if we were tourists.  To be honest, part of me was a bit embarrassed to share this story because it would reveal the truly anal-retentive lengths to which I will go when allowed.  However, I think there is a lesson here: I think sometimes we expect our kids to read our minds, to know what we have in store for them and to trust that we have great plans.  Maybe we just need to share a bit more of them sometimes, even if it commits us to going through with them!

Walk a Mile in their Shoes

My kids have been being really naughty on the school bus.  Oh, I hear you say, tut tut, cheeky kids!  Surely they cannot be that bad.  Well, one of them spat on a little kindergardener a week ago- that's how bad we are talking!  The context is that they were playing 'spit tag' which I guess makes it slightly less disgusting and feral but only slightly.  They have been loud and shouting, smacking each other with their hats, changing seats and generally making the bus driver crazy. 

Last year we had two separate complaints from the bus driver about them.  This year, after the spitting we had one child's bus pass confiscated for the day.  We tried explaining to the kids how valuable and important the transportation was to them, but it was apparently ineffective.  I know this because on Friday I was asked onto the bus by the bus driver and had to nod apologetically while he explained that he had had enough of my children.

Sheez!  What are we to do?  We have warned, threatened, grounded... What to do?  It was obvious to both of us.  The only thing we could do was make them walk to school once.  It's a full 10kms from our house to their school.  Far!  The walk would be difficult, tiring, uncomfortable and most of all MEMORABLE!

So today I got on my runners, we woke the kids at 6:30am and were walking as the sun was coming up. They began the trek positively.  Oh, isn't that lovely?  We wouldn't have seen that if we hadn't walked.  Oh I'm not tired!  This is great, actually... In an hour's time they were puffed, sweaty, over it and HALFWAY!  I showed them on my phone gps that they had only just gotten halfway to the school and it was 10 minutes to class time.  Our support vehicle arrived in time to whisk us to school with some (hopefully) changed opinions about the value and importance of their bus driver in their lives!  Mean?? Possibly.  Effective?? Let's hope so!

You can pick your friends...

My mother always used to say to us, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose but you can't pick your friend's nose."  Upon reflection I must question why she says this.  To my recollection we didn't have any sort of chronic nose picking habits, let alone any desire to explore our friends' nasal passages.  Of course my sister did sport a cruel rhyming slang nick name that will NOT be making an appearance on this blog, thank you very much.

No, I think maybe my mother said this (besides the fact that she thought it was funny) to remind herself of the inarguable fact I have been contemplating lately: you cannot make friends for your kids.  That simple.  You can't.

It's really quite a difficult fact to come to terms with, and one which accompanies the void in your sphere of parental influence called the school day, which stretches out like an empty space where your guidance and instruction should and used to be.

My kids have struggled with the friendship thing.  Each in their own way.  Of course my older two children were far more deeply affected by their early years and this has demonstrated itself in a variety of ways not acceptable in the school yard: picking up and eating food off the ground, taking jokes seriously and having a tantrum or cry, stealing food from others, trying to garner sympathy and get kids to do everything for you... the list is very long.  There are (LOTS) of times when this journey feels hopeless and endless.

However, we did have a birthday party for one of our kids recently.  She has really struggled with gaining and keeping friends.  She had a lazy eye, no social skills and an allergy to wheat that left her speaking like that Miss Teen America contestant who kept saying "The Iraq" in that infamous YouTube video.  Her party last year went so badly that a bitchy mother actually sat at my back porch table and told me she had no idea why her kid was invited because they weren't friends.  Shameless, really.  Why did they come if they didn't care about her?

So this year's party was a relative success in comparison.  Only three of the seven children she invited attended, but they were genuinely interested in being a part of her special day.  They wanted to play with her, they wanted to be her partner in games.  They LIKE her.  A small victory on the long, long road to gaining social acceptance, but hey, we'll take it.  Because at the end of the day we can't actually pick our kids friends or their friends noses.  We just have to hope that we can somehow steer the spaceship called our children toward that dream-galaxy called acceptance, love and friendship or at least toward self-acceptance.  (And no nose-picking!)

Gender Cues

Recently my little man asked to have his toenails painted just like mine.  How could I refuse?  This got me thinking about all the little gender cues we send our kids every day.  Every parent has a different position on this sort of thing.  For example: People will often tell you how different boys and girls are.  Boys play rougher, girls play more quietly; boys like trucks and girls like dolls, etc. Others will emphasise how their little boy is into pink or loves high heels.  But how much is nature and how much is nurture?

