Where NOT to go to pass the time

A collective sigh of relief goes up across the world this week, as, after several weeks of captivity, parents are finally being set free. Yes, school holidays have once again come to an end, and children everywhere are gathering up their pencil cases and musty lunch bags and being packed off back to their classrooms.

Of course lots of parent do relish these special weeks spent at home, re-bonding over the craft box and cooking up a cupcake storm. Other parents however, particularly those who aren’t naturally programmed to moulding papier-mâché and making their own play dough, sometimes find these long periods of time a little bit tricky to fill.

Once the novelty of an alarm clock free morning and a sandwich-making free evening has worn off, and you’ve spent several days watching your creative child stick tissue paper and glitter directly onto the dining table and build a cubby in every single room, it’s likely you might start thinking of other places to spend the day.

‘Other places’ that aren’t at home, to be more precise. Places that won’t involve you having to vacuum up afterwards, and require the odd bit of plastering and repainting when the playing goes wrong.

If and when the weather doesn’t cooperate and rain pours down day after day, soft play centres – the sort with swinging ladders, tunnels, slides and multi-coloured balls – are a tempting refuge. It’s true that spending a day at such a place is likely to knock at least a year off your lifespan and leave you with a nasty chest infection, but at least you are safe in the knowledge that, short of the odd friction burn and heat exhaustion, your children can knock themselves out without actually coming to any real harm.

The downside of these play centres is of course the entry fee. It’s generally on par with a central London mortgage repayment. And to add insult to overpriced injury, the parent is also charged just for the privilege of sitting, watching and breathing in the rancid air.

After you’ve set foot through the door and all shoes have been removed and stored in a pile under the counter, you will of course remember that the obligatory socks are still sitting at home in your child’s drawer. So your wallet is forced to come back out again and a new neon-coloured nylon pair (Easyjet style, Harrods prices) are passed over the counter to your child’s outstretched little paw. They of course will claim to love these new socks more than life itself. You will consider them hideous, and likely deposit them in the bin on the way out.

Finally the door (or gateway to hell, depending how you look at it) is opened, and your newly socked child is set free, static sparks flying in all direction as they run across the matching nylon carpeted floor. Reluctantly you follow suit and enter the room. Your ears are met with the thunderous sound of a hundred children all screaming, yelping and hollering in delight.

Just audible beneath this din, is a distinctive white noise. The low-level humming of a gaggle of mothers, all rocking backwards and forwards on their plastic seating in a desperate, shared pain.

Moving forward into hell, you spot the only beacon of hope in the entire place – a café at the end of the room. As you draw closer, the ‘café’ takes the form of a scratched up old counter and a chiller cabinet stocked full of last weeks’ salmonella and botulism experiments. Located somewhere beyond the coffee maker and the enormous display of food colouring and MSG is the kitchen, with it’s impressive line up of deep fat fryers spitting out grease all over the floor.

Unsure about which of the food would kill you and which would just make you sick, you settle on a hot chocolate and a purple coloured muffin. How wrong can you go with hot chocolate? It’s made inside the machine and spat out into the mug below. The muffin, which admittedly does look slightly solid around the edges, at least claims to contain a type of fruit.

The unwashed looking child behind the cash register takes the remainder of your money and hands you a numbered baton. You’d much rather just stand and wait for your order, but apparently loitering around the counter is not allowed. You must go to your table and wait to vibrate.

Not particularly keen to strike up a conversation with anyone in sight, you are forced to walk the length of the room in search of a table free of rubbish and off-putting inhabitants. You hurry past mothers dressed head-to-toe in stone washed denim and others dressed head-to-toe in fleece. You rush past those on day release from the local young offenders institute, and scuttle past those who obviously favour hemp on a stick to soap on a rope.

Eventually, several trips past scattered prams and regurgitating babies later, and you are finally settled into your plastic seat. You’re sitting just about near enough to the rope cage to see your child fly past, but not so close you can smell the feet. You finally have your ‘refreshments’ and enough dog-eared celebrity magazines to help pass the time, while you wait for your child’s colour-coded wristband to expire.

An hour passes and your child shows no signs of tiredness or even the slightest willingness to leave. The litre bottle of water you’ve just washed down the muffin with leaves you with little choice. You must leave the safety of your seat and brave the bathrooms.

The smell hits before you’ve even pushed open the door. The floor is swimming with something and none of the cubicles have locks, let alone anything resembling a loo roll. Hopping from dry patch to dry patch, you mentally calculate if you’re still covered by the tetanus jab you had for your holidays last year. Emerging from your cubicle you find a small crying child stood opposite your door. His trousers are around his ankles and his Thomas pants are full of something they shouldn’t be.

You briefly cast your eyes back to the liquid matter on the floor.

Now you’re faced with something of a social dilemma. Do you make a hasty escape and hope the soggy child’s mother is about to appear, or do you take possession of the said soggy child and go off in hunt of the careless owner? It’s not that you’re necessarily an uncaring cow with a heart of stone, but clearing up your own child’s accidents is one thing – sorting out the mess of a child with a shaved head and a cubic zirconia in one ear is quite another.

Luckily for you, the mother of ‘mini thug’ swoops in on him and drags him back out into the room, his Thomas pants still dripping across the floor.

Emerging back into the fresh air (the word ‘fresh’ becomes relative in a place like this), you decide that your senses have taken enough of a beating for one day. You spot your fuchsia-coloured child refuelling at the table and seize the opportunity to grab them and make a beeline for the door.

On the way home your exhausted child in the backseat tells you that it was worth all the pain. But it’s only taken 2 hours up of the day, and now you’re emotionally drained and financially crippled. To cap it off, the bottom of your jeans look slightly damp and the car now smells suspiciously of wee.

 

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How NOT to stop kids having sex

I haven’t had much time to write recently – work and migraines have been getting in the way – but today I saw a headline flash past my eyes and I had to have my say.

So what caught my attention? Condom’s for 12-year-old boys, that’s what. Yes, you read right. 12-year-old boys.

12-year-old boys who will, I guess, then be on the hunt for 12-year-old (or God forbid, younger) girls to test them out on. For many reasons, this has to be so, so wrong.

The ‘Hotshot’ condom, which has been ‘downsized to fit its 12-14 year old customer base’, is already available in Switzerland, and, if the manufacturers have their way, will be heading for the British high street and your kids wallet soon.

Lamprecht AG, the condom manufacturer behind this controversial contraception for kids, claim they set off down this path in response to a study conducted on behalf of the Federal Commission for Children and Youth. A study which showed that  not only were more 12 to 14-year-olds now having sex, but that an alarming number of them didn’t use any form of protection.

While as a parent, the idea of children so young having sex is a deeply disturbing one, and quite difficult to get my head around, it is hardly shocking news. It seems that every time you open a paper these days, there’s yet another pair of gormless babies staring back at you, sat there dressed head-to-toe in Mothercare’s finest and clutching their very own ‘hasn’t got a hope in hell’ baby.

When you see such a case of under-aged stupidity, it’s hard to know who you want to slap round the face first. The naive idiots apparently vying for the title of ‘World’s Youngest Parents’, or their own parents sat besides them, insisting that of course little Tracey and Dwain will make great parents – if they ever look up from their respective DS’s for long enough to notice what’s just popped out of Tracey and slid off the sofa.

So yes, there’s no getting away from the fact that (some) kids these days obviously have no fear of getting down and dirty with the person sat next to them in class. Nor that – judging by the sheer volume of pram-pushing girls in their Hannah Montana t-shirts – these kids ever think for a millisecond about the possible consequences of their actions.

England is now the teenage pregnancy capital of Europe, so I guess, on paper at least, arming kids with protection is a good idea. Or it would be if it wasn’t so wrong.

No child – boy or girl – could possibly be emotionally, physically or mentally ready to have sex at this young age. And  no 12-year-old boy is (or should need to be) emotionally mature enough to be trusted with something as important as preventing pregnancy or the spreading of a life threatening disease.

Most boys of this age aren’t even responsible enough to be left alone in a house with a box of matches. Some would probably forget to wash, eat or sleep if their parents didn’t remind them too. So who really believes that a randy pint-sized  man would ever want to make the effort, or for that matter feel comfortable enough to walk into a chemist and be asked – ‘Something for the schoolyard Sir?’

Of course there’s no disputing that such studies are needed to highlight how big a problem there is. Or that young boys must to be taught why they should be keeping it tucked away in their Ben 10 underpants until they are..  well until they are old enough not to be wearing Ben 10 underpants at least.

But that said, I think governments and Family Planning organisations are giving 12-year-old boys a little more credit than they actually deserve.

These kids in question aren’t having sex at ridiculous ages because they are maturing earlier than every decade that went before. Or because they are making an informed and intelligent choice about what they are ready to do. They are having sex because they see ‘Sex’ every which way they turn, and they think it’s cool to do it – and very uncool to have to admit they don’t. They aren’t going to suddenly get all responsible and grown-up just because they’ve got their own section at the condom counter.

So short of giving a free pack of 6 away with every computer game, or sticking them in with the fries when they up-size their Happy Meal, I really don’t see how providing  XS Junior condoms is the answer. If anything it gives out the worst possible message to horny young boys everywhere – that actually it’s OK to convince the girl who sits next to you in class to drop her High School Musical knickers, and hop onto the bean bag for some ‘recess’ action.

Really it comes to this. If you put aside every argument about whether selling condoms to and for kids is morally or ethically right, what about it being legally right? It’s bad enough that school nurses are allowed to hand out contraception at all, and that under-age girls can get the pill without their parent’s knowledge. But making condoms specifically for kids? The last time I looked the age of consent was 16 – and for very good reason.

Of course SWAT teams aren’t ever going to swoop in and arrest every person under that age for doing something they legally shouldn’t, but if you actually provide young kids with the means to have sex, surely it’s the same as encouraging them to break the law?

What’s next? School vending machine’s selling alcopops in pink plastic bottles endorsed by Brittany Spears? Or ‘extra light’ cigarettes, with packets that feature the latest Disney film.  After all, everyone knows that kids drink and smoke before they should, so why not make it more accessible and fun?

While we’re at it, why not go the whole hog and just let kids drive cars. I’m sure Toyota or Ford could design a ‘downsized’ car with booster seats and bigger peddles, so that their feet could actually reach the brake.

That would be crazy you cry, they’d end up killing themselves or someone else. Of course it’s crazy, and yes they surely would. Legitimising anything that kids are neither physically equipped to do or old enough to handle is a bloody stupid idea.

Yes, something needs to be done to stop young kids getting into bed and up the duff, but I fail to see how the solution will be found in a small, square packet labelled ‘Hotshot’.

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what you can do with a pile of sand

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Here’s a little gem from youtube that’s well worth 8 minutes of your time. I’d even go so far as to say I guarantee you’ll also end up watching it more than once… and utter the word ‘Wow’ at least half a dozen times.

The video shows the winner of 2009′s ” Ukraine ‘s Got Talent “, Kseniya Simonova. Her ‘talent’ – drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table – is incredibly mesmeric to watch, as the continuous flow of images tell the rather emotional story of how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky – then war planes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying – then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos, from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

During The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, one in four of the population was killed, with 8 to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. Little wonder then, that so many in the audience were moved to tears and this incredible artist went on to win the top prize of about $ 75,000.