Are we unconsciously implying that our kids should be more 'girly' or 'manly'?  Do we push the girls to be princesses and the boys to be pirates? So far my husband and I have tried to be a bit open minded about our kids and these sorts of roles, but isn't it a careful balance between encouraging their individuality, even eccentricity and creating kids that are considered really, really weird by their peers?

When my husband came home and took off my boy's shoes, he was startled and a bit bemused. (Although the man definitely takes everything in his stride!)  It made me wonder what the girl equivalent would be: what would be too 'boyish' to do with little girls? They can't dress in 'drag' or play to male of a sport.  They can't dress up in too boyish a costume.  It seems females have bent the gender rules in one direction and made a claim for just about any role they wish to play in society.  Luckily for us and our girls, nobody tells girls they can't be an astronaut anymore because they are a girl.  (When my mother went to university to study Archaeology she was told that 'young ladies don't do that' and asked to study English instead!  NOT that long ago, really!!)

However, the boy rules seem to have stayed a little more rigid.  As I have gotten older it has become more and more obvious to me that as far as gender 'rules' go women have it easier than men.  Women have this sort of buffet of opportunities that they can achieve (I know that men do too) and can really be any range of career woman, mother at home, or anything in between.  Everywhere they look there are other women doing what they are doing and a TV show demonstrating how hard they are doing it.  However men are expected to be absolutely everything these days: great provider, great father, loving and romantic husband, liberated housekeeper, confidante, etc while maintaining that manly status.  My husband manages to navigate these waters really well, and has taken the subtle sexism in his stride from being the stay-at-home dad.  It was strange to realise that people could be a bit closed-minded about him and his role as the main caregiver to four while I worked.  He even managed to reclaim a bit of the nobility of the job, when people asked what he 'did' he would gesture to demonstrate his four girls and say, "This!" 


We finally live in an era when people (hopefully) no longer believe you can 'turn' your child gay, so theoretically we can all be a bit freer with these gender roles.  These are interesting times to be growing up, therefore. I predict that this generation of males will grow up freer and with fewer constraints on their gender definitions.  Let's hope this is true, even if it does not include scarlet toe polish!

Traditions

What with the holiday silly season upon us I have been thinking lots about traditions. Holidays are a big time for traditions, and even if you don't think your family has any you are proven wrong when you get married. All of us have a "way we do Christmas" and few of us question this "way" until we are confronted with the completely foreign and totally "wrong" way our partner's family does Christmas. My husband and I tend to navigate these situations with relative aplomb, using diplomacy to deflect potential conflicts in philosophy with comments such as, "well hon, your mother's family think its okay to shake presents, so I guess you can fondle just this one..."

However things get more tricky when children are added to the mix. What was once a quirky approach becomes a gaudy freakshow and what was originally a cute ritual takes on religious extremist proportions. I think this is because when we are raising kids we are constantly distilling our world into digestible portions for our kids. Suddenly you are listening to your partner trying to explain the many odd rituals of the silly season... What to do?

I think it can work to view it as an opportunity to establish your own family rituals for various special days. This was especially evident because we inherited ours kids in the insta-family method. Getting our kids so quickly really emphasised the clean slate we had before us.

So what are some of our newly established family traditions? We make a pretty killer gingerbread house every year and then devour it with friends on New Years Eve. It's some really good kid-decadence for an oftenly kid-unfriendly event. We bake sugar cookies together and sometimes we manage to go caroling in the neighbourhood, which is met with bemusement by our Aussie neighbours! This year we all watched a podcast which talks about New Years Day traditions and picked a feast from this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdnVodCY29M&feature=relmfu
 Apparently black-eyed peas, pork and greens are all lucky food for the first day of the year. Also, we baked a cake and hid a coin inside with the idea that the person who got the coin got the most luck for the coming year. As it turned out the coin sat right in the middle so we told the kids that meant we all got the lucK. Do you feel lucky? Yup, I do. (incidentally the best chocolate cake I have ever made, courtesy of abc foodi app or here:


Www.abc.net.au/local/recipes/2004/11/20/1286010.htm

So, SO yum! Especially if you don't mind feeding your little kids brandy and coffee. And who doesn't, right?