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Click on the picture below to watch this truly amazing performance..

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Demon children and saintly spoodles

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Taking your child away on holiday can sometimes be a very dangerous thing to do. In only a few short weeks they can morph into a human being barely recognisable from the one you once knew. As routine, balanced diet and consistency goes out the window, everything you ever taught them seems to follow, including good manners, eating habits and general all round intelligence.

In the case of my 3 year-old, this certainly seemed to be the case. He left Perth a mild-mannered, book loving, happy eater, and arrived in England a screeching, uncontrollable terror. Who wouldn’t eat a single vegetable. Including beans. Coated in tomato sauce. Made by Heinz. Heavens above, what child refuses those?

What the hell happened up there at 33,000 feet you might ask? I’m still pondering the very same question myself – but looking back it’s easy to see where it all went so wrong.

A stranger to sugar and capable of sleeping for up to 4 hours in his afternoon nap, my son found his world being tipped upside down as he was dragged from his bed and shoe horned into the car on the way to the airport. There we were, in the middle of the night, singing to try to keep him awake. Dragging him behind us at speed, force feeding him cookies (albeit low-fat ones) to coax him on a plane he didn’t want to go on, and then telling him he must then lie down and go back to sleep, with bright lights and dinner trays clattering all around him.

It was a recipe for disaster from the start, and the rest of the holiday carried on in much the same vein. Erratic bed times, long stretches in the car, sporadic mealtimes containing all the wrong foods and a difference set of people every time he woke up. To say he was a fish out of water was an understatement. More like a little boy in a parallel universe.

As a direct result of this holiday madness, and so not really his fault at all, his behaviour often veered on the side of manic. Energy levels went through the roof, ears sealed off to reasoning and his mouth went into screeching overdrive. And all in a country where you are no longer allowed to ‘discipline’ your child in public … tricky.

He now saw eating – unless the food in question came under the food group ‘treat’ – as an unncessary inconvenience, and as mentioned before, anything that had once grown up from, across or dropped to the ground was now met with a pursed mouth and muffled cries of “Don’t like it”. A tad frustrating, especially as the week before he’d happily opened up for aubergine and olives.

The ‘highlight’ of this out-of-control behaviour came however, at perhaps the very worst time possible of our entire holiday. I’d go as far as to say, that in the collective 12 years my offspring have been alive, never have I wanted to hang my head so low in shame.

While visiting a potential school for my daughter, my son reached deep into his inner demon and pulled out quite possibly the worst behaviour that the inside of the headmasters office has ever seen. He spread crumbs far and wide (from a biscuit off the tea-tray he’d launched himself at), squeezed his juice box across the polished table and pulled himself back and forwards across the floor like the member of a crack commando team. He climbed on the window seats, threw cushions on the floor and very nearly pulled down the curtains – 4 times. He struggled when I picked him up, pulled at me when I put him down and slithered to the ground when I put him back in his seat. The entire time he screeched and shrieked and laughed like a nutter possessed.

It was pretty toe-curling stuff, as any parent could well imagine.

There we were, talking about school reports and untapped potential and trying to give a good impression. And there was  my little monster – who would also be eligible to go there in a years time – bouncing off the walls like Tiger on a mixture of crack cocaine and speed.

The only saving grace in this whole embarrassing ordeal was that the headmaster knew better than to judge the entire family based off of the actions of its smallest member. As well as being a parent,  he was also my old English teacher – the teacher who had in fact inspired me to start writing in the first place, many light years ago.

Should this worrying tale of holiday woe begin to put off any parent thinking of taking a break, then fear not, it does have a happy ending.

After the episode at the school, sugar was abruptly cut out of his diet (which was unfortunate for him as this happened before Christmas). Within days he started to ease off his high and calm down again – apparently it takes at least 2 weeks for somebody to go cold turkey where the sweet stuff is involved. Now back in Perth, my son is already back to his old self, and get this, better than before. His manners are perfect, he’s calm and controllable and best of all, he’s eating vegetables faster than I can get them on his plate.

Not that I’d ever recommend killing your child’s routine and dragging them round the world to help knock them into shape, but on this occasion, it seems to have done the job.

Incidentally, the same also seems to be true of Charlie. He went into the kennels as a naughty, barking, escape artist, and come out a changed dog. He is now well-behaved, quiet and far more obedient than the 2 year-old Spoodle that went in. He didn’t even make a run for it the other day, when I accidently opened the garage door without shutting him inside first.

Now, if my daughter had gone in the same direction as my son and the dog, I could have said I had a hat trick on my hands. Unfortunately the excellent behaviour she showed when away (which was enough to get her offered a place at the school) has worn off some, and been replaced with the somewhat emotional and pouting little girl of before.

Still, can’t win them all, and 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

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Shut up and push

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Here are some recent ramblings of an enlightened male, that will no doubt make mothers everywhere grind their teeth in annoyance.

According to Michael Odent – a medical expert and ‘childbirth specialist’ – fathers-to-be should no longer be present at the birth of their children, and should be banned from the delivery room. Apparently they make our time in labour longer, more painful and more stressful.

Oh, what a load of crap.

I believe it’s the trying to push and pass out something the size of a bloody melon that is the cause of all the pain and stress, not having the father sat beside us in the room. Something that Mr Odent would know if he was to give it a go. Oh that’s right, he can’t, he’s a man.

Now I can only speak for myself, and the 22 hours in total I’ve spent in labour, but having my husband in the room helped, not hindered the situation. He made the time go faster by talking to me, making me laugh and occasionally laughing at me (as he winched me on and off the birthing ball). He fetched me reading material and fluids, and let me wrap my fingernails so snugly around the bones in his arm I left scars, without making so much as a whimper.

For me, high as a kite on gas and air, the time actually passed quite quickly. For him, unable to escape from my vice gripe long enough to even let the blood flow back into his fingertips, the time must have practically stood still.

His one very stupid idea of offering me a Jaffa cake half way through a contraction aside, my husband was an absolute god send, and made an otherwise traumatic occasion much more bearable. The thought of having had to go through that without him there doesn’t even bear thinking about.

So I really don’t care if Mr Odent has been ‘involved for more than 50 years in childbirth’. He hasn’t been there. Or got the t-shirt, weakened bladder or stretch marks to prove it.  So with all due respect, he should butt out and stop trying to fix something that isn’t broken. Recommending that a woman should give birth with only a silent midwife in the room is like suggesting an operation should be done without the general anesthetic – just because it might speed up the recovery time. Would Mr Odent particularly like to be sliced and diced whilst awake I wonder?

Of course midwives do a great job – my last one was lovely, if my somewhat hazy memory serves me right – but they can’t give you what you need while your pelvis splits in half and your pain levels go off the Richter scale. At a time when all dignity has left the room and you’re freaked out and panicking, you don’t need polite chit-chat with a strange woman between your legs, as she grapples with a slippery crowning head. You need a familiar face and the reassurance of the person who got you into this painful bloody mess in the first place.

The other, even more laughable observation made by Mr Odent, is that watching your wife give birth can ultimately lead to divorce. I’m sorry. Is this man for real? What he’s really saying is if a man is subjected to seeing his wife laid out on a table like a birthing cow, then he will ultimately be put off having sex with her again, and as a result, have no choice but to throw in the towel and his wedding ring.

Now THAT is the saddest excuse in the history of marriages for a man being forced to leave his wife. It’s actually justifying why a man can jump ship and run off with a younger, un-stretched, child-free model. If there’s a Mrs Odent out there, you must be so proud – and so very paranoid.

Generally speaking, the man who gets you pregnant already knows (or should already know) you inside out. If, after the birth, he literally knows you inside out, then that, unfortunately, is one of the side effects of procreation.

To say that men can’t stomach the sight of their wife in labour or that they will ‘stop feeling a sexual attraction towards them’, is an insult to husbands everywhere. It’s certainly an insult to woman to say that we’re no longer seen as anything other than a piece of reproducing meat after the birth.

If woman had their way, Mr Odent, we wouldn’t be forced to watch our husbands belch, scratch, itch and fart beside us on the sofa every night. None of these manly qualities really puts us ‘in the mood’ you know, but you don’t see us all rushing to file for divorce and citing these disgusting habits on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour.

Really, fancy telling us we should be giving birth in silence and on our own. Are you recruiting for the Church of Scientology by any chance? Next you’ll be saying that pain relief is illegal and Enya is no longer a suitable birthing artist.

For a father to be made to miss out on seeing his child born would be a terrible thing. Not only because he wouldn’t get to experience the incredible rush of euphoria when meeting your 5 second old offspring for the first time, but because for the rest of his life he would be forever reminded by his wife, that not only did she have to do all of the work, but that he wasn’t even there to hold her hand at the end.

And that, Mr Odent, is the part you seem to have forgotten. Woman want their men there with them at this time. Not just to offer them support and a back rub, but so that they can see first hand just how much pain childbirth involves. This way, regardless of how many bins are put out or paychecks earned, the man will always know that he owes something to his wife that can never be repaid.

Call it an unfair advantage in the guilt stakes, but childbirth is the one bit of power we woman still hold in this world. Don’t you dare try and take that away from us.

Why Perth will never equal Paris

Paris, NY, London and Milan – the fashion capitals of the world. Exciting hubs of cutting edge design and stylish good taste. Where the beautiful flock to see and be seen, and designers fight to outdo each other, sending one unwearable outfit after another down the catwalk.

Perth on the other hand – not so much a hub as a gaping hole. The universal dumping ground for the last 3 decades worth of dodgy trends. A place that shops everywhere send their unwanted stock to, and the fashion police earn more in a weeks overtime than your average divorce lawyer would in a year.

Lord only knows why some of the clothes shops are so bad here, it’s not like there isn’t online access to the rest of the world and a constant supply of current fashion magazines. Perhaps it’s because the city is so isolated that it’s inhabitants just don’t care, or because the over zealous customs officials are rooting out all the best stuff and selling it off on Ebay. Whatever the reason, I’d have to say trends here seem to be at least a good 20 years behind the rest of the world.

Think ‘Hillbilly Chic’. A sort of trucker meets 80′s Chav meets unwashed backpacker.

Of course the limited choice of shops really don’t help. They are enough to turn even the most fashion conscious into the worst sort of fashion victim – or phobic. The options range from the likes of Kmart, Target and BigW for your cheap and cheerful basics – with basic being the operative word. Most garments seem to fall apart in the wash, beg for mercy under the heat of a gentle iron or change several dress sizes hours after being removed from the hanger. You get what you pay for of course, so for kids clothes, which have a shorter life span than the average family camera, these shops are great.

At the other end of the rather abysmal spectrum is Myers and David Jones. Both shops are supposedly the ‘Creme de la creme’ of Aussie shopping. Say no more. I’ve been into each a few times, but have never seen anything either particularly special or stylish, let alone affordable. I had a voucher to use up for David Jones recently, and it took me several visits to try and find anything that I even wanted to buy. In the end I settled for a pyjamas top. I only managed half an outfit as the top alone came to more than the voucher, and I was loathed to fork out even more for something I didn’t actually need.

Several washes later and the stitching on the top had all but unravelled. The fabric had also stretched so much on the sides that if I’d leapt off our roof, I could probably have coasted all the way out to Rottnest on a wind current.

Funnily enough a set of pyjamas I bought from Big W 3 winters ago are still going strong.

When talking to other POMS here, the one shop that most seem to miss is NEXT. If I had a decent pair of well fitted jeans for every time someone asked why they can’t open a store in Perth, my wardrobe would be overflowing with denim.

Clothes aside, there also seems to be an underlying scruffiness ingrained into the WA culture. The mullet for instance is incredibly popular over here, and it’s not uncommon to see an entire family out and about, all sporting matching scraggly rats tails down their backs. I think that like the fashion, photos in mens barbers over here must be somewhat outdated.

The other trend, one that never ceases to amaze me, is the notion that footwear is entirely optional. Now I’m not talking about going barefoot to the park or the beach – that would be understandable. I’m referring to those I’ve seen without shoes in IKEA, the city centre, restaurants, supermarkets, the cinema and the most dangerous of all, or so you’d think, Bunnings.

Revolting, dirty looking feet aside,  surely there have to be some serious health and hygiene laws being broken as kids run across the urine soaked floors of the public toilets and straight down the fresh produce aisle of the neighbouring supermarket.

And needless to say, if such people don’t ever wash their feet, it’s highly unlikely they’d wash their hands..

I followed one such woman and her snot encrusted child around Coles last week, and snapped her for with my phone for proof. Given that she looked like she was probably capable of beating me to death with one of those blocks of cheese, I’ve airbrushed her features slightly. But to be honest, I very much doubt she’d ever stumble across my blog, or be able to read this post.

This shoeless woman I have to say was certainly not alone. I spotted several others, overgrown toe nails and all, hot footing it through the freezer section.

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Perhaps people in WA feel there’s no point bothering with their appearance, because there’s really nowhere to dress up and go. I can relate to this, and know from experience it’s a very easy and highly dangerous trap to fall into. Before you know what’s happened, you can find that you’ve metamorphosed into a homeless bag lady, wearing the same old tracksuit for 6 days in a row and have forgotten to change out of your PJs on Sunday.

Now I’ve never been one for making a huge effort with clothes, or really caring that much about how I look, but a while back I realised I was starting to stoop to such a level. This was around the time I arrived at the school to collect my daughter and realised, as I went to get out the car, that I’d left the house in my slippers.

So the following weekend, when heading out to Coles to do the weekly shop, I dug around in the back of my wardrobe and put on a jacket, a scarf and my high-heeled boots – the sort of clothes I’d have once worn in the UK when popping out to fill the car up with petrol. Taking it one daring stop further, I took my hair out of a pony tail and dusted off my mascara,  pumping the tube vigorously to break the old clumps off the brush.

My son walked straight past me in the hallway, and then did a double take as he disappeared around the corner. I don’t think he actually recognised me. How sad is that.

“Oh you do look pretty Mummy” my daughter said as I appeared from the bedroom, clearly impressed with my ‘Extreme Makeover’. I loosely translated this compliment to mean that I normally didn’t.

“So where are you off to then, seeing as you’re all dressed up?” enquired my slightly suspicious husband.

With that I realised that I had better start making more of an effort, before I reached the day where I would think nothing of going to the shops still wrapped in my duvet, or end up with skin as thick as a rhinos hide on a pair of black and scaly feet.

Is it possible to parent without Prozac?

I’ve often wondered, what makes a good mother? And if I were to be marked out of 10, what would I get?

I mean these days are you considered a maternal goddess simply because you manage to keep your offspring alive, fed and watered till they’re 18, or is there more to it than just ensuring the survival of the young? Maybe it’s about teaching Junior not to knock every other child to the floor, in the stampede to get the last biscuit. Or how it’s unacceptable to spit at passing old ladies in the street, or hold up the local corner shop with a Swiss army Knife, for the sake of a pocketful of jelly beans.

Basic ground rules no longer seem to apply to kids today and it’s hard to know what will keep them from falling off the straight and narrow. Personally I concentrate on good manners, eating well, doing what they’re told – and the all important learning not to interrupt me when I’m on the phone. But who knows if this is enough.

Perhaps there should be a Parents Manual 101. A check list so we can tick off what we’ve done right, what we’ve got wrong and and what’s still to come. Actually scratch the last one. If we knew what was to come, the survival of the young would be put into jeopardy and Prozac sales would sky rocket.

I do sometimes feel that I probably fall well below the Mother’s Mark – that’s the parental version of the Plimsoll line, there to let you know when you’re about to drown in another child rearing disaster. These feelings of inadequacy are often as a result of me completely losing the plot, followed by my temper. Generally over something that is, in the grand scheme of things, really not that important at all.

Like my daughter sifting through her dinner as if I’m deliberately trying to poison her with an olive. Or my son deciding that the clean, cream wall is the perfect empty canvas on which to exercise his untapped artistic talent. The sort of stuff that I no doubt did at that age – and got a smack for.

So when one tearful child has gone to bed with no pudding, because he refused to eat any of the vegetables, or the other is glaring at me as she stomps to her room because I’ve abruptly switched the TV off – without giving a full  60 minute’s worth of warning – then I feel like crap. Well actually, lets be honest, initially I don’t feel that bad at all. I’m normally glad to have some peace and quiet at last and a chance to sit down without being talked at, tugged down to floor level or questioned over everything I say.

It’s about an hour later when I go into their rooms and see them laying there, all angelic looking with a tear still clinging onto an eyelash. Then I feel like crap.

Worse still, when looking for reassurance the next day, I ask my daughter, “So do you still love me or am I the meanest Mummy in the world?”

“Of course I do”, she says, looking horrified at the very suggestion she wouldn’t, ” you’re the very best Mummy in the world”.

And that’s when I feel REALLY crap. As I think to myself how important, on a scale of 1 to 10, was it that she ate that last piece of aubergine.

The trouble I find is that intending to be nice, loving and patience to my children every minute of the day, and actually achieving it are often about as far apart as the North and South Pole.

Sometimes it’s impossible not to be a bitch, even to them. I never mean it, but they seem to have this knack of catching me at a time when I’m especially stressed out, tired and hungry. They then  pull out all the stops and leap up and down on my very last, very frayed nerve. At that point, unfortunately for them, the most appetising looking thing to bite off just so happens to be their heads.

To make matters worse, it’s at these times that I come out with the most god awful things. Threats I have no intention of ever carrying out, character assassinations that are completely unfair and phrases that instantly morph me into my own mother. I hear the words come out, and even in mid flow think to myself ‘what the hell, shut up will you’.

I’m presuming, or rather hoping I’m not alone in all of this. Judging by some of the sad looking children and the angry, muttering mothers I’ve seen stalking around the supermarket and away from the playground, I’m guessing not.

In a perfect world I’d deal with stress better and never take it out on my kids. But the trouble is, as with most multi-tasking mums, half the time I’m too busy trying to work to play dress up with Barbies, and too busy cooking, feeding and clearing up to make necklaces out of pipe cleaners and the contents out of the ‘Bits’ draw.  By the evening I am certainly too bloody tired to discuss in detail, all those things that children find endlessly fascinating, and parents find, well, boring.

Yesterday for example, after a long day at the keyboard, my daughter informed me that for her latest school project she had to learn all about the banana. Now it’s not that I don’t care about the banana project, or wish to restrict her learning all about the cutting edge life cycle of this thoroughly nutritious fruit. But my brain just doesn’t have enough functioning cells left at the end of the day to process such an uninteresting topic.

I could let her lose on the Internet to find out more, but god only knows what would pop up if she Googled ‘ banana + picture’. I have images springing to mind, and none of them I wish to have burned into the memory bank of my 8 year old. I am tempted to just be blunt – ‘A banana grows, it’s peeled, it’s eaten – end of story’. But I suspect this just won’t cut it.

Besides that, it would be mean to crush her imagination and wish to learn. Particularly as I’m something of a witch when it comes to policing her homework and making her learn her times tables in the holidays – when all the other little girls seem to be out chatting with their friends on the street corner, wearing 2 inch silver kitten heels and eating sweets…

Juggling life and kids is an uphill battle at the best of times. Add to that a job, whether in an office or 10 feet from the kitchen table, and you may as well throw in a couple of knives and a blindfold. I wonder how many woman wish they didn’t have to do it all, or at least to be seen to be doing it all.

Given the choice, some days I think I’d rather go back to the Stone Age way of life. Sitting at home in my nicely decorated cave, with nothing to do but carving up and cooking whatever gets dragged back in through the door after the hunt. As long as there was Ebay that is, and Eastenders on the telly.

Anyway I have to say I felt slightly better about my mothering skills the other day, when I set eyes on this picture. I may bark, bite and occasionally smack my kids, but at least I’m not subjecting them to this type of beauty pageant child abuse. I ask you, what sort of self obsessed mother does this to her child? It’s freakish, warped and quite frankly creepy.

In comparison to these ‘eyes on the prize’ mothers,  I’m practically Maria Von Trap, with a little Mary Poppins thrown in for free.

When smelly children need surgery

Everyone has heard about those kids who stick something up their nose.

I’ve often thought what sort of idiot, albeit a pint sized one, does that? Images of a manky, sniveling little boy, with a crusted up, snot smeared face and unruly hair spring to mind. The sort of child who pulls wings of butterflies and feasts on worms and bugs. You know the type, they usually feature in the local paper, with a picture of the child proudly clutching the spanner set he somehow misplaced up his nasal cavity and his proud parents beaming away behind, quoted as saying “We wondered why all the magnets in the house kept sticking to his face.”

I also wondered what happened when this unfortunate event occurred. How did the child in question breath, when their nostrils were stuffed full of unidentifiable stuff? How did the parents not notice that little Jimmy had snorted his peas off his plate instead of eating them? And how on earth do they ever get the ‘foreign object’ back out again?

Last week I found out that I have one of ‘those’ children – oh what a proud parental moment that was. So off the back of that, I can now confirm the following. Yes, breathing is indeed restricted with something lodged up your nostril. It is easy to miss something different about your child, if it’s not visible to the eye. And believe it or not, it can take surgery.

The first clue that something was where it shouldn’t be was that my son smelt horrible, with a nasty whiff about his person that would come and go. The type of odour that simply refused to budge, even with much vigorous washing and twice daily teeth brushing. It’s hard to say exactly what the smell was even, somewhere between sour milk and a rotting vegetable perhaps. Fairly unpleasant in other words.

The pong went on for quite a while, until it escalated to such a point that my maternal alarm bells started clanging loudly in my ears. By this time I could no longer hug him on my lap without having to turn my head away to gasp for breath. Regardless of how much you love your child, no mother wants to sit and bury their nose into a compost heap every day.

Granted I do have a particularly sensitive nose, and could even detect a smoker walking 5 floors down and 500m away when pregnant, but this time it was more than me being fussy. So why wait till I was gagging you may ask? Well, apart from the whiff he was perfectly healthy. We checked him all over decaying flesh or rupturing boils, and like I said, he was washed and brushed regularly. Perhaps it was the fear of having a child diagnosed with halitosis that simply riddled me with fear.

So anyway, off to the doctor we went, where I told him that my son smelled horrible.

The doctor, as I expected, looked at me like I was something of a heartless cow when it came to my mothering care and concern. Then he looked into my sons mouth, and lo and behold spotted tonsils the size of walnuts. Or Brazil nuts. Or was it almonds. Anyway, regardless of the nut, apparently they were enormous and stopping all the air flowing down his throat. So the enlarged tonsils were blamed for the smell and I was referred to an ENT specialist to discuss having them removed.

A few weeks later we sat in front off the consultant. “He smells” I said, bracing myself for another raised eyebrow and resisting the urge to let out a “Mooo”, like the nasty Friesian that I am. The consultant looked at my son, turned him both ways and then informed me that he probably had something stuck up his nose. OK. Didn’t see that one coming. His nose certainly didn’t look any bigger than normal, and as far as I could remember, I hadn’t noticed him foraging around in the tool box and sniffing up a spanner. Perhaps it was a piece of Lego, or one of those wretched little Polly Pocket shoes I’m always telling my daughter to clear up.

Next stop for the doctor, the mouth, and his enormous tonsils were confirmed. They were then linked to his excessive sweating, loud snoring and irregular breathing at night, the long periods of time he spends awake and chatting in the early hours of the morning and his inability to shift a cold or cough. Well that cleared up all of those annoying habit’s then. I was told they needed to be whipped out ASAP, and as luck would have it, he had a slot to do it in a weeks time.

Marvelous, that would be the same day my husband was flying to Sydney for a week. Multitasking is one thing, but multitasking with a sick child alone is a whole other ballgame. By this stage, heartless cow was now looking more dazed and confused cow.

The night before surgery arrived, and with the bags all packed and ready for hospital, I promptly threw up. And then again. By 9am the next morning my husband had turned a rather sludgy shade of green. By 9.30 my daughter had been sent home from school. Or rather brought home, there was no way I was trotting into the school office to collect her dressed in my pyjamas.

I think it would be fair to say that so far ‘Operation Tonsil’ was not going to plan. With all of us (except the patient-to-be) now rolling around clutching buckets, the surgery was postponed for a further week. My son carried on watching Thomas, completely oblivious to the lucky escape he had just had.

A week later and into hospital we all went, lugging three enormous bags of essential items with us, only one of which was half unpacked. The other two sat in the corner completely untouched. My little boy was taken away by scalpel welding men in blue coats, and two nail biting parents sat in his dismal little room and watched the minutes tick by. Time does indeed go by much slower when you’re waiting for your precious offspring to survive.

On the way to be with him in the recovery ward I heard him long before I could see him. Weighing in at only 14kg, and just minutes out of a general anesthetic, I rounded the corner to find two nurses unsuccessfully trying to pin my little boy down onto the bed. Like a child possessed, he screamed blue murder and understandably thrashed around as he tried to figure out where he was and why he felt so odd. I have to say his show of strength was pretty impressive for his size, however it meant that he somehow managed to pull the tube out of his hand, and as I laid down with him to try and calm him down, he nearly catapulted me off the bed.

That night in hospital went as well as could be expected, considering the small and depressing room, the one colour suits all food and the rails of the bed that fitted in just perfectly between each of the vertebra down my spine.

For some unknown reason, all of the nurses also saw fit to raise their voices by several decibels as they barged into the room to check his stats, every 15 minutes throughout the night. To make continuous sleep even harder, each time they left they failed to close the door properly behind them. This left me with little choice but to climb over the rails of a ridiculously high bed, close the door myself and then climb back up and over and in again – in the dark. And all without waking the small restless child sprawled across the majority of a very small bed.

Did I mention this was a private hospital? No, I wouldn’t have guessed it either, if I hadn’t spotted the price list on the way in.

So now we’re home and I’m sitting with my little ticking time bomb of pain. Apparently he’s going to get a whole lot worse before he gets better, and he runs the risk of bleeding if he doesn’t eat toast everyday. Toast? I can’t even bribe him to open his mouth for ice cream right now. As far as he knows, his throat has just been attacked with a cheese grater.

This week is all about keeping him medicated up to the eye balls and preventing the dog from bouncing all over him on the sofa. It would be so much easier if he could understand why a day out ended in all this pain, but bless him, he doesn’t have a clue. Instead his sad little face looks up at me and I can just tell he’s thinking “What the hell did you let them do to me, you cruel and heartless cow?”

Oh, I almost forgot. The smell. That, I’m pleased to say, is gone. The ‘foreign object’ is still just that, as we have no idea as to what it might be. Let’s just say that if you blew your nose and that shot out onto the tissue you’d be somewhat alarmed, and probably feeling more than a little bit sick.

It’s sitting on the dresser right now, entombed in a plastic tub. I’m not exaclty sure why I’m keeping it, maybe so when he’s older I can whip it out and say “You may not have eaten worms and bugs as a child, but you did stick this up your nose. Happy 21st!”

Loving Mother’s Day

So, did the flowers, chocolates and assorted lovely Mothers Day gifts from my 2 little offspring make up for the countless painful hours that I spent in labour on their behalf? Absolutely.

Nothing makes a mother feel more loved and appreciated than the handmade offerings that are slaved over for many days by her children. Nothing beats waking up to see two faces peering at you over the duvet, demanding that you get up straight away for their ‘surprise’. And no shop bought card could ever be as special as one that is made with 100% undiluted love – and a craft cupboard load of tissue paper, glitter and glue.

I know that out of all the breakfasts eaten throughout the year, none is appreciated more than one whipped up by your child. Whether it might be a soggy piece of toast and a beaker of milk or a congealed Weetabix that has taken on the texture of setting concrete, it all tastes that much better because you didn’t have to make it yourself.

I was actually treated to smoked salmon and a poached egg this morning.  Admittedly my daughter did have some help here, but, as I was immediately informed upon entering the room, she did wear the oven mitt and was in sole charge of rolling the salmon.

With an offering such as this how could you ever possibly hold a grudge over the mind numbing pain brought on by your pelvis shifting for hours on end and your muscles contracting like bellows.

It’s funny how when you are a child you believe that Mother’s Day is all about the parent. When you grow up and become a parent, you actually realise that the day is really all about the child.

In my daughter’s case, it really was all about the child. This was the day she entered the world.

Damn that fairy

This past week has been something of a traumatic toothy experience for my daughter, and a scary glimpse into her dental future for me.

First she started off in the dentists chair, for what we thought would be a quick once over and out. It turned into several x-rays, and the photographic proof that she has more cavities than a rabbit warren has burrows. This news made my jaw drop. When the dentist turned to me and told me that I would have to improve her diet, my chin all but hit the floor.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that my child’s baby teeth were full of holes, I was being accused of pumping her full of Coke and Coco Pops for breakfast and filling her lunch box with pick ‘n mix. Marvelous, just marvelous. Everyone knows that asking a mother what sort of diet their child has is paramount to calling them hopeless, useless and completely irresponsible.

If I believed for even a millisecond that I was any of the above (and we’re only talking about diet control duties here, not mothering as a whole)  I guess I would have just hung my head down to meet my jaw and wished that the floor would open up and suck me on in. But I don’t believe that, so I decided to argue my case. Or rather defend myself, and say how incredibly healthy her diet actually is.

Chocolate is a treat in our house, sweets are a rarity (the last consumed were 2 jellybeans given by the doctor, go figure) and fizzy drinks are a no-go. She brushes and flosses twice a day, and resigns herself to 99% of the contents of any of her party bags going into the bin.

So short of sucking out all the sugar from her fruit, vegetables and wholegrain bread as well, I am at a loss of just how far I can go to improve her diet and stop the rest of her teeth dropping out as well.

I’m sure everyone claims the same, and the dentist probably just sits there thinking to himself  ‘Madam, you do protest to much’. But I was, to put it mildly, shocked, upset and riled up. Not at my daughter, or even really at myself, but at all those other countlesslittle Fruit Loop eating children out there. The ones boasting a perfect set of knashers, who are undoubtedly served up nothing but junk by a mum who doesn’t know her arse from her electric oven.

Seeing my stress levels increase, the dentist did try and pacify me somewhat, telling me that some kid’s teeth just can’t handle the same amount of contact with sugar. For the record, and for anyone else wondering what you are supposed to do in a situation like this, the dentist told her to start using a pea sized amount of adult toothpaste (not enough fluoride in the kids stuff when they are 7/8) and then not to rinse her mouth after. He also said to rinse her mouth out with some water after everything she eats, to brush her teeth after any treats and to steer clear of anything with any flavour.

OK, maybe he didn’t say the last, but he may as well have.

Her menu has now become as unappetising as a horses nose bag. The Sultana Bran (at 22.7% total sugar) is out and the Puffed Wheat (at 1.8%) is in. Not hard to see why Puffed Wheat is so low, it looks, tastes and bobs around on the milk like a handful of saw dust. The juice cartons have left her lunchbox, along with the ‘healthy’ fruit cereal bars and boxes of raisins (natures equivalent to candy floss).

Even the yogurt is being re-assessed for it’s high sugar content and then rationed. Quite frankly mealtimes are becoming a bloody nightmare. Still, what to do. Until her teeth are back on track and we can start again with a blank slate, I reckon it’s better to be safe than even sorrier.

It does seem that nothing on the shelves for kids these days comes without a cup or so of sugar thrown in for good measure, and this seems criminal. Cigarettes packets now host graphic images of the consequences, alcohol abuse is highlighted in hard hitting TV campaigns and even the danger of the sun is spelt in no uncertain terms, yet any company can target kids with their fat, salt and sugar laden foods, and no one seems to mind. Yes, the boxes are all labeled with food contents so a parent should know, but surely the kids ‘healthy breakfast cereals’ could at least veer a little more towards actually being healthy.

Little wonder that childhood obesity is taking over the way that it is, when these companies care more about profit, than doing their bit to try and prevent future generations becoming balls of doughy lard, with shorter life spans, diabetes and no teeth.

Anyway. Off my soapbox and on to the next dental disaster took place this afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, with a referral in hand, we trotted off to the nearest Orthodontist. Several more costly x-rays later, and we were seated to be told even more news. The expensive sort of news. Is there any other? Apparently her lower jaw is too far back, her teeth are too far forward and she’ll need a plate to bring them all back together. OK then. So that will be another $1700.

On the bright side the plate comes in a wide variety of pretty colours, something which I am now using to try and sell the idea to my daughter. The idea that I steer clear of the whole issue of discomfort, increased saliva and the problems that she will have stringing two words together when it’s in.

That wasn’t actually the worse part of the days bad news . Oh no. Not at all. The news that really had me jumping up and down with glee, was the glimpse into her future and the joys that are still to come. The x-ray also showed crooked adult teeth making their way down, that would in time require a full brace to be glued onto her teeth, for a rather reasonable $6000. Once again it does come in a choice of colours. Train-track grey, or the more expensive and less effective clear plastic. Hmmmm. Decisions, decisions.

So was that the end of the bad news? Don’t be silly. Add to that a tooth that’s gone AWOL. That’s right a missing tooth. No, I can’t say I saw that one coming either.

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I  guess at some point the tooth fairy got the hump with us, possibly for not leaving enough under the pillow, and as revenge decided to swipe a tooth to make us pay. Literally. In the form of a no doubt ludicrously priced false tooth when the other one falls out. Have to say that if I ever catch that damn fairy she’ll be lucky to make it out of there with both her (or his) wings intact.

So was that the end of the bad news? I’d say. Don’t you think that’s enough to be going on with?

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